Michèle Saint-Michel

Ontology of Us

by Michèle Saint-Michel, Bad Saturn (2024)

Score for Memories and the Weather in Montenegro

Graphic Score by Michèle Saint-Michel (2021)

Selected for the Oregon New Music Festival, 2023
Winner of the Charlotte Street Gallery New Music contest, 2021

This graphic score with Fluxus instruction is based on Michèle Saint-Michel’s book of experimental poetry, Saint Agatha Mother Redeemer. Evoking surreal memory, self-soothing ritual, and escapism, we travel the harrowing path of healing / not healing after trauma.

Why did your pain feel tender?

What’s the weather like in Montenegro?

Each movement in the score is named after a heading from Ralph Waldo-Emerson's collection of essays. Performed live at Charlotte Street Gallery by multi-woodwindist Lina Dannov, and electronic musician Tim Harte.

Getting Out Without Catching Fire

by Various Artists, Bad Saturn (2023)

Featuring Sophie Stone, Sheena Dham, Hermon Mehari, Lina Dannov, Arun Sood, Sylvia Hinz, Eryk Salvaggio, James Fella, and Silvia Cignoli

In this unique collaboration, each artist translated the poetic verses of Michèle Saint-Michel’s poetry collection "Liner Notes for Getting Out Without Catching Fire" (Bad Saturn, 2023) drawing inspiration from its raw emotions and themes to craft their sonic works. 

1. I (It’s So Hard To Tell) - Sheena Dham

2. The Death of Cleopatra - Hermon Mehari

3. Bird’s Shed Now or Never - Lina Dannov

4. Rothko Paints to Mozart in a Room Filled with Atoms II - Sophie Stone

5. Three Sheets to the Wind - Arun Sood

6. An Occurrence of Multi-Temporality in Music - Sylvia Hinz

7. DOD 5220 Dot 22 Dash M - Eryk Salvaggio

8. Rothko Paints to Mozart in a Room Filled with Atoms III - Sophie Stone

9. The Snow is Falling - James Fella

10. Judith and Her Maidservant - Silvia Cignoli

11. Rothko Paints to Mozart in a Room Filled with Atoms - Sophie Stone

The Immortal Charlie Parker

by Michèle Saint-Michel, published by Disembodied Voices, University of Cambridge (2021)

In The Immortal Charlie Parker, artist Michèle Saint-Michel tells an intimate story which, she writes in her email to us, is about ‘safety, trust, and inherent worth’. The spliced audio of radio pronouncements and news pieces transports us through her experiences of the pandemic, framing the fear of vulnerability in this tentative connection. It captures the strangeness of our times through a personal prism, one which has at the forefront a question: Are we now only dangerous to each other? The phrase ‘a trauma response’ punctuates the poem repeatedly. Those with PTSD and/or experiences of trauma will know well how the pandemic has intersected with our wounds. 

Content warning: this piece briefly mentions child neglect, sexual assault, rape, and PTSD. 

—Sumaya Kassim, Disembodied Voices Co-editor, Lucy Cavendish School, University of Cambridge