ratsdeville

L'ART CONTEMPORAIN sur ° un show de mot'arts

Principalement connu comme édimestre de ratsdeville [RDV] – un webzine sur les arts visuels de Montréal – Éric Bolduc a récemment ajouté une nouvelle flèche à son arc avec son projet « L’art contemporain ». Si RDV veut mettre de l’avant l’actualité de la scène artistique montréalaise, son nouveau projet se consacre sur l’histoire de l’art contemporain. Selon Bolduc, ce dernier serait un angle mort de la culture populaire. Même ceux qui ont passé par l’École des beaux-arts démontrent certaines lacunes dans cette sphère de la connaissance qui semble cabalistique.

photo : Éloi Desjardins

À partir de cette prémisse, Bolduc a décidé de créer et d’animer une page Facebook qu’il a intitulée L’art contemporain. En utilisant la fonctionnalité timeline de ce média social, notre curateur organise de façon chronologique quelques points d’intérêt. Y sont mis en lumière des anecdotes, des mouvements et des œuvres canoniques de l’art du XXe siècle. Un carnet de route pour naviguer dans les chroniques et remonter aux origines proche de l’art actuel. Une façon conviviale et participative d’apprendre et de partager sur les figures emblématiques qui composent les anthologies.

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billet sur ° Un Show de Mot'Arts

M-KOS : Conversation: Digital Archiving and Other Contemporary Myths

Jeffery Shaw, The Legible City, 1989. Computergraphic Installation. Collection of ZKM-Medienmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Digital archiving has lately become a much-discussed topic. The illusion of “everlasting” files, advocated at the beginning of the digital revolution started crumbling away, giving way to a perception of digital formats as one of the most ephemeral documents. “We ought to have a very good strategy for digital archiving” says Hiroko Myokan, former curator at Inter Communication Center (ICC), Tokyo and currently working on archiving the very first media art festival in Japan between 1986–1999, for the Agency for Culture in Japan. On a recent visit to Montreal for BIAN 2012, Mutek and Elektra festivals, Myokan and M-KOS resident editor and digital artist Oli Sorenson freely discuss digital archiving as a key phenomenon to our contemporary condition.

Oli Sorenson [OS]: When we first met in Japan two years ago, we had an interesting talked about digital archiving. You were also in a transition period from working as a curator for ICC to going back to studying. Are you still studying now?

Hiroko Myokan [HM]: Yes, I’m still studying archiving and preservation of media art in Linz, Austria but I’m also doing research for the Agency for Cultural Affairs in Tokyo about the first video and media art festival that happened in Japan between 1985 and 1999, in the Fukui prefecture.

OS: Were these well archived?

HM: Actually, yes. It’s a very rare case. They don’t have any video documentation but only printed materials as well as some broadcasting archives from the local TV broadcast company.

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M-KOS : Interview: Alain Thibault, artistic director of the International Digital Arts Biennale

Alain Thibault (Right) with artist Robert Lepage at the opening of BIAN. Courtesy of BIAN 2012. Photo: Conception

Alain Thibault is the founder and artistic director of the International Digital Arts Biennale (BIAN), inaugurating its first edition in April 2012. Unlike his sister electronic music event Elektra, BIAN focuses on digital forms of contemporary art, hosted in numerous museums, art galleries, artist-run centres and other venues throughout the city of Montreal. BIAN invited artists from Germany, Japan, France, Switzerland, Austria, The Netherlands, Turkey, USA as well as Quebec and Canada, including renowned names such as Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. Thibault talked to M-KOS about his motivation to take digital arts to the next level, while he enjoys the taste of success of the first edition of his biennale.

M-KOS : As founder for the International Digital Arts Biennale (BIAN), how would you describe your motivation to do such a festival?

Alain Thibault [AT]: In fact I started out with Elektra in 1999, which is also an international festival of digital arts. The focus with Elektra was mainly about concerts and performances, but still with a mandate of blending experimental electronic music with visuals. This could be audiovisual performance, robotic performance, but there was always a central axis on experimental electronic music combined with a visual element. So that began in ’99, and gradually we evolved out of Usine C which is our main headquarters and quite an extraordinary venue for presenting this type of show. By 2005 we started adding more and more installations to the usual performance program, and these slowly spread to other venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal and the Cinémathèque. In 2009 the installation program exceeded the allocated duration of the whole [Elektra] festival and that was when I said to myself I should make another event out of this, entirely devoted to the installation component. This is more or less how BIAN was born. And also this was about highlighting the idea that we arrived at a point in time where major artists were doing major works [in a digital format] and for me it was important to mark that moment.

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M-KOS : Re-writing art history – in conversation with Marie-Josée Jean, artistic director of VOX

Exhibition view from “Art Hisotires” at VOX. Courtesy of VOX.

VOX is a Montreal-based artist-run centre founded in 1985. After relocating many times within different areas over the years, VOX settled in March 2012 to its permanent home, in the brand new culture complex building 2-22, situated at the heart of downtown Montreal. The inaugural exhibition of their new space entitled “Art Histories” was curated by VOX artistic director Marie-Josée Jean and showcases a total of 16 international artists which all in their own way attempt to deconstruct art history and challenge this great institution. Jean talked to M-KOS of the history of VOX and their inaugural exhibition.

M-KOS : Can you start by introducing VOX, its mandate and its decision to move to the most central location of Montréal?

Marie-Josée Jean : The history of VOX is quite long because this is a group that was formed in 1985, and it’s interesting to know that at the onset the original name was Vox Populi. It was a communications collective predominantly using photography as one of many means of communications, but also radio. The origins of VOX were socially quite active, notably to the extent that VOX gave itself the mandate to defend the rights of youths. Over the years the group specialized into an exhibition space for photography. Nonetheless, our origins are clearly associated with social activism. In fact, the son of the founders of VOX, Marcel Blouin and Lucie Bureau, is now one of the key leaders of Québec’s current student protest (Leo Bureau-Blouin) [laugh].

