Studio XX is pleased to welcome artist Taien Ng‐Chan between April 16th and June 9th 2012: “My proposal for a residency with the Matricules Project involves research to locate archives from Studio XX projects that deal with site-specific art and/or urban culture. As a research-based creation, the final results will be determined through the process of mapping out a story through the archives, one possible story amongst many. I will use the Matricules Project to look at the history of women and technology in the city, and finally, to build an essay-video work that will be interactive and accessible on the Web. Essaie involves one aspect, or map, of a larger psychogeographic mapping project of Montreal, entitled Poetics of the City. Essaie will attempt to map out and localize an archive. My practice as a writer and an artist is to experiment with poetry, fiction and documentary in an interdisciplinary, multi-media context. I am working to develop new, visually poetic and engaging forms of storytelling, absorbing both the personal and the political. These stories range from flash fictions to tiny observations to serial narratives. In my ongoing work, I explore the intersections between text and voice, sound and image, observation and interpretation. Themes in my writing often include autobiography, relationships, urban and inner landscapes, and travel. Currently, my PhD research in cultural landscape theory, cinema, and cartography also influences my artistic practice. My proposal for Essaie involves drawing upon the Matricules archives in order to visualize how city spaces are affected by such factors as language, ethnicity and gender, among others. By gleaning video, images, texts and sounds from the archives and locating them on the map, I hope to create a multimedia essay exploring art, technology, and personal engagements with the city.”