Sisters with Transistors

How can I express my passion for the modular synthesizer? I would say it began with the album Ears by the young American musician Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. The first time I listened to this album, it felt like a moment of realization, an avalanche of sensations, sometimes bordering on an overflow of indescribable emotions. This discovery gave me with the opportunity to experience the presence and sensory envelopment of a multiplicity of sonorous textures, despite their machine-like and abstract nature. Through this experience, I felt the opening of an intergenerational dialogue whose words still eluded me. This dialogue has indeed existed for a long time. Here, it unfolds under the gaze of the director of Sisters with Transistors through a series of archives, interviews, and never-before-seen performances. In this context, the various appropriations of the electronic machine serve to subvert gender norms and destabilize a predominantly male artistic tradition, as exemplified by Clara Rockmore placing a few well-dressed men at the mercy of her instrument. Carried by the iconic voice of Laurie Anderson, the film traces a musical universe exploring the lineages of radical sonorities experimented with by a generation of female musicians in search of emancipation, whose technical innovations are duly celebrated by the filmmaker.

Julia Minne
PhD student and programmer