The hand, the one whose presence is always betrayed by its infinitely vulgar shadow, even more visible due to the fact that it sees itself as ineffable. Behind and above, beings so petrified in fortune that they decided, once more tonight, to play “Rebel Jazz.” They come down from their cloud palaces to finely observe, like tantric Burroughses, how the ethnic wrecks, neurotic prostitutes, anorexic junkies and other vessels of human decrepitude, who have for ancestors this strange “middle class” from centuries past, eke out a living. A long night of contemptuous delirium: the beings, the bodies to be sacrificed do not matter. And in the morning, the hand, unphased, reinserts each in his or her place: osteopathy, liposculpture, meditation, and mental refocusing for the aesthetes managers; for the others, low neighbourhoods reeking of dead-end lives, sulking, eroding, and nauseous.

— Dominique Bassal [English translation: François Couture, iii-14]

La main visible was realized in 7.1 in 2014 at the composer’s studio in Montréal.

Composition

• 2014, Personal studio, Montréal (Québec)