Bande de cabochons
Anne-Françoise Jacques & Éric Normand
Avatar welcomes Anne-Françoise Jacques and Éric Normand for a two-week residency.
The duet’s residency is dedicated to a research around simple phenomena: vibration, strings under tension, mechanical interactions with various electrical objects, amplification, re-amplification, and diffusion through chosen materials. Their project is to assemble a network of interactions between several mechanical, electrical, and acoustic elements, to generate an installation where the elements influence each other to the extent of blurring the line between the cause and the effect, between the source and the amplification.
Anne-Françoise Jacques has been active in sound art since 2004. She performs regularly, alone and in various collectives (including Minibloc and Fünf), makes sound installations and creates soundtracks for Julie Doucet’s animated films. Her work has been presented in many festivals including Mutek (Montréal), Send&Receive (Winnipeg), Club Transmediale (Berlin), VIVA! Art Action (Montréal), MEM (Bilbao), Sonoscopia (Porto) and at artist-run centres (Centre Clark, Séquence, Action Art Actuel, L’Œil de Poisson, Espace Cercle Carré, le GRAVE). It has also been exhibited in bucolic or odd places, such as in parks, in a subway exit, and under a staircase. She carried out a performance tour in Japan in November 2014. Her most recent recordings are available on Crustacés Tapes, a postal sound distribution project.
Éric Normand is an improviser, bassist, composer, singer and songwriter, instruments designer, record and show producer. He defines himself as an “epidisciplinary” free electron fueled by the spirit of encounter, by the fight for freedom and the spirit of cocreation. He lives in a remote area, in Rimouski (Québec), and is the artistic director of Tour de Bras, an organization devoted to improvisation music. He has also been directing a grand orchestra of improvisers (the GGRIL) for ten years. He favors duets and trios with Xavier Charles, Philippe Lauzier, Jim Denley, Pierre-Yves Martel, Martin Tétreault, in addition to numerous impromptu encounters. His music has been played in any festivals in Canada, in Australia, in France, in Spain, in Austria, in Italy, in Slovenia, in Latvia, in Lithuania, and in many other countries. It has been aired on Radio-Canada, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, Radio-Grenouille and many student radios.
