LES COURANTS | ce qui pousse, se défait, grouille encore – Anne-F Jacques

Exhibition from February 27 to March 28, 2021

Maison Pierre-Chartrand
8000 Boulevard Gouin E, Rivière-des-Prairies, Montreal
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 12 pm to 5 pm
Saturday: 10 am to 5 pm, Sunday: 12 pm to 5 pm
To book a visit: 514-872-2462

Anne-F Jacques’ residency provided the opportunity to create a whole new body of work. […] Part installation, part performance and part ephemeral intervention, this Montreal artist’s practice is deeply rooted in the concepts of do-it-yourself, found objects and unlikely encounters. The converging of materials plays an important role: any interaction can make a sound. Objects and materials that would otherwise never have met generate an original, sometimes incongruous, soundscape. This is how two large sheets of paper converged with strings slowly pulling across their surfaces, generating a subtle, fallible and intermittent sound. The weakness of the materials, their fatigue, puts the notion of efficiency into question. This is one of the key components of Anne-F Jacques’s creative process. She works to challenge the idea that things must operate optimally. Her work is also concerned with dismantling the concept of the power of the machine, one that is deeply rooted in a techno-enthusiastic and masculine vision of digital arts. Functioning is not necessarily spectacular: inertia and silence are neutral but significant moments. As the artist said in a video interview with Ada X, “Sounds that make silence” are still sounds. They can be on pause, waiting, at the edge of themselves and their possibility; it is about letting things “be,” even in their fallibility. Her body of sound machines–a collection of semi-autonomous creatures—was presented at the Maison Pierre-Chartrand in the winter of 2021. It plays on the ambiguities of a flickering presence that is revealed through the assembly of materials and their movement generated by small repurposed motors that Anne-F Jacques has revived. Materials are activated: rocks, bark, and algae, whose complexity allows for the creation of an astonishing range of sounds; common or found objects, such as light bulbs or a plastic coffee lid whose rim reveals a trickle of dark liquid, follow the rotating movement generated by the motors. Outside the building, four photographs focus on the relationship between the natural elements and the mechanisms that move them, emphasizing their coexistence. Discreet actors of our ecosystems, sometimes inert, silent or still flourishing, the objects of the world inhabit us.” — Nathalie Bachand

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This exhibition forms part of Les Courants, an introductory digital arts program for young people and families in Rivière-des-Prairies. READ MORE

This program was carried out in collaboration with the Maison de la Culture of Rivière-des-Prairies and the Rivière-des-Prairies Library and receives financial support from the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications and the City of Montréal as part of the Entente sur le développement culturel de Montréal.