Bal
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2019
MICHEL LORAND – HANS FAVEREY
B&W HD film,16×9 stereo sound, 04:30
BAL is a film with missing images. A sound creation based on Hans Faverey’s poem “Man & dolphin / mens & dolfijn” (1970). “My poetry isn’t a poetry of meaning but of movement.” This is how Dutch poet Hans Faverey (1933–1990) summarized his work. His poems are conceived like musical compositions: sounds as notes, identical yet different according to octave or key.
The poem is constructed on the inability to pronounce words. From this silence, the movement of speech is born. This film is a canon in five voices, built around the poem’s five stanzas. These are recorded, repeated, and shifted by one stanza at each reading. This musical composition begins as a crescendo and ends in decrescendo. The five readings of the poem meld together to create one polyphonic piece.
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*
Zeg nou eens.
(Say).
B/a/l. Bal. Hé:
je moet bal zeggen.
Ball; bal. Dolfijn,
zeg bal: ‘bal’. Zeg eens
bal.
(Ball). Dolfijn: ‘bal’.
*
Zeg nou eens ‘bal’, dolfijn.
Hé dolfijn:
zeg eens
bal. Bal: b/a/l.
‘Bal’; zeg eens: bal.
Je moet ‘bal’ zeggen.
(Ball; say: ball).
*
Ball; bal. Je moet.
Zeg eens; zeggen.
‘Bal’. (Say). Zeg:
(ball). B/a/l. Zeg
nou eens. Hé, dolfijn.
Bal, dolfijn.
Bal. ‘Bal”. (Bal).
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