Jean-Paul Curtay at Ultimatum Festival 1985-05-05

Room noise.

Jean-Paul Curtay is a French visual artist, writer, video artist, poet, and Lettrist choreographer born in 1951. He is the inventor of “bodily music” and “hypergraphic music.” In painting, his primary mode of expression is hypergraphy (the use of the sign as the sole represented object).

Performs sound piece [mixture of live and recorded sounds: slamming, off-beat clapping, barking, laughter, human voices, stomping, mouth sounds, tapping, crackling].

He is the author of the first anthology of Lettrist poetry, which he published in 1974. One of his pastels is part of the collection

Very active in the Lettrist scene beginning in 1967, he began to distance himself from the group around 1978. He ceased all public creative activity in 1988. Jean-Paul Curtay is also known as a physician specializing in nutritional therapy and herbal medicine.

Room noise.

Microphone feedback.

Room noise.

Performs sound piece [vocalizes][microphone feedback throughout].

Performs sound piece [trickling sound].

Room noise.

Continues sound piece [mouth sounds, microphone feedback].

Microphone feedback.

Room noise.

Resumes sound piece [tapping and clapping sounds].

Room noise.

Resumes sound piece [mouth sounds][left ear, right ear].

Speakers popping.

Continues sound piece.

Speakers popping.

Continues sound piece.

Room noise.

Applause.

Performs sound piece [accompanied by recorded sounds: computer noises, baby crying, humming, gurgling, horn, high pitched gibberish].

Silence [cuts out].

Resumes sound piece.

Room noise.

Performs sound piece [accompanied by recorded sounds: whispering, gurgling, metallic grinding, bird calls, human voices].

Microphone feedback.

Continues sound piece [accompanied by recorded sounds: whispering, gurgling, metallic grinding, bird calls, human voices].

Chatter and whistling.

Continues sound piece [shouting].

Shouting [unintelligible] and laughter.

Performs sound piece [metallic trinkle sounds].

Coughing.

Continues sound piece [accompanied by recorded sounds:chugging, lasers].

Applause.

Continues sound piece [louder, whispering].

Applause.

Fades out sound piece, sound quality more distant.

Room noise.

Microphone crackle.

Bon, Bon soooooooooooir [modulation], bon soir! [left ear] En attendan the John Giorno baaaaaaaand [echo: baaaand][right ear].

Applause.

Pendent que les techniciens vont defiler le renfilage et vice versa [echo], on va visioner le film de Napoleon Moffat qui s’appelle Framed-d. Qui est originalement un super huite qui a ete transfer a trois–three quarter inch, trois quarts video. C’est un film excellent pis un des meilleures… Pour cinq minutes vous avez le poesie visuel plein de geule, okay? [left ear bias, right ear echo].

Chatter, soft clapping.

Napoleon Moffat’s "Framed" starts [piano music].

Film continues [speech: There are spaces that live within us. Spaces which occupy the frame. The transparency of their names. A terrible tragedy that haunts their walls. The revelation of their fiction. Of something which might of happened but that never really occurred].

Film continues [piano music].

[End of recording].