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| GLITCH THIS! SPLICE THAT! - A QUEBEC SPECIAL Curated by ETIENNE DESROSIERS Commenting on an underground media art scene in Quebec suggests the issue of defining underground creation by its cultural specificity. Whether there is a distinction between Quebec and the rest of Canada on a creative basis is a non starter. Radical ideas go beyond specific communities, linguistic or otherwise. Our beloved grand pays gets even when it comes to art. Thus, it�s easier to confront such a concept in economic and cultural contexts. Most of the works presented here belong neither to the mainstream of mass-media images nor to its reversed art-world sphere. In that sense, they sneak out of the viewfinder of marketing by triggering various alternate takes that redefine the relationship to the work. Between our big time national broadcasters and Yankee imperialism, between artsy-pieces for the happy-few and popular culture, artistic creation from the other solitude emerges within different venues that bring a new edge to underground art creation. While democratisation of technology explains creativity booms within the media arts community, fresh contexts of distribution also force their way in. Thus live cultural agitators like Kino Collective or Prend �a court venues. The happenings of the first are a brilliant manifestation of idiosyncrasies brought to a level of collective interests, while the second raises the presentation of independent shorts to a rarely seen vitality. By creating their own cultural pattern, these examples provide dynamic niches of film and video escaping easy popular cultural definitions. Film and video with so-called underground content fully bloom here. In the past few years, new initiatives of presentation through collective actions found a rejuvenated community of interests and defined a new meaning for individuality. This programme is drawn around these circles, while also exploring a diverse array of styles and contents. - Etienne Desrosiers |
| copyright (c) 2004. eKsperim[E]nto Web Team |
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| Motel Centurion Jo & Loo de Cunt Vetter 2003, super-8, 4� One night, a fading petrochemical art-punk-rock-legend has his best erotic dream while two weirdoes do strange things in a motel room. A wicked journey through motel trash culture. Sing along with Jesus Alexandre Roy 2001, video, 1� A sing-along Jesus karaoke lullaby. Manifestant Pantouflard Sylvain Robert 2001, video, 4� A spurious videogame in which police and rioters confront themselves in unpredicted ways, accompanied by a beautiful fake Japanese voice. Royal Plus Guillaume Paquin 2002, 16mm, 4� In a run-of-the-mill Laundromat, the monotonous tossing of the spin cycles takes on new rhythms in this witty B&W urban dance interlude, citing film noir with a Jarmushesque stoic twist. Stages of life Patrick Boivin 2003, video, 10� A citizen�s existence in an Orwellian near-future world. Drawing a critical yet apolitical bead on every aspects of society, Phylact�re Cola insults intelligence as well as stupidity with their satirical gallery of grotesque characters. At the edges of both centuries, this Quebec City�s collective stormed national tv with their irreverent iconoclastic sketches. This trilogy brings together three of them originally shown separately. Aspiration Constas Mentzas 2003, 35mm, 12� On a deserted beach, lost between the sea and a cliff, a man gets out of his car with a hammer, possessed by elusive conviction. Tension arises as no one can hear him except the cliff that sends him back echoes of his behaviour, drawing a spellbinding textured landscape, soothing yet marked with a hollow menace. |
| Fuck Everyone (Illease) Mathilde G�romin 2003, super-8, 4� How to grow up and find one�s place in a lesbian body? Get in the ring, riot-grrrr, and experience everything to avoid being ill eased in the end. All you have to do is watch and listen. A vivid and refreshing music-clip that mixes found-footage with cut-up animation. Naughty Soxxx Chantal Houtteman & Elza Kephart 2002, video, 10� Watch these hilarious sock puppet parody children shows and pornography, chock-full of Canadian Content. In �Les aventures �rotiques de Chaussette", an adventurous Quebec girl leaves her safe harbour of Sept-Isles to claim her fame as a singer. A lonely woman from Bradford (Ont) seduces any man that comes along in "The Diary of a Horny Housewife". "Love Lessons" showcases a pretty but stupid pupil who needs after school tutoring in nearly every subject, and Young Billy Buck tries to make his way to the Calgary stampede in "Homo on the range". Breathe Under Water Laeah Lazariuk & Pierluigi Vecchi 2001, video, 5� A piece about real time anticipation and pleasure. Possible worlds and different levels of being are explored as the character asserts and reinvents itself. The technological confinement acts both as a confessional space and a camouflage of reality. From the Fluid series. Julien Jean-Fran�ois Caissy 2002, video, 2� Gluttony prompts a kid to accept an offer he can�t refuse from a sexy nudist neighbour. You�ll never guess the in-yer-face raunchy finale of what starts as an innocent cute NFB�s style animation on a summertime coming-of-age. Easy Cheese Martine Asselin 2003, video, 2� Some American products are surprisingly useful. �In a wonderful country, you�ve gotta eat wonderful things�. A sweeping look at deep-seated consumerism. Hollywood Marion Pinell & Martin Beauregard2003, video, 3� This video performance parodies the patterns of the dream factory. Common languages of cinema and music-hall comments yankee zeitgeist with fun. The Vegetable Chlo� Leriche 2002, video, 3� The ballad of a lonely veggie in Hamburg. Can he help you forget your hard day? "If he could, he would can.� Score by Lederhosen Lucil, a musical segment of Krista Muir�s imagination. |
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| About the Guest Curator Etienne Desrosiers (b.1969) graduated in Communication and Comparative Litterature. He curated numerous radical media arts events throughout the world, notably, Memento Metropolis (Montreal, 1999), Stormy Weather (Copenhaguen, 1998), Spacejunks (London, 1998) and A propos de l�internationale situationniste (Montreal, 1995). He was the programmer of the Film section of the Synfolium, presented at the Quebec Cinematheque in 2000. He is the creator and curator of Underground Visions presented for the first time in the Montreal sudway in 1998. He was director of programmation for the 3e Manifestation internationale vid�o et art �lectronique in 1997. As a filmmaker, he directed eight shorts presented in numerous international festivals, notably the Namur Film Festival (France) and the Rencontros de Cinema documental Amascultura (Portugal). |