The Capsule opens and closes with conversation. From Ferdinand Brunot’s first recordings in Berry to the Orléans Corpus, we listen to the voices of women and men navigating with linguists in the current of the river of speech. This flow of thousands of hours of recordings is that of the corpus of the French language and the languages of France. By entering in groups of two, three, or four to discuss and converse, your recorded voice—unique and free—will join the anonymous voices and words composing a collective self-portrait of our language. The most daring, alone in the capsule, can attempt the experience of the inner voice… On the facade, we discover an enigmatic history of linguistics, illustrated with drawings from Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics. A capsule, a tablet, an application. Step in, take a seat, and have a good journey.
The “Conversational Capsule” created by Guykayser, produced with Gérard Parésys. It was built with the participation of the Agglomération Montargoise and received support from the DGLFLF. Thanks to LLL, Olivier Baude, Michel Jacobson, Daniel Fauchard, and Hervé Mauplot.
Guykayser in dialogue with linguistics… by Olivier Baude
At the beginning of the 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure drew diagrams to explain the concepts of linguistics to his disciples. He drew while speaking, and the traces of these words took shape in his famous Course in General Linguistics, which founded modern linguistics. Today, Guykayser turns them into assemblages. He draws his own story with complete freedom, while inviting us to join this unusual conversation. The conversation then flows like a river, at once constrained and free…
The story begins with two human beings looking at each other. They are within a frame composed of the mosaic of Saussure’s world languages. These are also the first drawings of cerebral zones overflowing from the individuals. They are going to talk to each other, for sure; the power of languages is there for that very purpose.
Moreover, even when two heads float, they find themselves back to back. Strange, but sketches, like language, allow it. It becomes obvious: they bathe in the same world, they will navigate in the same direction.
There it is, contact is established! This sketch is Saussure’s diagram of speech. What connects the two people is this ability to share what we hear and what we say, to mobilize our bodies and our thoughts to create the river of conversation.
If the heads seem to be resting, the back of the skulls are bathed in the river. It is thought, it is the concepts born in our brains that share the same fluid. There is no conversation without this bath of thought.
They speak to each other. The sketch recalls the organs necessary for the act of phonation. If thought is there, it must be transformed into a sound object to reach the other. Air will be expelled by the lungs, travel through the trachea and past the larynx, then the sound wave will take shape by rubbing against the vocal cords, the tongue, the teeth… It might rush into the nasal cavities but will surely slide over the lips. It will then take the great leap and fill the void.
Then they enter the stage. They finally exist. Who? The horse, for example, or the tree, or even the school of fish that Guykayser adds… They serve as examples of the whole, a whole that language allows us to describe through its elements. The river of language will give them this existence. In Saussure’s diagram, it is the tree that reveals the forest of signs. What we do with this tree, we do with all the words of our language. In Guykayser’s assemblage, the tree and the head find themselves surrounded by the wave. This is where everything is at stake: the possibility of associating as well as the freedom to interpret. Moreover, in the following drawing, the horse and the head become one; language is both a biased part and a stakeholder of the world.
We are close to the denouement; the main actor is here: the sign, the linguistic sign. Presented in a triptych as mysterious as it is clear. In this one, the double arrows framing each circle are what matter. The drawing is not simply a drawing. Images are linked to concepts and form words; these double arrows allow one to move from one to the other. Meaning is created, the conversation comes to life.
Does everything become possible? Perhaps. Guykayser’s final drawing has taken over. We find only a few elements of Saussure’s diagrams, but the essential is there. If the fish from elsewhere are swimming—which seems important to Guykayser—they do so because one never steps into the same river twice.
