Cet événement a pour moi une importance particulière du fait que Karl Lemieux fonde ses performances essentiellement sur le film 16mm. Il procède par manipulation en direct de film 16 mm dans une batterie de trois projecteurs projetant sur un même écran. Cela inclus des interventions peintes sur la pellicule, des méthodes de défilement non orthodoxe du film et des destructions de film par brûlure dans le faisceau lumineux. Il semble donc assez naturel de projeter de la gravure sur pellicule en direct en superposition avec les images de Karl sur le même écran.
Performance at Casa Obscura
Last Wednesday, the collective Basmati (Audrey Coianiz and Saul Sagatti) Detheux Jean and I have made a visual collective improvisation with the musicians Jean Derome, Joane Hetu and Isaiah Ceccarelli, as part of MercrediMusics at Casa Obscura in Montreal. I had met Audrey and Saul in Macchiagodena in Italy last May during the IOProject where I participated with them in the Alkemax workshop. It was already expected that they would come to Montreal in September and we agreed to try organize something together in the same spirit. I suggested to Jean Derome to schedule a performance in the context of MercrediMusics at the Casa. He immediately accepted, and I invited Jean Detheux to join us.
the performance day
15H:30, October 17, it is today that the DVD set of my films is going to be launched. Coktail at 17H:00 and performance with Robert Marcel Lepage and René Lussier at 20H:00.
The beginning of the day was difficult. I arrived at La Société des arts technologiques at 10H:30 thinking that we were going to have all afternoon to quietly do a complete rehearsal of the piece and I found out that something else had been booked in the afternoon and that we were going to free the space at 13H:00. And Robert was to arrive just at 13H:00. so this meant no complete sound check before tonight after 18H:00 and no rehearsal.
Revisiting “The Subway”
For some time, there are talks between the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema (FNC) about doing something special during the next edition to underline the release of the DVD edtion of my films. This is why I have been working hard on Herqueville so that it is ready for the festival. One of the hypothesis is to put up a performance that would somehow revisit my older work. At first I was not too excited by the idea of looking backward although I understand that it would be appropriate for this DVD set that will cover all of my carreer. But if I was to do a performance, I thought I should rather move forward to something new. Then I had the idea of using elements of my film Songs and Dances from the inanimate world – the subway (NFB, 1984, 14 min.) along with something new based on shooting and photographs done with a cell phone in Montreal subway.