Cave of Sighs: Approaching Lazaret Grotte du Lazaret Le Printemps des Poètes 2025 Nice, France LabSynthE creates time-based media and sound for a Paleolithic cave directed by Emmanuel Desclaux on the French Riviera. For the 2025 Volcanic edition of Le Printemps des Poètes, the poem "Approaching Lazaret" was penned by Kevin Craft. Credits: xtine burrough (Lab Director, USA), Frank Dufour (Lab Director, France), Emmanuel Desclaux (Cave Director), Hadi Asgharpour (LabSynthE Artist in Residence), Caroline Rodgers (Lab Research Assistant), Maryam Ashkaboosi, Vajihe Zamaniderkani, Tony Carmoega, Rebecca Xiu Han, Olga Johnson, Santiago Alvarez, Parul Bhatia, and Shaghayegh Ashouri Artist statement about The Cave of Sighs: Noise, air, breath: A sigh is a breath made audible. Something that we mean to say without words, it is the purest essence of the meaning of what we do not dare or want to share. It is pure emotion, Shaping with your lips the flow of air that you send back. A sigh is something that does not want to remain silent but that also does not want to sound… A thin edge fluttering between sound and silence. Someone else breathing will eventually inhale my sigh, how will this affect her? A sigh is communication for the overburdened, the silenced. A sigh expresses a request to the gods for help, please help, at the same time it forgoes a request to the humans, to be heard. A sigh is the sound of international language, the shape of the mouth,the shoulders, the body concave, folding in while air falls out. Someone else breathing will eventually sigh again, someone who hasn’t yet been born, someone more than twice my age. Somewhere, someone else is sighing, too. The sigh of animals sometimes indicates content. My dog used to sigh when he was happy, belly full of early morning breakfast, his return to the covers in my bed, a sigh so loud the neighbors knew his routine.
