This presentation will take us back to the early 1980s, in order to look at two contrasting exhibits: “Für Augen und Öhren“ and “Écouter par les yeux“. The first dealt with the relationship between music and the visual arts in the 20th century, while the second took up the “material of sound” in the arts. For our purposes here, we will look closely at an image provided by René Block, which was published in the “Écouter par les yeux catalogue“, and which was intended to map the “relations between visual arts and music.” A second document from the early 1980s deserves our attention: Max Neuhaus’ artist’s statement from the catalogue of an exhibit of his works at the Paris Modern Art Museum, which gives a practical line for working with sound in the arts. We will aim to clarify what this detached approach to music implies and how, by looking at other histories (that of science, in particular), we might derive certain aspects of the practices associated with what we call “sound art.”

Simultaneous translation: Marie-Louise Diomède