Studio XX, Montreal’s foremost women’s digital resource centre, is proud to present the 50e édition of its popular Femmes br@nchées salons, a Studio signature bringing together artists, theoreticians, authors and people interested in the relations between and impacts of information technologies on contemporary women’s conditions. To close its programming season on the theme of the Home, Studio XX presents Doctor Perla Serfaty-Garzon et Toronto artist Michelle Kasprzak. With complementary points of view, both speakers will elaborate upon the notion of intimacy as attached to this space conventionally associated with women. Doctor Serfaty-Garzon will present excepts of her recent research on the relations between intimacy and territory while Michelle Kasprzak will show her interactive video installation – Scrub – which explores eroticism and domesticity.
The evening will continue with an end-of-season party for the 50th anniversary. Sushi, music and an audiovisual presentation on past Salons will be featured. Everyone is welcome.
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Perla Serfaty-Garzon – http://www.perlaserfaty.net
With doctorates in Sociology and Psychology, Perla Serfaty-Garzon directs the Economic and Urban Development Service at the Montreal’s City Hall. She is author of several publications on the home, including Psychologie de la maison. Une archéologie de l’intimité (published in Montreal in 1999) and Une maison à soi. Déterminants psychologiques et sociaux de l’habitat individuel. She has recently written several articles for the Dictionnaire critique de l’habitat (to be published in Paris), several chapters for collective works and articles delimiting the meaning of habitat and the stakes of appropriation of one’s home.
Michelle Kasprzak – http://michelle.kasprzak.ca/
An award-winning artist, researcher and lecturer currently investigating interdisciplinary practice, performance and collaboration. Through her role as faculty with the Canadian Film Centre’s new media programmes, she develops and delivers curriculum that addresses methods of prototyping in a collaborative environment. She brings the most current issues in new media to the attention of the public through her efforts as the Producer of the Interactive Arena, a lecture series presented by the Canadian Film Centre that invites influential thinkers to share their critical insights with the community. With her artistic and pedagogical pursuits as inspiration, Michelle is investigating experience engineering, 3D visualization, interface design, prototyping, performance techniques and technology, and hybrid environments.
Scrub is an interactive video installation. Visitors to the gallery approach an area that resembles a kitchen. There is a sponge on the countertop, and a video monitor in the cabinet above that has been left open. The sponge is the visitor’s interface to the piece. On the screen, footage of the artist wearing rubber gloves and performing domestic tasks with a sponge appears. When the user scrubs the sponge, s/he is also scrubbing through the video footage. Visitors will also discover that if they scrub in a particular direction, or at a particular speed, they get another surprise.
Infos: 514.845.7934 / www.studioxx.org / programmation@studioxx.org