UNIVERSAL EARLog III: Day 4

The (p)reconstruction of the Curse of the Phantom Tympanum script is reaching completion; or at least the first stage of completion, after which we’ll have to smash the gaudy monstrosity to rubble again and pick out the bits we want to film. The shape of the residency itself took a little more form as we met with Bandits-Mages boss Isabelle Carlier and project assistant Delphine Robin-Tyrek, who will work alongside tech guru Quentin Aurat to ‘get it all happening’.

Our reunion/introduction meeting painted a curious landscape as conversation drifted from the practicalities of working with Berruyers (as the locals are known, although the term is not without controversy), to the twin regional pastimes of witchcraft and alchemy, to the impending arrival of Boris Lehman, ‘Godfather and filmmaker permanent resident’ of Bandits-Mages, with whom I visited the infamous Bosnian pyramids in 2014, to the idea of a film that encapsulates ‘The French’ – of which our hosts’ surest guess was that it must be Bruno Dumont’s P'tit Quinquin.

Hipsters put a football through this vintage window just yards from the 800 year old stained glass of the cathedral while we stood and laughed.

To business, though, and we postponed the local auditions for one week in order to give everyone (not least yours truly) a chance to prepare, and also to try to rouse some more talent on this Sunday’s mysterious social tour of the city (including the epic grid of marshes that bubble away just to the north-east of the alchemy district).

Afterwards, Niemczyk and I finally wandered inside the imposing cathedral, my ears headphoned and wired to the sound recorder, so that I didn’t notice how quiet it was until we stopped recording. While hardly silent, the cathedral turns out to be a cavern of microscopic noises, whispers, hiccups, stumbles, and digital camera shutters; the most prominent sonic motif, a cynic might note, is the jangling of coins.

The well-to-do of the past eight centuries have co-opted various little lounge pods around the insides of the cathedral, each trying to out-do the last in the eyes of god and the Joneses, and as Niemczyk pointed out: probably some serious deals were cut here across the years.

That feeling when your head's off and it's a bank holiday weekend and there's no way you can see a man about it until Tuesday.

It suggests a double–purpose for those echoing expanses. Not only must the preacher or what-have-you bellow to be heard, his Latin kumquat-ex-deuses indecipherable in the loud smudgy fear-inducing acoustics of the church, but conspirators must keep their voices low to be intelligible to their collaborators.

Today, a more intuitive use of the premises - in line with the ideal that heritage sites should move - might be as some alien sports venue, the peculiar unreachable balconies, sticky-outy bits and ribbed, phallic columns just waiting to be thrown a dodecadodecahedral ball, a unicorn polo squad, and a book of esoteric rules and rumours.

And that’s just the inside! As we might've noticed during our dehydration-defying crawl past the mighty tabernacle three days ago, the exterior's quite a sight, too. "It’s impressive," mused Niemczyk, "but is it beautiful?"

Personally, I feel some affinity for the medieval wretch responsible. Clearly intimidated by the profile of the job, he threw everything he had at the damned thing.

When all hell breaks loose around you, what is there to do but shrug.

Likely considering a small investment in salvation.

All photos courtesy of Aleksandra Niemczyk.

UNIVERSAL EARLog III: Day 2

Day 2: mostly about creating that second ear (see: Day 1).

We seemed to find our rhythm today. Following yesterday's atrocious camerawork, I switched to the sound recorder to gather street ambiences along the left 'ear' - the western half of the sinister circle that’s printed on local maps of Bourges. I think I’m more comfortable framing sounds. Meanwhile, Niemczyk took a freer, more expressive approach to filming those areas where the circle corresponds to a place that can be accessed by the public. 

We took more stills today, which should make the finished document a little richer for the casual viewer. We joke that we are making the world's most pretentious holiday movie, but deep down we know we're doing work whose tremendous importance will only be recognized several generations along the line.

Of course, I forgot to delete yesterday's sound file so the recorder cut out 48 minutes into today's walk. We continued recording sounds moments later with Niemczyk's iPhone; my left ear, then, will have a little sonic nick cut out of it, and a flat top.

Curiously, today’s prescribed semi-circuit happened to take us past the cinema where my movie Epizoda ? played last November, and also past the Rue Mausecret, giving us the exact view that I saw on Google Maps and which you probably remember me Tweeting about, six months ago almost to the day. As the (indispensible) Encyclopedie de Bourges tells us, via Google Translate:

‘It is a very old neighborhood, which included both the Jewish neighborhood with the presence of the synagogue, and undoubtedly the neighborhood of mysterious or dubious practices constituted by sorcery, black magic or alchemy. Thus, we find the street name "Montsecret" as early as 1541, which will see the spelling of his name changing. For some local scholars, two versions of this street can be brought, namely "my secret", that is to say a street that contains unknown elements, or "mau secret" that can be translated as "bad" And then we touch black magic.’

This seems like a very good sign.

Window display on city cafe. (Photo credit: Aleksandra Niemczyk)

 The first of the real-life characters from the montage who we have been able to locate. (Photo credit: Aleksandra Niemczyk)