Thematic Residency: Do it Yourself
http://lesprojetsdelabaleine.net/Cyprine.htm
Format: improvised and interactive multimedia performance and web creation
From January to March 2004, Studio XX welcomes Sylvie Chénard for her thematic residency titled Do it Yourself. She questions different aspects of the cultural blur (brouillage), the liberation of women’s pleasure, and a social, cultural and natural, virtual technological environment that respects human rights, free and non commercial alternatives such as free software, free code, the liberation of copyrights and the rights of the artist and the programmer, the remote controls for the guitarist, a documentary on the lack of awareness regarding the word « cyprine » as well as the free and non commercial alternatives during menstruation, questioning political, economical and technological shifts that are anti-democratic. These studies and reflections lead to the realisation of the solo project DIY : Brouillage cyprine, an improvised and interactive multimedia performance and web creation.
Do it yourself / Fais ça toi-même! is an exploration project for an improvised and interactive feminist multimedia performance which questions the various aspects of the cultural, social and political blur that we constantly face nowadays due to the ubiquitous technologies, particularly as far as communications are concerned, and the increasing anti-democratic and anti-ecological developments worldwide. Through play, experimentation and reflection, the artist offers a critical and self-critical examination of these powerful machines that condition and pollute us, by drawing deeply on the interconnected, loving and festive energies of the present that are featured and promoted by Do it yourself / Fais ça toi-même! Blurred words, ethics, bodies, politics… a feminist and ecological blur! Do it yourself / Fais ça toi-même! Doing it yourself! Doing it for yourself! Doing it for the world!
Sylvie Chénard has been working as a multidisciplinary artist for over twenty years. Creator of the Projets de la baleine, these get-togethers of improvised music are engaged socially in both spirit and form. She has produced many albums (on the Magnetic Ambience Label), and is currently working on improvisation projects and interactive multimedia installations.
Interview with Sylvie Chénard on .DPI, electronic review of Studio XX (in french).