Jumping Tiger: Paulette Nardal

Pouncing Tiger: Paulette Nardal (Jumping Tiger: Paulette Nardal) is a sound performance that moves between archival material, live music and poetic fiction. It is based on interviews with Paulette Nardal from the Nardal sound archive of her biographer Philippe Grollemund, the author of Fiertés de femme noire: Entretiens/Mémoires de Paulette Nardal (The Pride of a Black Woman: Interviews with/ Memories by Paulette Nardal, 2019).

The performance unfolds as a fictional conversation with Paulette Nardal. Interview fragments intertwine with electronic soundscapes, improvised music, and poetry. Nardal's voice is constantly present and enters into a dialogue with other voices and perspectives. The sound experience opens up a space in which the archive, the performance and the audience participate equally in the production. Sampling is at the heart of the work: voices, breaths, pauses and language fragments are removed from their original contexts and find each other in new tonal and rhythmic relationships. The samples are played live with an SP-404MKII and supplemented by field recordings, synthesizer inserts and improvisations with flute and voice.