French composer and musicologist, Marin Escande joins the French Spring Festival 2022 as a participating artiste to showcase the final result of his residency at De Saram House. ‘In Search of Patterns’ is a 20-channel mixed media sound system installation that renders audible the movement of sounds between twenty speakers on a table-like structure, mapping an imaginary landscape of resonance. One table, twenty speakers, thirty metres of electrical wires, ten amplifiers, ten transformers, and other parts, all having once found their refuge at electronic shops in Pettah.

“Pettah for me was magical, it was like finding the Alibaba cave!” shares Escande in conversation on the making of the installation. Escande is resident in Colombo at Bawa’s De Saram House on a two-month residency for French artistes by the Embassy of France to Sri Lanka and the Maldives in partnership with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust and the support of the Residency Fabric of Institut Français. Sharing that while he may not have had much chance to travel around Sri Lanka, he has been to a few of the country’s most inspiring localities like Kandy and Dambulla, yet his strongest connection to Sri Lanka was the busy streets of Pettah – a place he calls the ‘playground for his installation’. “I spent so much time there; entire afternoons spent walking the winding roads of Pettah in search of the electronics that would make my installation. And what a fantastic place to be, there is simply nothing you can’t find in Pettah!” 

The installation, sourced in Pettah and crafted together by Escande, is the physical instrument for the presentation of a 25-minute composition made of overlapping loops created by the movement of sound. While some noises in the composition are a part of the every day – the crackle of electric lights or the quiet atmosphere of a courtyard – others are raw synthetic sounds. Their juxtaposition creates a cartography of how we experience and remember spaces through sounds. 

“Your senses have a way of reactivating the memories of a place. If you take a picture of your grandmother’s house and look at it 20 years later, you can reactivate an entire part of your life just by looking at it. With sound, it works the same way. A particular sound has the power to take you back to a memory – a place you associate solely with that sound. This installation is a reflection of the soundscape in Sri Lanka and the Geoffrey Bawa way of approaching it – the people, the landscape, my friends here, the devices. It’s a composition of sounds that will bring me back to Sri Lanka.” 

A composer known for experimenting with sound movement, Escande adds that his residency was a revelation in itself, the ‘In Search of Patterns’ installation a first of many for him. While his main practice in Paris leads him to focus solely on the composition aspect of his music, building his own sound system from scratch to play his own work is a new direction he’s keen on pursuing.  “I really want to do this again. What I did here in Sri Lanka was a very convincing starting point. I really liked the feel of building the subject and walking through the space.” 

With Sri Lanka’s soundscape playing such a vital role in his work, is it possible that our local, traditional music may also inspire Escande in his future compositions? “I have been introduced to Sri Lankan music during my residency, especially traditional drum music which was fantastic. I was so mesmerised by it and it certainly had an impact on me but I don’t believe that I can relate it to what I’m doing right now with my work. Maybe it will influence me later, but for now, it won’t be a direct influence on me” he answers. 

Educated in Paris Conservatory (CNSMDP), Escande predominantly composes both instrumental and electroacoustic music. Through various interdisciplinary collaborations, he has developed an original musical language that draws from the environmental soundscape, urbanism, and architecture. His music has been awarded numerous prizes - “Petite forme” (2016), “Sound Spaces” (2019), “Mixtur Barcelona” (2020), “MA/IN” (2021) - and has been played in France, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Italia, Sweden, and Austria. He is also a teacher of sound creation and contemporary music history at universities. 
Already a musicologist of many accomplishments, Escande concludes the interview by stating that he wants to dive deeper meaning into his music, “I really feel like I need more complexity. I don’t want to limit myself to a genre, I’m always carried by curiosity.”