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    The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, sp…

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  • Research

    The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, sp…

    • Research Topics
    • The STMS Lab
    • Research Teams
    • Sound Systems and Signals: Audio/Acoustics, InstruMents
    • Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces
    • Sound Perception and Design
    • Sound Analysis-Synthesis
    • Sound Music Movement Interaction
    • Musical Representations
    • Analysis of Musical Practices
    • Projects
    • Sound Workshop
    • The Musical Body
    • Creative Dynamics
    • Finished Projects
  • Creation

    IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

    • Composers & Artists in Studio
    • Chloé Thévenin in studio
    • Oren Boneh in studio
    • Tristan Murail in studio
    • Martin Matalon in studio
    • Sébastien Gaxie in studio
    • Murcof in the studio
    • Vimala Pons in studio
    • Lucie Antunes in studio
    • Deena Abdelwahed in the studio
    • Music-Fictions
    • Artistic Research Residency
    • Artistic Residencies: The Blog
    • Rendez Vous 24.25
    • 2024-2025
    • Replay Concerts
    • Seasons from 1996 to present
    • ManiFeste-2024 Website
    • ManiFeste festival from 2012 to 2024
    • L’Étincelle, IRCAM’s journal of creation
  • Transmission

    In support of IRCAM's research and creation missions, the educational program seeks to shed light on the current and future meaning of the interactions among the arts, sciences, and technology as well as sharing its models of knowledge, know-how, and innovations with the widest possible audience.

    • Training Courses
    • Training Courses 2025.26
    • Max, Max for Live
    • Computer-Assisted Composition
    • ASAP & Partiels
    • Sound spatialization
    • Generative AI
    • Practical Information
    • Higher Education
    • Cursus Program on Composition and Computer Music
    • Master ATIAM
    • Sound Design Master's Program
    • Mixed-Music
    • AIMove Master
    • Discover Research at IRCAM
    • Cultural Outreach
    • Cultural Mediation at Middle School Students
    • Médiations culturelles au lycée
    • Digital Workshops
    • TACT
    • Images of a Work Collection
    • Group Tours
    • ManiFeste-2025 Festival Academy
    • 2025 ÉLAN award
    • Spatial Composition Workshop
    • In Situ Polytopes
    • ULYSSES Ensemble
    • Auditors
  • Innovations

    Engaged with societal and economic issues at the intersection of culture and IT, research at Ircam has forged a reputation for itself in the world of international research as an interdisciplinary benchmark in the science and technology of sound and music, constantly attentive to the new needs and uses in society.

    • The IRCAM Forum
    • Softwares
    • Ircam Amplify
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  • Campo santo, Impure histoire de fantômes
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Campo santo, Impure histoire de fantômes

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Premiere by the composer Jérôme Combier and the scenographer Pierre Nouvel
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Installation/Concert for 5 musicians, electronic, stage and video system

Welcome to Pyramiden! It’s here, at 78 degrees north, in Spitzberg a couple hundred kilometers from the North Pole that composer Jérôme Combier and video artist Pierre Nouvel have brought us. A ghost town nestled in a fjord, shadowed by a pyramid-like mountain. Pyramiden is one of the last vestiges of an urban utopia: a mining city organized to be ideal, true to almost every principle of communism. It’s was the “most perfect communist town in the world”, paradoxically located west of the Iron Curtain until the fall of the USSR and the end of all mining activity left it, abandoned, to the test of the elements, in dereliction.

It is this phantom of a town that Campo santo, title borrowed from W. G. Sebald, shows us. Between a concert and a sound and visual installation, it is above all, a hauntological work (concept coined by Jacques Derrida with his Spectres of Marx: a work built on traces of the past) drawn on sounds and images captured in situ, in a gangue of frozen time.

Electronic Challenges

Presented as an open installation in 5 successive tableaux interspersed with short interludes, electronics hold a central role in Campo Santo, particularly from a dramaturgical point of view. With fragments of speech in English, Russian, or Norwegian recorded during the two artists’ trips, the work also conveys fragments of texts by W. G. Sebald, Jacques Derrida, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, or Auguste Blanqui, to question utopias connected to Pyramiden. The electronics also offer a lyrical counterpoint to the instrumental ensemble (two percussionists, an accordion, a guitar, and a flute), notably via a virtual and ghostly chorus. Lastly, the computers make it possible to have a sound reconstruction of the places visited – we can hear the piano of Pyramiden, the north most piano in the world in the reconstructed acoustics of the concert hall. Campo santo: a mausoleum of deserted human venues and Verlaine’s “dear voices that have been stilled”.   

Earlier Projects at IRCAM

Kogarashi, le premier soupir des fantômes (2002) for guitar and electronics  
Noir gris (2006) for string trio, sound and visual installation, creation Jérôme Combier and Pierre Nouvel based on Ohio Impromptu by Samuel Beckett
Stèles d’air (2007) for ensemble and electronics  
Gone (2010) for string trio, clarinet, piano and electronics  
dawnlight (2015) for ensemble and electronics

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  • Pyramiden  © Pierre Nouvel
    Pyramiden © Pierre Nouvel
  • Pyramiden  © Pierre Nouvel
    Pyramiden © Pierre Nouvel
  • Pyramiden  © Pierre Nouvel
    Pyramiden © Pierre Nouvel
  • Pyramiden  © Pierre Nouvel
    Pyramiden © Pierre Nouvel

Biographies

person

Jérôme Combier

Composer (born 1971)
At the age of 19 Jérôme Combier decided to learn music. While studying musicology at the université de Saint-Denis he also studied guitar, after meeting Hacène Larbi and Emmanuel Nunes at the Conservatoire d…

person

Pierre Nouvel

Founder of the trans-disciplinary collective Factoid bringing together video artists, musicians, graphic designers, curators, scenographers, Pierre Nouvel (born 1981) works as a scenographer with a broad range of directors (J.-F. Peyret, M. Deutsch, L. N…


Related Event

Performance
Creation

Campo Santo, impure histoire de fantômes

14 December to 15 December 2016
Scène nationale d'Orléans
by Jérôme Combier
Ircam

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