Since its founding, Avatar has always focused on one major discipline while also continuing to explore more broadly. Whether through sound, electronic, visual, relational, or public art, Avatar’s artists and team have gone from tinkering with electronics to producing large-scale projects; they have created devices and actions, invented, shaken and transformed individuals and things through their encounters. This is the organization’s focal point: the encounter. Whether it involves a connection to the work, the object, or the other, this relationality between humans or between humans and things is explored, tested, studied. What interaction might be possible between individuals, between human and object? How can the relationship between living beings and inorganic materials—electronic, sound, and mechanical equipment or even artifacts—shape works, practices, creative methodologies, and theories? Avatar and Université Laval wish to consider these questions over the course of this event.

The event Agence Augmentée: RENCONTRES will be a celebratory gathering during which more than thirty artists will present their explorations of the theme. There will be a mix of performative talks, panel discussions, and a workshop. On Saturday, December 17, Avatar will unveil its 30th anniversary programming and to jump start the festivities, about fifteen artists will interweave their performances over the course of a riotous night.

Myriam Lambert
General and Artistic Director of Avatar

Agentivité

This event explores various forms of agency. Defined as an entity’s ability to act and therefore transform or affect the world, things, and beings around them, the notion of agency will be investigated by observing whether the interactions between these elements can produce new conceptual or physical materials that exceed the agents involved.

Agence Augmentée

The project Agence Augmentée is an initiative of Alexandre St-Onge, an artist, professor at Université Laval, and President of Avatar’s Board of Directors. The project is being carried out in different phases, over a period of almost three years. The first phase took place in summer 2022, during which artists were invited to create work collectively, using artifacts or elements of their respective material vocabularies. The intention was to make an installation generated by performative and sonic actions, amalgamating elements drawn from distinct universes in order to create a whole other world that is constantly mutating. The second phase, presented at the Galerie des arts visuels of Université Laval in fall 2022, proposed the creation of an evolving installation generated by the sharing of material elements as well as a series of performative and sonic actions. The third phase of the project, which, for the reasons mentioned above, has the addition of the word “Rencontres,” will offer a new artistic and reflective perspective on the subject.

The third phase, Agence Augmentée: RENCONTRES, is presented by Avatar, an artist-run centre dedicated to audio and electronic art, and the Art School of Université Laval.

Agence Augmentée is funded by the FRQ as part of the Research-Creation Support for New Academics program. The Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Entente de développement culturel reached between the Government of Québec and City of Québec, and the City of Québec join the FRQ for the phase Agence Augmentée: RENCONTRES.