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M-KOS : Transforming the Earthling – in conversation with Janet Werner

Janet Werner in front of her painting “Crying Eyes” (2011). Photo by M-KOS

Montreal based painter Janet Werner is currently showing a new body of work within Parisian Laundry’s main space. Throughout her painting career, Werner has been engaged with the genre of portraiture, focusing primarily on female figures. She collages and transforms images from fashion magazines, popular culture and naïve painting, to invent altered personalities with these source materials, in addition to creating new narratives. Werner plays out a tension between fiction and reality to question notions of beauty, often by distorting and messing up the posing women. The resulting paintings not only astound by their sense of scale, composition and color, but also draw the viewer into the inner psyche of Werner’s counterfeit characters. Werner talks to M-KOS about her new exhibition, and of the ways she produced her latest body of work.

M-KOS : Can you tell us about your choice of title “Earthling” for this exhibition at Parisian Laundry?

Janet Werner : [laugh] The reason I’m laughing is because it was so hard for me to come up with a title, I really struggled. It was one of the first titles I thought of, but I kept looking and looking. Titles are extremely difficult for me. But in the end I went with it. What was your question, why did I use the title?

M-KOS: Yes, does it have to do with the people in the paintings?

Janet Werner : Well, I feel like the work is existential in nature and when you take an existential position you usually think of it in terms of: I’m here right now, on earth, at this moment. But to call it Earthling is like taking a different perspective of that same experience. It was as if they were aliens but in fact, it’s us, if you looked at us as though we were aliens. I was just thinking of the beings who are cast here, in these paintings.

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M-KOS : collapsing foundations – in conversation with Haig Aivazian

Haig Aivazian, Collapsing Foundations, 2010-Ongoing. Courtesy the artist and Parisian Laundry

Beirut-born, NY-based artist and curator Haig Aivazian is now showing his ongoing project at Parisian Laundry’s bunker space. “Collapsing Foundations” is a multi-part project comprised of written text, sculpture, drawing, video and a lecture performance, all of which seek to answer the following question: Can one erect a monument to an individual who has already erased the traces of his life’s work? Initiated from the CAD drawings of the artist’s late architect father, Aivazian here evaluates the potentials of languages and materiality, examines the notion of legacy and explores the relationships between private and public, through a wider body of research and various forms of presentations. M-KOS interviewed Aivazian during the opening of his exhibition.

M-KOS : How did “Collapsing Foundations” start off?

Haig Aivazian : I’ve been thinking about this project for several years now. Initially it was a fairly academic paper that I wrote. I had these drawings my father had done that I needed to do something with. I knew there was a potential in them but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. I wanted to explore the lines, explore them almost formally. I was thinking about drawing parallels between the collapse of a building and the collapse of a body, but mostly I was interested in the collapse of language in these moments: At the approach of death, what happens to language? What happens when we speak? What is our relationship to death as we speak? So I got interested in this idea of the very act of speaking, as an effort to ward off death. But the more we spoke, the more we are approaching death. So those are some of the ideas at the beginning point.

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RATSDEVILLE sur ° un show de mot'arts

lire : La critique d’art au Québec ~ partie 3 : Éric Bolduc de RDV
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USDMA : Quel est le mandat de RDV?
EB : À la base, c’est une initiative de diffusion sur l’actualité des arts visuels de Montréal et ses environs. L’organisme, à but non lucratif, se veut « collaboratif », comme j’aime bien le décrire. Mon objectif est de créer un climat de coopération avec les différentes instances, paliers et acteurs de la scène artistique de tout horizon : les galeries marchandes, les maisons de la culture, les espaces alternatifs, les pratiques en marges, les artistes établis, etc.

USDMA : Quel type d’activités vous distingue chez RDV?
EB : La prémisse de RDV est de relayer l’information et de la rassembler dans un « one stop shop », un endroit où l’on peut avoir rapidement accès à des renseignements sur les évènements les plus éclectiques et inusités. Les arts visuels ne sont pas très visibles dans les médias traditionnels, toutefois quand une exposition à la faveur du public ou des critiques, on entend parler que de cette dernière. Il y a un foisonnement incommensurable d’activités dans le domaine des arts visuels à Montréal et je trouve donc pertinent de traiter de cette diversité.

ATSA @ côtes-des-neiges ~ reportage

NATALIE REIS @ trois points ~ reportage

ART FOR HEALING FOUNDATION ~ interview

The editor asked simple questions to Earl Pinchuk, co-founder of the Art for Healing foundation ... and he answered :)

RDV : What is the mission of the Art for Healing Foundation, in a nut shell ?

EP : The Art for Healing Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring the healing power of art to hospitals and wellness facilities, transforming otherwise sterile public and patient areas into inspiring environments that encourage a sense of serenity and hope for patients, their families, and healthcare providers.

David Lubell at the Argyle Institute of Human Relations

RDV : Do you see in your practice a curatorial aspect, can you talk about that ?

EP : The curatorial aspect is vital to our installations. As we create "galleries" for artists, this means an installation of 10 to 20 works, installed together, along a hospital corridor. The right works have to be chosen that "speak to each other". If not. the installation will not work. The installation of the artwork itself has to be just right or once again, it will not work. The height and distance of each piece has to work visually. So we may receive beautiful artwork, but if not curated properly, it will not do the artwork justice. This has traditonally been a big problem in hospitals.

Rita Letendre at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (top)

Rita Cohen at the Montreal General Hospital (bottom)