Jennifer Walshe, Ensemble Contrechamps

Going back to 2003, Jennifer Walshe composed XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, an opera for voices, ensemble, cameramen, CD and puppeteers. Dealing with the theme of sexual violence, and in the same vein as the Singspiele in the work of Mozart and Haydn, she remodels, with the help of AI, a few canons from the history of Western music and contributes, in a radical way, to the public debate via film, photography, and sculpture, as well as installations, compositions, improvisations, and recordings… In 2013, a tale of the fantastic by E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Sandman, in which a young student falls in love with an automaton named Olimpia, was the inspiration behind the title given to some visual arts-based research archives looking into robotics of the past and present, SOME THINKING & FEELING. Designed for her own voice, with its unique techniques and modes of emission, and also for the rhythm section, the woodwinds and brass of Ensemble Contrechamps, her latest work draws upon these archives. In the light of the most recent scientific and philosophical advances, it questions the nature of human intelligence and the potential for sensitivity of a non-human kind.