Based on individually recorded encounters with a political speechwriter, an intellectual property lawyer, an artist who invites others, a community leader and a biologist specializing in citizen science, “Le Diplomate Tranché” is a sound piece that speculates on diplomacy and their places.

Through a hallucinatory state that speaks of an external landscape, but also of a psychological landscape, the sound work pays attention both to the content of a given utterance and to the way it is uttered. The result is an invitation to enter the psychology of a plural diplomat, haunted by governance in times of advanced capitalism.

The piece was curated for the exhibition “Negócios Estrangeiros / Affaires Étrangères” curated by Maud Jacquin with Sébastien Pluot (Art by Translation) and Luísa Especial (AiR351), and simultaneously opened at the Torres Vedras Art and Creativity Center, on the table where the armistice of 1808 was signed, after the defeat of French troops in the Battle of Vimeiro and in the Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, on a desk provided by the Portuguese Embassy in Paris.

Special thanks to Jagna Ciuchta, Pierre-Louis Colin, Isabel Corte-Real, Mathieu Guillot, Grégoire Lois, Carlos Semedo, Maud Jacquin, Sébastien Pluot, Luísa Especial and Luís Campos e Cunha.

Le Diplomate Tranché [The Sliced ​​Diplomat], 2022
Stereo sound transferred to vinyl record, 9’35”
Turntables, loudspeakers on an office table linked to political power

Language: FR, EN, PT

Citizens, 
Participants to our programs:
Bats, birds, butterflies, snails, flowering plants, vascular plants, evolutionary processes, 
human behaviour, biodiversity.

We co-design protocols.
We rely on citizens.

I define myself as an craftsman, I make chairs.
A chair has to be solid and comfortable. 
To make that chair I have to be convinced.

You have to know people, so you can catch them.
No one knows who I am.
I am not acting.

This void began to be occupied by others.
I invite them when they are alive.

I want to be possessing and absorbing.
I have very fluid borders.
I’m constantly listening.
I’m a vampire!

Citizens,
We love the ones that collect data.
We love to communicate something.
We love jargoning.
The same word does not mean the same thing.

[whistle]

Data. Love.
Love. Data.

I'm here temporarily.
I don't plan to settle.
It's a journey, a frontier.

I do not care.
Who are you?
I don´t care.
I’m a vampire!
I don´t care.

I advice.
I take responsibility.
It is a duty!
You can't get around reality.
I will adapt my position to the context.

[whistle]

I want to be possessing and absorbing.
I have very fluid borders.
I’m constantly listening.
I’m a vampire!

I make opinion move.
You have to push it, push it, push it, to make a guy fall.
I don’t think I would try to be in charge of the chair.
I am not acting. 

It is a hybrid zone, between clean and dirty.
There is a choice that is not easy.
Exoticism starts where we want it to start.

Citizens: 
No numbers, no experiments, rubbish!