Techno megashow in Phi | The Press

Technology. Its good, its bad sides. Its liberating power. His capacity for creation, for social rapprochement. But also its oppressive or paralyzing dimension. The Phi Foundation invited 14 artists, from here and elsewhere, inhabited by technological power. This results in exposure Terms of use, with strong, strange, beautiful, inspiring, disturbing or poetic works. Art, what!

We all live the same choice. Compete or restrict? Ignore the text message beep or rush to the phone? In the metro, we are immersed in our screens. Obsession ? Dope ? Is it the same with a book? Or a thirst for knowledge and pleasure in both cases?

As in Nicolas Baier’s exhibition at Blouin Division, we immerse ourselves in Phi in the technological universe and its influence in our lives. But technology is the computer, the book and even the pencil, recalls Cheryl Sim, co-head of the curatorship of Terms of use with researcher Daniel Fiset, who believes that “we use technology as much as it uses us”.

The techno theme goes all over the place in this exhibition. Because of the diversity of artists. In the first room, Anishinabe Nico Williams highlights the contrast between, on the one hand, Amazon’s terrifying efficiency in delivering anything and everything quickly to us and, on the other hand, the beading, this slow and meticulous technique that allowed him to design Special Deliveryan impressive pastiche of Amazon’s packaging, created in thousands of glass beads.

We liked it very much Of[faroucher], a solid video project by artist VahMiré, alias Ludmila Steckelberg. Her work is a tribute to Montreal, which she will soon be leaving to return to Brazil. The video, coupled with a virtual reality version, is a more abstract than figurative evocation of the sense of belonging she had with the metropolis. With allusions to nature, architecture and climate, with its cubic snowflakes hugging the sidewalks. A sensitive tribute with various mediums of representation of oneself and the living environment.

Not far away, a video by the American Ilana Yacine Harris-Babou parodies beauty care tutorials for women found on the internet. A work on the obsession with performance and mimicry that characterize these guides to contemporary knowing how to appear.

Very happy to find Skawennati, the Mohawk artist of cyberspace, with his installation CyberPowPow (1997-2004). A virtual environment that originally allowed real-time chatting in an Indigenous space. And that visitors can discover now to create their avatar.

In the adjoining alcove, Ontario artist Brendan Fernandes presents The Left Space, commissioned during the pandemic by the Art Gallery of Ontario. A video on this period during which we used a lot Zoom. Brendan Fernandes has worked with dancers (from all over) who have connected to Zoom and lent to a live performance to remember the isolation and the desire for communication felt in 2020 and 2021. And to evoke both solidarity and the need to express one’s points of view.

Relevant installation also by Montrealer Shanie Tomassini. Screen lights under a moonless sky consists of two styrofoam sculptures – covered with fiberglass and pulverized cement –, a curtain of steel balls and an intimate space where small ceramic creations stand next to 15 cellphones created in incense and which will be burned throughout the period of the exhibition. A work on technological obsolescence and on the history of human know-how, this combination of talents and the use of tools.

In the spaces at 465, rue Saint-Jean, the large hall is occupied by works of extremely effective aesthetics by Chun Hua Catherine Dong. Installation Meet Me Halfway presents four screens broadcasting digital cartoons created thanks to a performance carried out in virtual reality. Mulan is another animation that can be seen on a screen or with a VR headset. Reconnect includes three photos taken in Charlevoix and representing the artist, dressed in ceremonial clothes, who looks at the Great Wall of China in his VR headset. A work in particular on the technology which makes it possible to be both in one place and virtually in another.

The tour ends with The Looksa double video by Wu Tsang evoking the complicated relationship between artists and technology owned by private interests, but also with the experimental project of Nadège Grebmeier Forget, I won’t stop lifting all these faces, presented in the educational hall of Phi. A journey through mirrors on which visitors can represent themselves in an abstract way with make-up products. Work on body performance and self-image, without going through a social network like Instagram. Being alone and together with the other visitors, the mirror replacing the screen…