Invited to exhibit at the Grand Café in Saint-Nazaire in 2019, Anne Le Troter presented a work that continued her exploration of language specific to a social class or professional group. After previously examining the linguistic forms used by people carrying out telephone surveys and by ASMR practitioners, for this work she focused on a set of interviews conducted by an American sperm bank with its donors—nearly four hundred anonymous profiles, accompanied by comments made by the bank’s employees.

After cataloging, classifying, and re-recording the descriptors used to characterize donors, the artist illustrated how the choice of words, syntax, and intonation contribute to transforming individuals into stereotyped, marketable personas. Using these fragments of speech as her raw material, she created the installation Parler de loin ou bien se taire in Saint-Nazaire, based on a sound montage she describes as being a “pre-adolescent nursery rhyme, naïve and persistent.” [1] Recorded in several languages that respond to each other in the style of a public announcement, the presentation of the installation contrasts with the apparent intimacy of the recorded statements. The words chosen to individualize the donors gradually lose their meaning as the voices distributed in the space seem to refer to a single person rather than being a collection of testimonies made by several hundred individuals.

As regularly occurs in Anne Le Troter’s work, the loudspeakers are placed on rotating platforms, causing their cables to alternately tighten and loosen in a motion suggestive of respiration—an effect created by the artist to draw an analogy between the rhythm of the audio montage and the operation of human organs. The audio cables, used to create the seats in the benches where the visitors sit to listen to the piece, literally envelop the public in the sound material, underlining the installation’s organic dimension. A large pink carpet from the Saint-Nazaire shipyards hangs on the wall; stained with bleach, the effect created evokes either an intrauterine space or sperm stains. [2]

In this regard, Parler de loin ou bien se taire contrasts with the more overtly medical imagery suggested by Anne Le Troter’s previous piece based on the same corpus, The Four Fs: Family, Finances, Faith and Friends, [3] which she presented in 2018 at the Rennes Biennale. While its sound component was presented in just one language, the installation’s physical appearance was very different, giving the impression of a cold storage room. This area was separated from the rest of the exhibition by a curtain made of tubes used for sperm preservation, and contained an aquarium featuring a scattering of colored lenses. The connection between the two pieces, however, is evident, as the title of the earlier work also served as the name of the Four Fs exhibition in which the artist would present Parler de loin ou bien se taire at the Nasher Art Center in Dallas, following its display in Saint-Nazaire. The title subverts a biological maxim stating that animal instinct is based on four fundamental drives, designated in English by four words beginning with the letter F—feeding, fighting, fleeing and fornicating—which is here replaced by terms that refer to socially valued concepts: family, finances, faith and friends. While the title of this earlier work is rooted in the language of seduction, Parler de loin ou bien se taire infers a certain unease, referencing the final verse of Jean de La Fontaine’s fable The Man and the Grass Snake, which explores the dangers of speaking out—opposing the pleas made by a snake to a human who in return kills it.

Philippe Bettinelli, 2021

Translated by Timothy Stroud

[1] Interview between Eva Prouteau and the artist held on November 25, 2018. Available at: https://www.grandcafe-saintnazaire.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/def-ajt-visites-feuille-de-salle-anne.pdf, consulted May 12, 2025.

[2] Although the artist reports that these associations were made by certain viewers, she does not claim that this was her intention. Discussion between the author and the artist, November 2020.

[3] Acquired by the Centre national des arts plastiques, inventory number FNAC 2020-0351.