VIRGINIE LAGANIÈRE

The Unit

2008 - 2009

Biography

Virginie Laganière lives and works in Montreal. Her artistic installations, composed of sculptural elements, photographs, sounds, lighting and videos, question the notions of constructed (i.e. architectural) spaces, the phenomena of insecurity, the human psyche and the technologies of perception. She has a fondness for site-specific environments. Since 2003, Laganière has presented her installations in Quebec, Mexico, Spain and Switzerland. The artist’s video works have also been shown at many world-renowned festivals. Since 2008, Laganière has benefited from several artist residencies, in such cities as Querétaro (Mexico), Basel (Switzerland), Espoo (Finland) and Barcelona (Spain). The artist will soon begin residencies in Beijing (China) and Turku (Finland). Laganière is currently working on an exposition that will be held in June 2013 at the Darling Foundry in Montreal, for which she received support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. In addition to her rich individual career, Laganière has worked with Women With Kitchen Appliances (WWKA), and for ten years was part of a duo with artist Jean-Maxime Dufresne, with whom she collaborates on a regular basis. In 2010, as a curator, Laganière invited artist Samuel Roy-Bois to take part in Avatar’s ArchitecSonic, as part of the Manif d’art.

About the work

Mid-way between a subjective camera and a surveillance camera, the lens sweeps across the site like a scanner. It stops unexpectedly, probes the space, watches two suspicious-looking buildings. These construction units seem to reflect a traumatic past. The result of some catastrophe or disaster? They seem to have been abruptly abandoned, left as is: with the blinds closed awkwardly, a door left ajar. The sound processing contributes to this feeling of insecurity and danger: a strident sound, a ringing of a distant telephone straining to find a recipient; comments on secret documents held by the U.S. Army; voices generated by an avatar; the station of an old radio trying to tune itself as a landscape is revealed, in a lateral movement like that of a radio tuner. Here the notions of place, time, even humanity lose their meaning and must be continually redefined over the course of this strange experience.