And, the Coexistence of Temporalities

Béchard Hudon

Publication

A video of fifty-nine minutes created from recordings captured by the Université de Montréal webcams. The sound composition is a mix of field recordings from various places in Quebec and digital processing.

Inspired by the thoughts of Donna J. Haraway, in these troubled and confusing times, we felt the need to connect with a couple of Peregrine falcons that where roosting at the top of the Roger-Gaudry tower at the Université de Montréal. Using three webcams installed near their nest, we observed and recorded them from our computer almost every day from early March to late May, and then occasionally until late October 2021. The video recordings became a point of contact with these birds saved from the threat of extinction thanks to the ban on the use of DDT (in Canada and elsewhere).

We were captivated by the life of these urban birds of prey, their unique space-time, and how they live in their temporary habitat. One of our main interests was to observe how they survive in this anthropogenic place devoid of vegetation. Their nesting area with the city as backdrop, in a place saturated with human expansion, formed a strange and reassuring image all at once. Their presence in this place emphasized the tension between different temporalities: a production-oriented human time and a rhythm specific to falcons.

This temporal interlacement made us pay particular attention to the “dead” time that took up a significant part of the Peregrine falcons’ daily life. They spent long periods of time in the same spot, in a state of observation or silent waiting, offering a striking contrast to our hyperconnected pace and collective allergy to unproductive time.

And, the Coexistence of Temporalities focuses on the interactions between human and non-human animals in order to glimpse other ways of inhabiting the world and to infuse our imaginaries with an inclusive and sensitive multispecies energy.

Béchard Hudon

Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon are interdisciplinary artists based in Montreal. Béchard has an MA in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal and Hudon has a music formation.

They have exhibited widely, notably at the Triennale Banlieue at la Maison des arts de Laval, the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine in Trois-Rivières, at the MA Musée d’art in Rouyn-Noranda, the Centre d’exposition Lethbridge and Ellephant Gallery as part of the International Digital Art Biennial in Montreal, the Mois Multi in Quebec city, the Knockdown Center in Brooklyn, in the context of the event Quebec Digital Art in NYC, at the Device Art Triennal in Zagreb and at the National art Museum of China during the exhibition ThingWorld: International Triennal of New Media Art. Béchard and Hudon also produced permanent public works in Quebec.

Single-channel HD video with sound, 59 minutes

2021.12.12 -AND-, 12-hour online event curated by Christof Migone
Within the framework of this event, our project is presented by AVATAR.

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