Mathieu Bonnafous is a sound artist, musician and field recordist listening to the surrounding world, natural and industrial, human and non-human, from which he draws his inspiration. Sound recording is the basis of his creative work. She made him aware of the notions of soundscape and sound ecology, which would come to occupy an important place in his artistic approach. This resulted in the co-creation in April 2020 of the label and publishing platform “forms of minutiae” alongside the sound artist Pablo Diserens. Together, they highlight a musicality that combines biophony, electro-acoustic music and deep listening. The audio recordings he makes are used in a naturalistic way or can be manipulated and sometimes altered by various technical processes. He then orchestras textures, instruments, tones and anecdotal sounds in order to create unconventional works, oscillating between repetitive, concrete-naturalistic and micro-tonal noise music where fiction and reality intertwine. For nearly 6 years, he has collaborated with choreographer Rebecca Journo. Together, they develop a unique language around image-sound, which was first addressed in La Ménagère (2019) then in Portrait (2022), this collaboration leads him to live performance, which he explores further in the latest creation Les amours de la pieuvre (2024) where the musical composition is similar to that of a concert. In parallel, he co-composed the live music of Datadream (2021) by Steven Michel and directed the soundtrack of the play sous sol (2023) by Arnaud Deprez. In addition to performing arts, his work finds a place in the audiovisual world through the production of fictional films, documentaries and experimental short films. He also creates in the service of club culture under his alias Catartsis, combining Bass music and early 2000 techno influences in his creations, which he explores through his preferred medium: sound recording. This gives his music a concrete and tangible character, leaving room for unusual textures and sounds.
