Who are you?
Hello! My name is Penelope Michel and I'm originally from Dunkirk. I've been living in Lille for almost twenty years, and more precisely for the past four years in a little green village tucked away in the city, the aptly named Lezennes. With Nicolas Devos, we're lucky enough to have our studio there, and recently the confinement has finally allowed us to finalize the third album of our group Cercueil, which had been put on hold in spite of itself since we set up the Puce Moment entity, dedicated to sound experimentation and multidisciplinary encounters.

What is your background? Your musical thinking?
I have a classical training in cello and solfeggio, which I followed during my childhood at a time when the music academy was perhaps, as I remember, a little inward-looking. But it enabled me to discover and play in a variety of musical groups and ensembles, and to learn a little flute and piano alongside my instrument. In high school, I started playing in rock and experimental bands, and soon went on to explore sound on my own with my first computer, discovering the possibilities of sampling, sound processing and analog synthesizers at a time when second hands were still accessible and untouched by the vintage craze. With my various bands, for which I have a multi-instrumentalist practice (bass, cello, synthesizers or vocals), we have toured in clubs and squats as well as in the specifically French network of contemporary music, or at festivals in Europe, Brazil, Iceland or Montreal. Together with Nicolas Devos, we soon began to create small, ephemeral sound performances, sometimes with video (created on the principle of foundfootage or images we shot ourselves), which we would set down on the occasion of an evening without returning to them, and which we began to list under the name Puce Moment. Gradually we structured our association, which previously organized the Mon Inouïe Symphonie festival (dedicated to sound poetry and experimental music in Dunkirk), and began creating our own shows envisaged as times for encounters with guest artists, the first of which "La lenteur" created with performer Gaétan Rusquet was hosted in 2014 during the Cabaret de Curiosités du Phénix in Valenciennes. In our pieces, we design the scenography, staging and, of course, the musical composition, performed live or recorded and broadcast as a multicast. Our musical practice is rooted in our instrumentarium, but we simultaneously see computer composition as an extension of ourselves. We are currently working on our third piece, entitled "Sans soleil", for which we were able to meet Japanese musicians from Gagaku in Tenri at the last minute, and which will be premiered in France this year in collaboration with choreographer and dancer Vania Vaneau. Over the last ten years or so, we've also embarked on a number of collaborations, notably with choreographer Christian Rizzo, then choreographer Mylène Benoît, and in the theater with Anne Conti and Florence Evrard, working on sound and image in the form of soundtracks or film-concerts... My thinking and musical practice are at the crossroads of all these encounters and experiences, which remain permeable and persistent over time. The periods I've gone through are not over, and I feel I'm always on the move in a continuous process of research and experimentation. The compositional approach is based on the listening and sound diffusion conditions that will ultimately exist, and on the relationship between the music and the light, movement, bodies and dramaturgy of the piece.