Erwan Sene – JUnQ (PAN 131)

JUnQ, or the Journal of Unsolved Questions, is modeled on a parallel exercise: to sketch music and to score sculptures. Part exhibition, part book and part album release, JUnQ seeks to propose a collaborative language that binds the algorithmic needs of an artificial pop star to the performance of the artist himself. Boundaries between reality and artifice are blurred in a continuous chain of confrontation and sublimation, wherein a romance between analog evolution and digital experimentation is born.

The immersive project released by PAN represents Erwan Sene’s debut album and the multifaceted nature of his approach. Composed like a chorus of fantastical beasts, the album wanders atmospherically through a fogged wood. Sounds are never used for their default function–– they are sculpted, distorted and amplified, becoming hybrids of themselves. A haunting banshee, the monstrous growl of an Orc, Siren songs wafting through the trees–– these and more are recreated with sinuous violins, muffled harpsichord and digital instruments, culminating in a a vibrant “jungle” of sound.

The JUnQ book
Each page of the JUnQ book dives into the neon structures of Sene’s Cronenberg-like mutations: miniatures, models and ventilation details echo the micro-evolution of Sene’s “imaginary mundane.” Moments of object recognition flicker before receding from view. Appropriating the mechanisms of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sene seeks to conjure the sense of entrapment brought on by infection, affecting containment in the microscopic abstractions he presents of his own sculptural work. Casting his contained biotope as a friend, rather than a foe, the fragmented view of these works imbues them with a sense of intimacy and primacy.

The JUnQ book features a bespoke type designed in collaboration with Marie Mam-Sai Bellier and Marine Stephan. Evocative of archeology and the imagined glyphs traced by lost civilizations, the type provides an (il)legible scripture to JUnQ’s multi-fold universe.