MOTONOMY China Tour by Julie Semoroz & Jérémy Chevalier

The exploration of sounds and the reflection of the living world has been the key concern of this artist over time. Julie Semoroz is a Geneva-based singer, sound artist and manager of artistic projects. Her creations deal with notions of melancholy, of metaphysical poetry, the invisible and the territory, building intimate and ethereal universes on the edge of breakage. She works extensively with repetition and sound exhaustion, as well as improvisation. She spreads confusion, navigating between pop and experimental music, sound performance or concert.

Julie has produced live music for Yann Marussich’s “Bain Brisé” during his highlight performance of “Swiss Window in Asia” to Power Station of Art and in Shanghai, Penghao Theater in Beijing and Ox Warehouse in Macau back in March 2016, realized by Pro Helvetia Shanghai, Swiss Arts Council. This June, she will present across mainland China a brand new music tour in collaboration with Jérémy Chevalier, as JMO/ Spriale Nevrose/ Laniakea Starlette will be performed. Then in Hong Kong, she will improvise over sounds foraged by local residents and artists to transform them into the sound installation called Sonic Amass.

“Julie Semoroz’s music provided a sonorous texture, drowning irrelevances, heightening intensities. Her quasi-Pythagorean harmonies overwhelmed our day-to-day noises, body sounds and movement, our surreptitious whispers.” 

–Sarah Wilson, professor of modern and contemporary art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London talking about “Bain Brisé” of Yann Marussich.

JMO

Noise, experimental sound, ambient

Ground and ethereal atmosphere

Since 2015, Julie Semoroz has developed a sound research work in the form of performances, installations and sound spatializations; experimentations issued from “field recordings”. The idea is to work the sound material in type frames of “site specific art”. JMO’s lives are thorough and detailed. She works including various organic materials such as voice recording or sounds from the human body that she transforms. A journey through dreamlike universe, passage between the microcosm and the macrocosm.

SPIRALE NEVROSE

Sound performance

Jérémy Chevalier is a visual artist, performer and musician. He practices rock music as a first source of inspiration. The objects he uses, the installations he sets and his acting are full of humour and derision. His instruments, tools and gestures are borrowed from the entertainment industry together with its derivative effects, namely its mistakes and the accidents it arouses. Spirale Nevrose is a new project born during the creation of Protuboscope made with Galery Duplex in BiG (Biennales des Espaces d’Arts indépendants) in June 2017. Spirale Nevrose as its name shows it, is the combination of the repetition of voice and language, exploring absurdity of communication.

LANIAKEA STARLETTE

Drone Rock

Laniakea is the first sound collaboration of Jérémy Chevalier and Julie Semoroz. This project was born during the creation of Protuboscope in June 2017. It displays cosmic repetitive music influenced by kraut rock, space rock and noise. The Laniakea Supercluster is the galaxy supercluster that is home to the Milky Way and approximately 100,000 other nearby galaxies. It was defined in September 2014. The new definition of the local supercluster subsumes the prior defined local supercluster, the Virgo Supercluster, as an appendage.

SONIC AMASS

Sound project, creation and outreach in Hong Kong

Sonic Amass is an audio project by Julie Semoroz that emerged in 2015 and is now being exported to China. Designed in the form of an in-situ outreach programme, the creation has become a laboratory for sound improvisation. The aim is to mix sounds and noises of a specific area (neighbourhood, esplanade, building, park) as a sound metaphor for the plural identity of the daily life in said area. Local artists and audiences will participate in the process of creation with collecting sounds.