The musical composition is in keeping with the theme of boundaries: it uses different sources of sounds found on the spot, captured beyond the usual acoustic noises: the invisible waves of Villerupt, the electromagnetic fields, the contact microphones, the hidden vibrations.

Text and music come together to create a photograph of the territory and its history. Through the seasons that punctuate the sound journey, borders follow one another: those crossed in the past, the one that separated France and Germany, the one now crossed by French people working in Luxembourg. This shows their shifting, arbitrary, but also emotional character. Living in a border town is a series of possible changes of scenery, a fragility at the same time as a wealth.

Hélène Gaudy is a novelist. After studying visual arts, she led numerous projects combining writing, image and landscape. She has published art books, books for young people and several stories, including Vues sur la Mer (Les Impressions nouvelles, 2006, second selection for the Prix Médicis), Plein Hiver (Actes Sud, 2014), and Un Monde sans Rivage (Actes Sud, 2009) which was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt. She is a member of the Inculte collective and the editorial board of the magazine La Moitié du Fourbi. 

Christina Kubisch, born in Bremen in 1948, belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Although she is best known for her sound installations and electroacoustic compositions, her practice also extends to video and visual arts. Since 2003, she has been making the ‘Electrical Walks’ series around the world, sound walks in urban spaces, where electromagnetic fields are amplified. Christina Kubisch has taught audiovisual arts in Berlin, Paris, Saarbrücken and Oxford. She has received numerous awards, including the Giga-Hertz 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

With the support of Esch2022, European Capital of Culture, as well as the French Ministry of Culture, the DRAC Grand Est, the Région Grand Est, the Centre National de la Musique, the Collectivité Européenne d’Alsace, the Département Meurthe-et-Moselle, the Ville d’Esch-sur-Alzette, the Ville et Eurométropole de Strasbourg, LISER (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research), the Musica Festival and Puzzle Thionville.

In partnership with Residhome Luxembourg and the Cottage Luxembourg.

Inspired by interviews with the inhabitants of Thil and the documentary film Rodina by Jean-Louis Sonzogni, La mine est une bouche questions the borders that intrude on bodies until they break them. At once a documented fiction, a historical evocation and a plunge into the digestive corridors, the work slips into the very bowels of the Second World War.

From the trachea to the intestines, each bodily boundary is a threshold bearing the trace of the abuse inflicted on the prisoners. From their arrest in Minsk in Belarus to their deportation to France, to their escape before the Liberation and their final return to the Soviet Union, the different moments of their History are translated into a living journey. 

An attempt to capture the sensory vestiges of history, between the rustling of the forest, the chirping of birds and the flow of water taken from the mine where the prisoners were subjected to forced labour.

Marina Skalova is a writer, playwright and translator of German and Russian. She writes at the intersection of languages and literary genres. Her works include the bilingual poetry collection Atemnot (Souffle court) (Cheyne Editeur, Prix de la Vocation en poésie, 2016), the narrative Exploration du flux (Seuil, 2018), the play La chute des comètes et des cosmonautes (L’Arche, 2019) and Silences d’exils, a book and exhibition produced in collaboration with the photographer Nadège Abadie (Editions d’en bas, 2020). Her texts give rise to readings, performances, stagings and collaborations with choreographers. She regularly performs on stage with musicians, for rock readings-concert with Simone Aubert (Hyperculte, Tout bleu) or by combining her texts with the contemporary music of the duo KleXs.

Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish sound artist. In his works, he seeks to reflect on complex, inaccessible or interesting places and environments through immersive sound explorations. His works deal with themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl and Fukushima, border walls in global and metaphorical contexts and melting ice in the Arctic. He also creates works using otoacoustic emissions, sounds generated by the human ear. His work method stems from the use of sound recordings of tangible aspects of intangible themes. His sound creations have been released on labels such as Important Records (USA), Touch (UK) and Posh Isolation (DK). He has exhibited his work around the world, including at MoMA in New York, LOUISIANA – Museum of Modern Art and ARoS in Denmark, the Sydney Biennale in Australia, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan.

With the support of Esch2022, European Capital of Culture, as well as the French Ministry of Culture, the DRAC Grand Est, the Région Grand Est, the Centre National de la Musique, the Collectivité Européenne d’Alsace, the Département Meurthe-et-Moselle, the Ville d’Esch-sur-Alzette, the Ville et Eurométropole de Strasbourg, LISER (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research), the Musica Festival and Puzzle Thionville.

In partnership with Residhome Luxembourg and the Cottage Luxembourg.