After two years of pandemic turbulence, Mois Multi lands in Quebec with a strong bouquet to brighten the spleen of February. The digital and electronic arts festival is “reborn” after the COVID-19 eclipse and offers, as a reunion, a monstrously jubilant month to reflect on the state of the world.
There will be scrap robots to be seen, imperceptible chants of waterways to be felt, tales of grey-haired sex to be heard. This year, Mois Multi and its theme, “Monsters, martyrs and skies”, cast a wide net and abroad to move, to make people laugh, often to amaze.
“It’s like a rebirth this year,” says curator Émile Beauchemin, who has been orchestrating the event’s program for five years. It’s the return of shows and installations, and we wanted to make it a big celebration. »
This 24e edition is also a butterfly, explains its curator. The festival is finally emerging from its sanitary cocoon, ready to spread its wings with the public to explore a changing humanity and world.
Works to discover
An emblematic work of the program features scrap robots, made from the rubbish that the West dumps in Africa. The Congolese Precy Numbi designs his sculptures of sheet metal, electronic parts and recycled plastic as so many ecoheroes, vigilantes of a planet whose inhabitants are stubborn to exploit their neighbors and rush into the climate wall.. Can a humanity that is sometimes so inhuman still claim the monopoly of consciousness? The relentless gaze of garbage androids featured in Robot sapiens Kimbalambala seems inquisitive: who is the monster, the creature of pollution or we who make it possible?
It’s a scaffolded party with the people here. It gives access to voices that have little access to the stage. People are excited, but they can’t wait to share this emancipatory gesture!
In this changing world, the melody of the waterfalls begins to sound false until it confuses the birds. The falls, in fact, sing by producing infrasound capable of traveling nearly 400 km and directing avian migration. There is, however, distortion with the advance of cities and their noise pollution. The Catalan Marc Vilanova proposes, with Cascade, to make the song of the falls visible and felt thanks to 150 loudspeakers which amplify these infrasounds. The frequency will strike a luminous optical fiber, which will testify to their oscillation on a large sound curtain. “It’s a way of making tangible what we don’t perceive,” explains Émile Beauchemin. It is a work imbued with poetry, very imposing too: the installation is nearly 27 feet long and 12 feet high. »
Toronto band Mammalian Diving Reflex is making a comeback this year with a new delivery of human experiences. In 2022, the troop had entrusted the scissors – and the heads of the volunteers – to children from Quebec who had become apprentice hairdressers for a day. This time, the troupe returns to the capital with a new sex show. Throughout the fall, the group recruited fifteen seniors from the capital to design All the Sex I’ve Ever Had. The show revolves around sexual anecdotes experienced by the protagonists. A bit voyeuristic, a bit irreverent, the show is first and foremost a liberating act that winks — and above all thumbs its nose — at the taboos that put sexuality under glass.
“It’s a celebration put together with the people from here, specifies Émile Beauchemin. It gives access to voices that have little access to the stage. People are excited, but they can’t wait to share this emancipatory gesture! »
For three evenings, Kid Koala and his jazz orchestra will lay The Storyville Mosquito on the Diamant stage, this gem of a performance hall in Quebec. The Vancouverite and his band will present a musical cinematographic work created live on stage. In all, 14 artists will make this tour de force possible. The film tells the epic of a mosquito who abandons everything to conquer the city. “It’s the story of a leap into the void, a leap in front of you,” confides the commissioner. There is great research and great virtuosity behind this work. »
Mois Multi also gives pride of place to local artists — who are often not prophets in their own country. Liminal, by Louis-Philippe Rondeau, will allow people “from 3 to 99 years old”, explains Émile Beauchemin, to immerse themselves in an interactive and immersive work on the relentless passage of time. “This artist has traveled the world with his work, but we know very little about him in Quebec, deplores the curator of 24e Month Multi. I thought it was crazy that he didn’t have his rightful place here. »