Ursula’s residency in Nantes

Ursula left Austria for Nantes in France for her Slash artistic residency. Her work during the four-weeks-residency attempts to reinterpret and question the city’s restructuring process and its memory. In collaboration with other local artists, she created the sound performance and installation When the dust settles.

Ursula Winterauer arrived on Tuesday, 29th October in Nantes. It was actually her third time in the city since she already came for the training program in March 2024 and for a study visit upstream her residency in July 2024.

During her first week under the grey and cloudy weather of Nantes, she booked some meetings for the next few days with the help of Thomas Cochini (Nantes’ local facilitator) and Trempo’s team. The second week, she met the artist and designer Pierre Stadelmann with whom she worked all along the rest of the residence. She also met with two classical singers from the territory: Hameline Abraham and Anaïs Vintour. During the rest of her time, Ursula kept on working on field recording and composition. One of the main objectives of the second week was also to find a location for the live performance that Ursula wanted to organize at the end of her residency. After a couple of events, we finally found a spot whose location was perfect: surrounded by works and just in front of the new hospital’s construction (cf. her intention note below). 

Third week of Ursula’s residency was dedicated to the voice and field recordings, composition and work with Pierre about the physical artwork that would come out of the live performance, as well as what type of scenography and machine noises they would like to install. 

Time passed really quickly for the last days of Ursula’s residence. The team grew up with the technical and production parts. Ursula and Pierre were also caught up in the last preparations for the live performance that was scheduled for Thursday, 21th November. On D-Day, a huge storm occurred in Nantes. There were huge wind gusts, between 100 and 150 km/h, a lot of trees fell off and firefighters’ sirens resonated everywhere in the city. It was quite an apocalyptic atmosphere but we still managed to maintain the live performance and actually, it sounded quite well with Ursula’s creation. 

The experimental composition »When dust settles« explores the sounds of a city in transformation and turns them into an acoustic reflection. At the heart of the piece are the everyday noises of construction and redevelopment, often perceived as disruptive or even unbearable. They not only stand for change and transformation, but also symbolize the speed and impermanence of contemporary life.

In the sound piece these urban sounds, arising from the process of city restructuring, are treated as an archive of collective memory, reinterpreted through careful arrangement and attentive listening.
Field recordings of old, still-standing buildings, new machines, and the voices of those involved in the transformation merge within the composition. The juxtaposition of old and new—stones, earth, structures, voices, and sounds—creates an acoustic collision of different temporalities. Demolition and reconstruction together tell a story of transition.

The length of the sound piece is determined by the duration of the construction process, in which an object is built from concrete and other materials during the live performance. Using the codes and materials of modern architectural construction, and evoking the geological core tool used by geologists to study our soils and our past, the sculpture itself is a witness.

Similar to the sonic samples used in the piece, the »urbalogique« column juxtaposes samples of the original sand of the Île de Nantes, gravel and tar from past construction and demolition works and fresh cast iron from the current works on one of Europe’s largest construction sites, l’hôpital de Nantes. During the live-performance, the sound piece is saved in real time on a data medium that is simultaneously moulded into the growing concrete object. In this way, a fleeting moment is captured but remains inaccessible. Buried, but preserved as a memory.

In Collaboration with Pierre Stadelmann

Live-Performance: Hameline Abraham, Pierre Stadelmann, Anaïs Vintour and Ursula Winterauer

Photos credits :
Margaux Martins

Video Credits:
Video production: Astrid Serafini (association jump and stay)
Camera: Marine Bréhin
Production assistant: Théophile Chenière
Sound mix: Phil Tremble