The sound piece EPHAD II, first performed in 2024 at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, is here presented here an expanded version in French, English, German and Italian, as a poem and montage of voices.

Rhythm and presence activate poetry as an organic entity that evolves in real time, accompanying the unfolding of language and its transformations.

Maïa Lacoustille explores the plasticity of language through several key concepts, including the “poem-montage,” in which a collection of voices traverses various linguistic states— mastered languages, languages in learning, or accent variations—and the mot-valise (portmanteau word), understood as a linguistic “interlocking” device in which different forms coexist and transform.

In response to Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise and Jacques Lacan’s concept of lalangue, the performance investigates language as a space of both lexical formation and deformation. In this context, the artist becomes a temporal agent who renders the transformation of language perceptible, accompanying the progressive unfolding of words and their shifts.

Maia Lacoustille is a French artist who graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2021. Following a residency at Artagon Pantin (2022–2023), she has exhibited at major contemporary art venues, including the Grande Halle de La Villette, the Air de Paris and Romero Paprocki galleries, the CAC Brétigny, and the Magasins Généraux in Pantin. Her practice spans sculpture and performance, developing a multidisciplinary language within the emerging contemporary art scene in France.

Founded in 2024 by Gaspar Willman and Jeanne Turpault, the Cabinet Institute is a fictional institution that develops curatorial projects and a constantly evolving collection. At the heart of the project is a piece of furniture, originating from a natural history museum and composed of 60 drawers, which questions what we preserve: objects, images, secrets, or fragments of memory. Each activation invites the public to enter a constellation of works in dialogue with one another.

Today, the Cabinet Institute travels with its permanent collection, regularly presented to the public through specific activations of the piece in the form of a ballet. This is performed by mediators, who reveal each drawer one by one, setting the works and the narratives they contain.
This activation is the form that the public will encounter at the opening.