The Listening Balcony
Reactivated in 2024, the Listening Balcony offers a breathtaking view of today’s international soundscape.
This journey is the auditory expression of a survey of the Valais glaciers undertaken three years ago by the Swiss artist Virginie Thurre. Both alluring and terrifying, the Alpine glaciers first inspired painters in past centuries. Then photographers. The artist sought to express the indomitable force of nature. For Virginie Thurre, they offer the opportunity for a unique immersive experience. When she explores them, she does so with microphones, hydrophones and geophones, using them to investigate crevasses, glacial lakes and streams, crevices and moraines. She is on the lookout for the energy that flows through them and eludes ordinary perception: infrasound vibrations, seismic resonances, and distant acoustic echoes of human activity. The work thus opens a new realm of perception and emotion. The recorder captures the infinitely large and the infinitely small, at a particular moment in time: that of global warming. It reveals a universe in perpetual motion: the bursting of air or gas bubbles released by warming, flows, internal collapses, and multiple bursts and tears. A secret world of tragic beauty.
The author is a mountain guide and founder of Échappées (echappees.ch), a collective ecofeminist project offering immersive hikes that combine listening to the alpine landscape with stories of pioneering women, inviting participants to walk, slow down, feel, listen and experience the landscapes in a different way. Trained in sound design with Phonurgia Nova since 2023, her work combines field recording with Alpine memory. A journey to be experienced with closed eyes. Acknowledgements : Emilie Wicki (scouting and guiding on the glacier) / Joell Nicolas (VRVN) (sound mixing) / Jeanne Debarsy (sound narrative design) / Marie, Chrystel and Alyzée for their input / Wendy Delorme for the poetic encounter up there.
Composition, Virginie Thurre; mixing Joell Nicolas (VRN)
