One lost cell phone, four ficticious identities. The curator Élène Tremblay has invited four artists, Marie-Josée Hardy, Maryse Larivière, Marcio Lana-Lopez and James Prior to create works where their probable identities could spread.
Presentation:
This e-poetry project, is based on a poetic body of work of the Canadian-Welsh author Childe Roland and the images of the Canadian photographer Susan Coolen.
Astres / Stars / Goleuadau stands as a metaphorical representation of the black holes in astronomy and the death of supernovas. The series is composed of sound poems in which all verses first syllables start as an aspirated syllable which slowly dries up the throat. The spoken words only stand when read loud, “like a string of curses launched to pitiless stars” (Childe Roland). Written in three languages, French, English and Welsh, the texts are organized in sets of themes and approach various contemporary issues: environment, epidemics, computerization, globalization, etc.
The photographic work of Susan Coolen also evolves around the cosmos’ theme. In the ongoing project Astral Projections, Coolen stages objects and links her collecting of specimens to space imagery. Often playful, and linking to fictional accounts of travel to the Moon and beyond, Astral Projections opens up the imaginative possibilities of multiple entities and possibilities inhabiting our vast cosmos.
Presentation :
Who is…? is a body of work presenting with texts, photos and videos artist’s portraits created by Swedish artist Magnus Bärtås. These «biographies» articulate themselves around a series of statements, short sentences reconstituted through the memories of conversations between the author and the artists met randomly during journeys throughout the world.
Agence TOPO proposes a multimedia adaptation of Bärtås’ work. Taking for starting point the narrative method of the artist, Agence TOPO adds an element of creation to it by opening a section where the Net surfers can in their turn build a portrait. (Notes about adapting Bärtås’ work for the Web)
In its interactive form, the project plays with the questions of identity with the Internet. Between the “googlisation” of the people, the multiplication of the data banks and the self-representation of the Net surfers who draw themselves a profile real or idealized in the community’s sites, the questions of identity remain fundamental while being sources of fiction, of staging.
Translated into several languages (French, English, Spanish, Swedish, Russian and Latvian), the original work of Bärtås makes it possible TOPO to approach the universalization of the communities increasingly curious to communicate and elucidate the eternal mystery of Who is… Who?
Inspired by the the musical object’s modes of circulation, its iconographic markers and its serial representations: (cds, vinyls, flyers), Post-Audio NetLab is a space of interaction, exchange and socialization that fictionally simulates the codes of today’s music culture.
The starting point is an invented collection of over 400 album covers, each one of which is associated with a musical style, texts and short videos, which allow one to enter Post-Audio’s fictional universe. Various interactive modules – listening, mixing and exchange rooms – are made available to the users who can handle the virtual albums, create their own musical compositions, or exchange texts, music, comments and information in a forum. The launch is now being held in order to invite the local and international community to intervene through the website and propagate the media culture of the hour.
Go beyond the Post-Audio_NetLab experience and get Post-Audio_DVD!
Civilities is a modular, collective fiction that brings together some ten Montreal artists from a range of disciplines and backgrounds who offer diverse perspectives on “living together.” The invited artists explore potential spaces of confidence, reconciliation and the cohabitation of persons, peoples and religions. From the rules of religious fundamentalisms to the movements of anonymous crowds in the city, the projects examine various aspects of social organization, cultural norms and the collective spaces of shared practices. Working from interfaces representing public space, that of the community and of civitas, small stories emerge like windows onto more universal situations, onto a certain state of the world, somber and violent indeed.
VILANOVA is a multimedia creation following the photographic event Villeneuve Tour, by the collective of artists/photographers Fovea, presented during Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal, in September 2001.
Villeneuve Tour proposed a series of thirteen artistic interventions in several small shops and outdoor spaces of the Villeneuve neighbourhood, situated at the confluence of the Plateau Mont-Royal and the Mile End, in Montreal. The VILANOVA web site now revisits the little story of the in situ artworks and proposes a reflexion about transforming and archiving ephemeral interventions on the web. The urban route becomes a virtual itinerary through thirteen multimedia projects while in many ways exploring universal questions related to bodies, identities, memory and time.
Presentation: