Wired Women S@lon 93: Erin Sexton + Les Délicates attentions + Risk, mutual aid & self-care

Thursday, December 13, 2012, 7PM

ERIN SEXTON +
LES DÉLICATES ATTENTIONS +
RISK, MUTUAL AID & SELF-CARE
artistic practices and cultural work today
collective mindmapping activity facilitated by Anne Goldenberg

4001, Berri (corner Duluth) space 201
Admission: $5, *FREE* for members.
Refreshments will be served.

In order to conclude the 2012 year, Studio XX is pleased to present, as part of our Wired Women Salon 93, an evening dedicated to the theme of The HTMlles Festival, RISKY BUSINESS, as a sort of epilogue to the festival. The evening will start with a presentation by artist Erin Sexton about her project Crystalline Domain, the result of a residency which took place from September 10 to November 2, 2012. Valérie Perron will then follow with Veux tu une médaille? by Les délicates attentions (Valérie Perron and Julie Châteauvert), a project initiated during The HTMlles Festival. Following these artist talks about “risky projects”, Anne Goldenberg will facilitate a collective mindmapping activity linking issues of risk to artists and cultural workers where the public will be invited to participate. Looking forward to celebrating this lively end of the year and the beginning of holidays with you! Also, you will have the chance to grab one of the hand-made mugs “Les HTMlles 10” crafted by Création Li (only a few left!) or a copy of the limited edition .dpi 26 printed supplement “RISKY BUSINESS.”

Erin Sexton

During her residency at Studio XX this fall, Erin Sexton developed Crystalline Domain, a new multi-channel audio/visual installation series.

As a child she collected rocks and crystals, spending much time imagining the mystical powers they might hold. Her first electronics project was a crystal radio set, which uses a crystal diode to separate the audio signal from the carrier wave. Crystal oscillators use the geometric crystalline structure as a natural resonator, feeding its fundamental resonant frequency back into itself to generate tones. Crystallization is a fascinating process, matter transitioning from one phase to another, expressing symmetries that structure everything solid in the universe.

Setting up a hybrid chemistry/electronics laboratory in the studio, Sexton grew crystals from sugar, salt, borax, and copper sulfate, exploring the entire process through sound, video, and microscopy. Walking the line between ritual and experiment, she sonified super saturated solutions with oscillators, amplified crystals and their formation with piezo electric disks, and improvised with tactile open circuits plugged in to all of the above. Raw and aesthetically playful, the resulting sound and video material is presented in real-time, patiently exploring the time-scale of nature, drawing us through immediacy into contact with the micro-macro cosmos.

Each work in the series will be installed differently to provoke a variety of physical/perceptual experiences, on multiple channels of video with stereo or quadraphonic sound. For Femmes Branchées, Sexton will present an artist talk and short previews of the works in the series.

British Columbia born artist Erin Sexton explores matter, energy, space, and time through sound, performance, installation, and video. Drawing from theoretical physics and mysticism, her work is both rigorously conceptual and playfully improvisational. Through analog electronics, electromagnetic fields, pseudo-science projects, and phenomenological experimentation she creates direct links between lived experience and the processes of nature, from the sub atomic to the astronomical. She collaborates most often with Magali Babin (CA), Julie Rousse (FR), Pascale Barret (BL), and Alexander Wilson (CA, as Ænth). She has released 2 albums: Horizon (2011, les encodage de l’oubli) and Aircraft (2004, independent), and is featured on multiple compilations. Her work has been presented across North America and Europe. She has lived and worked in Montreal since 2004. For more info: http://erinsexton.com

+

Les délicates attentions

Veux-tu une médaille? consists of a détournement project that subverts military medals as iconographies of power. By definition, medals recognize an exceptional act of bravery, a service rendered. Objects of the cult of masculinity, medals serve witness to a ceremonious acknowledgement of gratitude, and serve even as identity markers in the military.

The détournement makes use of medals’ original names, official descriptions or engraved images. Les délicates attentions play on decontextualizing the original meaning of medal ceremonies, removing them from their patriarchal origins, thus building upon the scathing and ironic interventionist gestures for which the artists are most renowned.

Medals will be awarded with careful consideration to members of the gender police who reproduce inequalities, through such means as toxic and destructive wars that, in reality, deserve no accolades of honour.

Valérie Perron holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts and Media Arts from UQAM. She has presented her installations and performances within the context of such events as Gender Alarm, hosted by La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Turn On by the Artivistic Collective, Art Souterrain, during the Pan-Canadian Gathering of Young Feminists, and the Montreal Festival of Lights.

Julie Châteauvert holds a master’s in Dance and is completing a PhD in Arts Practice Studies at UQAM. She has presented her performances in France and Quebec. Her videos have screened in various festivals, including the Festival Videodanzaba, MadDance, the OFFTA, and FIFA. She is a member of the Artivistic Collective, and is interested in participatory methodologies.

+

Risk, mutual aid & self-care
artistic practices and cultural work today
collective mindmapping activity facilitated by Anne Goldenberg

This participatory installation invites you to envision risk-taking, self-care and different forms of mutual aid by artists and cultural workers to get organized, engaged, as well as to preserve and support ourselves in this contemporary economic and political context. Following a short presentation about some of the issues that concern us, you will be invited to join in the mindmapping and take part in the activity which will conclude in a collective re-reading of the content of the installation in order to form observations and questions that could be useful for future discussions…

Anne Goldenberg is interested in political, epistemic and poetic platforms both collaborative and participative. She has a PhD in Communications (UQAM, Montreal) and Sociology (Unice, Nice) and wrote her thesis on “the negotiation of contributions in public wikis.” This theoretical work allowed her to observe and explore various forms (multimedia, social sculpture, performance and installation) that contribute to the poetics of the collective contribution. At the core of libriste culture, she explores the relationships between technical devices and digital materials, both public and collective. She is a facilitator for open forum and booksprints, and she enjoys making visible, legible and malleable the processes of the co-construction of knowledge.