Category: Various

Electronic Nap in Paris

Electronic Nap at the Port de la Gare

An electronic nap on the bridge of the Petit Bain barge to listen to the ethno-ambient music of Ujjaya.

Comfortably installed along the Seine in a chaise longue or lying on large cushions, the public came to participate in a very original sensory adventure.

In the middle of a unique decor opposite the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand and the Pont de Tolbiac, the electronic nap can begin.

Ambient music

After an excellent presentation on the origins of the ambient by Olivier Bernard it is Ujjaya who will give an instrumental concert to animate this musical nap.

electronic nap

A great book written by Olivier Bernard (800 pages)
Anthologie de l’ambient  – 2013 – Camion Blanc

Ambient music, which is typically characterized by large electronic sounds produced by synthesizers with sounds that are often very long, can trigger a state of physical and mental relaxation.

The basic influences of our friend Ujjaya are coming from legendary artist like Brian Eno, Steve Roach, Robert Rich.
Because of its Malagasy origins Ujjaya composes cosmopolitan and global music, which travelers from all over the world will appreciate.

Ujjaya introduce ethnic music produced with instruments from around the world to transform it into an ethno-ambient style.
Ultimately, Ujjaya manages to develop his own style and sound.

electronic nap

Ujjaya

Ujjaya and a small part of his instruments

From the left to the right on the picture we can see :

A pierced clay percussion udu in Africa (called Gatham in India )

A Mac book used sometimes as a synth – it launches the drones except in this photo where he plays with a portable harmonium (from 1885, authentic the Gazette of the elections of the Indre et Loire dated October 1885 found at the bottom when he cleaned the instrument)

A shank (small white spot on his left), or ritual Hindu conch that introduces most of his concerts

A muyu, or temple block, it is a clave that serves to rhythm the mantras in the Bhuddist temples.

A Balinese gong, which gives the base note in the gamelan.

The next electronic nap is scheduled on the Petit Bain houseboat on 9 September with Archetype and Ludovic Roubaudi.

Coming soon a sleeping concert for a full night during next september or october months.
Provide a sleeping bag and a pillow. Like the @Ujjaya.ethno.ambient facebook to be informed.

The last ambient festival of Paris took place in the crypt of the Martyrium of Saint Denis, rue Yvonne le Tac in Paris in the 18th arrondissement.
For more informed the best way is to like the facebook page of Ambient Festival of Paris @paris.ambient.festival and Ujjaya facebook Page @Ujjaya.ethno.ambient.

To organize a workshop photography along the Seine during 3 hours book the Experience Photography Tour with Fred from Parisian Clichés.

In Search of Marcel Proust

Our photographic testimony is focused on the main places that inspired the author for the writing of his novel, ”A la recherche du temps perdu””. A lot of locations from the novel, houses and villas, hotels and restaurants places or neighborhoods are still there for our biggest pleasure at the beginning of our century.

Continue reading In Search of Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust and photographic memory

The power of photographic memory

The writing of In Search of Lost Time is based on an essay, Jean Santeuil, which will serve as a genesis, a synopsis for the writing of In Search of Lost Time. This essay marks the beginning of a meticulous artistic approach initiated by Marcel Proust for the writing of his final novel using his photographic memory.

This artistic process that will last more than fifteen years until his death.  He had no choice to avoid putting his death on the scene, the last episode of this masterful process of creation.

To portray an aristocratic society to which he does not belong wholly but which he can approach and co-operate on a daily basis with such a clear vision of his morals and beliefs is pure pleasure for a reader in search of adventures and stories to be imagined frozen by a camera.

Without the persevering determination of Marcel Proust to create a masterful literary work, to built this work as an exceptional artistic creation, reading In Search of Lost Time would be an unbearable novel to read for a neophyte photographer in literature and would have no Influence on our vision to see the world by narrative composed of a simple accumulation of photographic memories that would not suffice to keep his reader in suspense.

In the same time photographer will place his tripod, his lenses with different opening, angle, speed and paper, to revel the final result of his process confirming his role of photographer of informing, representing, and surprising.

Marcel Proust, used maybe a photographic memory filed in mind he could pick up as a reminder, as records during his writing process.

bed room marcel proust

The revelation of the involuntary memory

The book written by Jean -François Chevrier ” Proust et la photographie ” proposes an analogy between the involuntary memory that would be at the origin of the vocation of Marcel Proust for the writing of The Search for lost time and the unconscious mechanisms at work in photography.

Here are some extracts from the book of Monsieur Jean-François Chevrier:

“I imagined a fiction: The search for lost time tells a vocation of photographer as much as a vocation of writer.

It is the gradual discovery of the powers of photography as a work of memory.

Watching, recording, writing, reproducing, imitating, revealing, imagining are for me the seven keys to the photographic imagination.

For the needs of the book, of a circular construction, Proust frequently reverses the terms, anticipates.
His narrative assumes from the beginning the possession of the final truth.

A collection of memories, like an album of photographs, can’t make a novel.

In order to construct the Research, it was necessary to establish a firmer point of support: the revelation of the involuntary memory. As early as 1909, Proust had shut himself up in his work, in the almost empty architecture of his novel, which he would never cease to fill until his death.

I see in this company a model for photographers, because perfectly romantic.

But I must observe that the practice of photography today demands from the photographer a singular awareness of his ends and his means.

It has always seemed very significant to me that the last fragment of Jean Santeuil, which prefigures the famous episode of the Research or where by a characteristic effect of the involuntary memory, the hearing of a sonata de Vinteuil re-emerges in the spirit of Swann the distant period of his first relations with Odette de Crécy, that this last fragment ends with this sentence:

“And the photograph of all this had taken its place in the archives of his memory, archives so vast that, for the most part, he would never look at them, unless by chance they were reopened, as had been this The pianist’s hangover that night. ”

“The photograph of all this” is the complete recording of the past in memory, restored by chance, when one might think it lost.

As for the formula “the archives of memory,” Proust owes it to Baudelaire.

Proust brings an additional element of analysis by introducing the temporal or event dimension. The apparatus is no longer a reproduction tool but a recording tool.

Cf: Proust and Photography – by Jean-François Chevrier

 

Harvesting time in Montmartre ?

Harvest in Montmartre is ready soon.

The harvest of the the grapes in La Vigne du Clos Montmartre are very late in the year and generally starts around mid october, as for centuries.

In the eighteenth century, the hill was covered with 3/4 of vineyards with a north exposure, considered as an aberration for winemakers.

At that time, the wine was not subject to the rights granted because outside of Paris, favor the opening of taverns and cabarets in the neighborhood like the famous ” Au Lapin Agile ”.

When Montmartre was annexed to Paris in 1860, the houses grow at the expense of the remaining vines and in the thirties the vine is replanted from 2000 feets of Gamay and Pinot Noir.

With less than 1800 feets to date, the grapes are pressed in the cellars of the town hall of the 18th district and then auctioned.

Anayway the wine is still a product coming from the ground of Montmartre and Parisians are proud to get a wine from their 2000 square meters of productive land and we can still find Cuvée de la planète 2014.

To celebrate this event don’t miss the harvest festival beginning of october.

 

Harvesting Time in Montmartre Parisian Clichés

 

Harvesting Time in Montmartre Parisian Clichés