Le jeu des miroirs de Kali

For three months, Félix-Antoine Morin travels around India. When I was there, he says, "I always had a microphone sticking out of my bag." By the end of his stay and an impressive recording schedule, he had amassed enough sounds to create a spellbinding soundscape where the sacred mingles with the profane. In the first few minutes, the call of the muezzin gives way to the sound of stray dogs. From there, the incredible evocative power of sound does the rest, weaving a rich narrative that transports us from one place to another - a market, a desert, the world's largest religious gathering, the flames of one cremation after another - while the drones skilfully tie it all together. 

To distinguish radio art from sound documentary, it's often said that the latter is cinema without images. This is particularly true of Le jeu des miroirs de Kali. Halfway between ethnographic documentary and sound art, this long piece of field recording is an essay on the act of observing (phenomena that we don't always understand), reminiscent of the work of Felix Blume.

To be listened to with headphones, of course, and - above all - with your eyes firmly closed.

Jenny Cartwright
Documentarian and audio artist