Production: Babelfish, Semi-Silent, ACSR
Author: Anne Lepère
Producer: Babelfish, Semi-Silent, ACSR
Director:Anne Lepère
Sound engineers: Sound recording, editing, texts, and sound compositions: Anne Lepère Mixing and broadcast: Jeanne Debarsy
Other key staff: With the voices of Ana-Rosa Lopez Villanueva – the Guardian, Komivi Antandji aka Gros Grain With the voices of the participants of the “Cloud” workshops (gathering around sixty people). With Martinho Moleiro on flute. External perspective: Marion Sage Production delegate: Camille Valençon Illustration: Georges Favières Graphic design: Lucie Caouder A Babelfish production, co-produced with Semi Silent with support from the Fonds d’aide à la création radiophonique of the Wallonie- Bruxelles Federation and the support of ACSR
Synopsis:
CLOUDS is a sound fiction unfolding between earth and sky. It begins with the narrator wandering in quiet contemplation, her gaze lost in the sky, when she is suddenly surprised by an eagle that lifts her upward. Carried through multiple layers of the atmosphere, she reaches the threshold of the Cloud Reserve, where she meets its guardian and embarks on an initiatory visit across shifting altitudes. As the journey progresses, the narrator becomes aware of the growing fragility of clouds, affected by present climate realities. Along the way, magical beings appear, including Big Grain, who investigates how clouds are perceived by humans today. These reflections gradually surface throughout the piece, leading to a climactic moment when the guardian invites the narrator to swallow a cumulus cloud—an intimate experience of becoming cloud from within, feeling each water-filled cell vibrate.
Movements between earth and sky punctuate encounters with the poem-clouds: Cumulus, Stratus, and Cirrus, each embodied through syllables, words, and sonic textures. Human voices emerge and dissolve like drifting cloud formations, shaped by the altitudes they inhabit—lively and playful in mid-levels, dark and dense below, light and ethereal above. The listening experience unfolds like watching a living sky, where clouds continuously pass and transform. CLOUDS is a meditation on impermanence, reminding us that no one lives under a uniform sky, nor one that is entirely grey or blue. And you—what color is your sky today?
