Capturer l’éther : Transmutations d’influx intangibles
Pierre Boulanger, Juan David Molina, Samah Saidi, Triska Sicuranzo Gagné
This residency is part of the Avatar 2023 Prize offered to a graduate of the Baccalauréat en arts visuels et médiatiques at the École d’art de l’Université Laval.
The installation Capturing the Ether: Transmutations of Intangible Impulses attempts to capture something elusive: the wind that knows no boundaries. A metaphor for the fluid communication between the elements, beings, and things, this planetary breath becomes the mode through which to consider the world with a sense of hope.
To record the air currents, during their residency, the artists will develop tools that are both performative instruments and data collection devices. The data will then be interpreted and used to activate various sonic and kinetic devices. Via mechanisms of pulleys and taut ropes, this data will control various actions, movements, motors, loudspeakers, fans, projectors, and other materials present in the space.
Reflecting wind and its entropic character, the generative installation will extend the artists’ performative act into the objects’ performativity. Through an electronic and mechanical system, Triska Sicuranzo Gagné, Juan David Molina, Samah Saidi, and Pierre Boulanger propose a poetical and multiform exploration of air in motion, a conversation between the elements, humans, and machines.
In a context in which questions about digital technologies, the environment, and interconnectivity take a central place, Capturing the Ether will approach these issues with curiosity and openness.
Residency at Avatar Centre (Québec): 28 May to 18 June 2024 + 30 July to 18 August 2024.
Photos: Juan David Molina – Avatar residency, 2024
Pierre Boulanger
Quebec artist Pierre Boulanger studied film production in Moscow, then applied arts and visual arts in Canada. Using knowledge from his various areas of expertise, he creates works that oscillate between object, sculpture, sound art, kinetic art, and installation. Based on moments of wonder emerging from the experience of manipulating materials and observing the contexts in which they evolve, Boulanger builds machines through which he tries to reconstruct the complexity of living things; he activates the inert to evoke the poetry of the real. Fascinated by the phenomenon of resonance, by our sensual connections with sound, movement, and matter, as well as by what we describe as non-living things, he attempts to redeploy unique moments of intense experience into new forms, using instability as a kind of ambiguous language that can create collisions and generate new narratives.
Boulanger has been awarded the 2019 Prix Émergence en métiers d’art as part of the Prix d’excellence des arts et de la culture, the 2023 Prix Avatar (sound and electronic art), the 2023 Prix Musée Ambulant, as well as grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture. He is currently completing a master’s degree in visual arts.
Juan David Molina Velasco
My art practice is based in a particular imaginary inspired by multiple mediums and cultural hybridity. My intention swings like a pendulum between the philosophy of science and the sensitivity of matter. By shifting and deconstructing meaning, I work on a poetic concretization of systems in order to create a sensorial phase shift of reality. I construct my own plastic language by drawing on affects stemming from my personal history.
My practice is a creative continuum that is constantly evolving. I strive to use everyday signs and codes so as to disrupt the everyday. I am interested in the phenomenon of contagion in terms of how an idea can suffuse thinking. I assert my identity through my imagination and construct my realty through my gestures.
Born in Colombia, I was uprooted by violence. I learned to discover my original culture through childhood memories and distant stories. I integrated into a new culture and had to learn a new language. I grew up navigating between two worlds, not knowing how to define myself, not knowing with what to identify myself. Moving from Jonquière to Gatineau to Quebec City, I explored the performing arts and visual arts at Cégep de l’Outaouais. I received a bachelor’s degree in visual and media arts and am currently completing a master’s degree in visual arts at Laval University.
Here is somewhere else. I am not from here, but I don’t belong somewhere else either.
Samah Saidi
Samah Saidi was born in Tunis and works and lives in Quebec City. His art practice focuses on notions of memory and transformation as bastions of identity. Through sound installations and videos, he probes the languages, objects, and practices that he has inherited so as to highlight the transformative power of their hybridization. With an increased focus on speech, archives, and bodies, his hybrid works merge notions of individual and collective identity.
His work has been presented in exhibitions, festivals, and art residencies in Quebec City, Brussels, and online. For the group exhibition DENSE/DENSE (Laval University, 2023), he was awarded a grant from the René-Richard Foundation and the Prix Inter/Le Lieu, thanks to which he presented his first solo exhibition (stéreodibs, 2024, Le Lieu, centre en art actuel). He has also received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for his current project as part of a master’s degree in visual arts.
Triska Sicuranzo
Triska Sicuranzo has participated in several art residencies, in particular at Avatar, La Chambre blanche, and La Charpente des fauves. Her works have been presented in many exhibitions and events such as Québec Musiques Parallèles and Art sonore à l’Abbaye presented by the organization EXEcentrer. Right after college, she already began distinguishing herself through her work, and Cégep Beauce-Appalaches acquired three of her works for its public collection. She won the Concours du drapeau, a public art competition at Laval University’s School of Art, and her work L’emblème de la nordicité was presented on a flagpole of Quebec’s city hall (2022). In fall 2023, the collective formed of Triska Sicuranzo, Juan David Molina, Samah Saidi, and Pierre Boulanger will present Capturing the Ether: Transmutations of Intangible Impulses, a project that received a Première Ovation grant, at the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival 2024. Sicuranzo is currently completing her master’s degree while in residence at Avatar, exploring the concept of night as site of poetic possibilities through a sound installation that emphasizes the gradual loss of our connection with the starry sky. At the end of her residency in winter 2024, her research will be presented in a master’s graduate exhibition at Les Productions Recto-Verso.
