Digital is everywhere, its impact, real, and it is on this observation that thirteen artists worked during the Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul. The event, which ends on Sunday, celebrated its 40th anniversary under the title Connected-interconnected. The digital world in question.
In front of his computer, Serge Clément seems happy, on this Friday afternoon, a week before the end of the activities. If the photographer draws a positive balance from his participation, what makes him smile is the calm that reigns in the old school, headquarters of the symposium, after the storm of the day before.
“Revolving doors”, he specifies, delighted with his formula to describe the crowd which had presented itself. Almost all the artists I met talked about it. Even if the management could not confirm the number, 200 people in five hours would have presented themselves.
Serge Clément was ready. On the green board that was once essential for teachers, he has written down the subjects to be discussed, in particular his career: from exhibitions to photographic books, to his current explorations of cinema.
“I was told to prepare the tape, but I didn’t want it,” says the man who found the experience rewarding. People ask relevant questions, it forces you to go far in thinking. »
Carolyne Scenna is convinced of having released the tape, so much, in one month, she “talked, talked, talked”. Without regret.
“You can make work just by talking. It makes it evolve without it being perceptible,” says the one who planned to make videos inspired by Web phenomena such as unboxing (unboxing).
Serge Clément and Carolyne Scenna admit to having advanced their projects, without the pressure to conclude them. Based on what cinema brings to it — images, the concept of editing and a “screen space” — the former is now exploring the creation of “virtual exhibitions in real institutions”. The second has exploited her studio as an animation studio and an installation of objects, inhabited by the idea of making the image a sound material, concrete and heavy like the two hands of 20 books that she films frame by frame (stop-motion).
Familiarities
In forty years, the Charlevois rendezvous has changed a lot. He abandoned the “young painting” of the beginnings to open up to all genres and all generations. It migrated from the municipal arena that made it famous to the school building hidden behind the art museum. The artists no longer welcome the public in an open and cacophonous area, but in individual rooms. However, one element sticks to the event: its popularity.
“We are in the same traffic as in 2019, close to 10,000 visitors [finaux] says Sandra Lavoie, Acting Director General. After the cancellation of the 2020 edition and the amputated version of foreign artists last year, 2022 looks like a return to normal, as the overused expression goes.
The theme [pointe les] innovative aspects of technology, but also its negative impact on our lives.
Without big celebrations around the 40e, the symposium ran as usual, interspersing the days with occasional activities. The festive aspect manifests itself there, like the closing show entrusted to the electro-pop group Qualité Motel.
This edition and the next two have their house touch: Anne Beauchemin, appointed artistic director (or curator), has been gravitating around the symposium and the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul for a long time. One of the current exhibitions at the museum is by his hand. She also wrote two studies of the symposium, one on the period 1982-1999, the other on the years 2000 to 2011.
“Digital, as a subject of reflection, had never been approached [au symposium], says Anne Beauchemin, who sees it as a unifying theme. It sets the stage for conversation. The theme [pointe les] innovative aspects of technology, but also its negative impact on our lives. »
Boutades and expatriations
Based on the meeting, the symposium is one of the few in Quebec, if not the only one to create, in one month, a work in front of an audience. Most artists only arrive with a few materials and an idea on paper. Or on screen.
Michel Boulanger receives people with his 3D drawing, visible on the computer at the entrance to his premises. This sketch, precise and detailed as only modeling software can make it, and malleable “like modeling clay”, says the artist, gives an idea of the vast sculpture that slowly took shape: a wooden assembly, painted black and covered in white lines.
This animator wanted to make fun, a little, of the digital technologies that make it possible to produce wire-frame models (or wire frame). He opted for driftwood, despite its knots and deformations that do not match the perfect lines of the software.
“It’s a joke,” he admits. Everything is unrealized in the wire frame. It’s virtual, transparent. With me, it’s the opposite, we only see [l’objet], a makeshift 3D universe, with poor materials. »
Several artists have only integrated digital technology (and social networks) once on site, as a research or collection tool. Others arrived with both hands in, even both ears. This is the case of Sylvie Laplante, one of the rare sound artists in the history of the symposium. She spent the month creating a multi-channel work, broadcast even in the stairwell of the old school.
To her bank recordings, she added sounds captured in Baie-Saint-Paul. She sorted it all out, stripped it of its “parasites” and familiar elements to obtain a composition described as a “sound change of scenery”.
“It’s through visual digital that I transform sound”, says the one who only moved away from her keyboard to talk to people. And to describe to them the graphic on the giant screen, plugged into a multimedia player software.
Oli Sorenson feeds on the digital world, transforms it into acrylic paint and ends up making it virtual again – his works will take the path of the cryptographic market, but with a less energy-intensive currency, he assures.
“I am inspired by the Internet cloud and mythology [le rendant] ephemeral and vaporous. But with energy consumption and planned obsolescence, its impact on the environment is real”, says the one for whom the virtual is a false pretension.
The 40e Symposium will not have been a lure: the artists were there, in flesh and blood, full of ideas and… words.
Jérôme Delgado was the guest of the Symposium international d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul.