Betsey Biggs

For virtual reality headset or gallery installation, desert sounds, and voice. Commissioned in 2017 by the 9th international Women in French international conference, “Le bruit des femmes” (2018), held at Florida State University; text read by Chantal Dumas; software programming by Kevin Sweet. This sound installation uses public domain sounds from freesound.org. Eight audio soundscapes, each 11 minutes, 25 seconds.

In 2017, I was commissioned by the 2018 Women in French international conference, held at Florida State University, to create a sound installation exploring women’s history in the francophone diaspora. The result, Souf: For Isabelle, is an immersive sound installation inviting listeners to sonically explore the life of the Swiss-Russian writer Isabelle Eberhardt — an anarchist, cross-dresser, cultural nomad, and Sufi adept who converted to Islam and spent most of her adult life traversing the Sahara alone on horseback while navigating political intrigue, assassination attempts, and a star-crossed love affair with an Algerian soldier, before drowning at the age of 27 in a flash flood. Eberhardt’s life was tragic and dramatic in equal measures, and identity was hopelessly fragmented in terms of gender, geography, spirituality, and mental state. Souf: For Isabelle, drawn from her diaries, allows listeners to wander these shards of memory as if exploring physical ruins.

I spent extensive time reading and marking up Eberhardt’s diaries, and collaborated with French-Canadian sound artist Chantal Dumas, whom I recorded reading these memories. Eberhardt’s writings catapult confusingly through time and space, and Souf takes as its starting point the liminality of her wandering among four cardinal directions: Europe to the north, Algiers and Ténes to the west, Batna to the east, and the Saharan desert to the south; the areas lying between these directions (northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest) are represented by soundscapes representing her journeys. The installation attempts to tuck the listener inside Eberhardt’s confusing layers of memories, emotions, fears, hopes, and senses of place. Surrounding us is desert. We do not always know where we are and must commit to listening in order to gain any semblance of understanding.

As listeners put on their headsets and turn their bodies around a 360-degree circle, they see an unending desert landscape and navigate through eight geographically-arranged soundscapes encompassing sonic fragments of Eberhardt’s life. Each soundscape lasts for exactly 11 minutes and 25 seconds and ends with a recreation of the flash flood that tragically ended Eberhardt’s life in Aïn Séfra, Algeria.

Souf: For Isabelle was exhibited and experienced by hundreds of people at Florida State University in 2018 as part of the 9th international Women in French conference, “Le bruit des femmes.”

In 2023, I was given the opportunity to workshop Souf: For Isabelle in CU Boulder’s ATLAS B2 Center for Media, Arts & Performance, an immersive installation and performance space offering an ambisonic 40.4 sound system and immersive projection. This enabled me to set the project up as an immersive gallery installation, and I plan to seek further opportunities to present the project in this fashion.

CREDITS

writer/composer/producer: Betsey Biggs
performance: Chantal Dumas
software programming: Kevin Sweet

GRANTS, AWARDS, COMMISSIONS

Commission ($800) from the 9th international Women in French international conference, “Le bruit des femmes” (2018), held at Florida State University;

PERFORMANCES AND EXHIBITIONS

2018: Commissioned and exhibited by the international Women in French Conference, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA.