DÉCARIE DECONSTRUCTED
2005
This “carte-blanche” project was commissioned by the curator John Zepetelli for the event: DECARIE: A COMMUNITY BASED EXHIBITION PROJECT. The pieces created for this invitation are a video-music performance conceived with the sound artist Myléna Bergeron and also a community art photographic installation created with adolescents in the neighbourhood crossing the Decarie Expressway.
After giving workshops in basic photographic technique to a group of students from the Saint-Luc secondary school, the photographer took them on an 12-hour photo shoot (noon to midnight) in the neighbourhood surrounding the Decarie. The aim was to take the time to look at the area with a different point-of-view. The teenagers also participated in the selection of the pictures for the final installation.
The result is a map of the neighbourhood made from approximately 500 small prints. The same images were remixed into an audio-visual presentation, partly composed with field recordings made by Bergeron during the photo shoot.
Performance at Galerie Liane & Danny Taran, Centre des arts Saidye Bronfman, 31 may 2005 © Jean Lachance
« The décarie expressway slices through the centre of the multicultural montreal borough of côte-des-neiges—notre-dame-de-grâce, immediately west of the saidye bronfman centre. It is the area’s most potent and contradictory symbol of both utopian improvement and dystopian devastation. The dramatic, partly sunken, twelvelane river of gasoline was completed heroically for expo 67. Some thirty-eight years later, it is ever more fast-flowing. One of canada's busiest highways, the décarie continues to serve as a metaphor for either civic development or fiasco. In this project, the site gives rise to artworks whose social inquiries range from the joyously philosophical to the darkly existential, while redefining ideas of public art, performance, urban spectacle and community. »
– John Zepetelli, Curator
Mosaïque collective réalisée avec les élèves de l'École secondaire Saint-Luc,
Galerie Liane & Danny Taran, Centre des arts Saidye Bronfman, 2005 © Jean Lachance
DÉCARIE DECONSTRUCTED
Artists: Caroline Hayeur (images) and Myléna Bergeron (sound)
With the participation of students from École secondaire Saint-Luc
Technical Description:
Video-music performance, widescreen 122 x 366 cm (48 x 144 in.), about 20 minutes
Photographic installation, approximately 500 photographs, 10 x 15 cm each (4 x 6 in.)
Venue:
2005 - Liane & Danny Taran Gallery (now SBC - Contemporary Art Gallery) Saidye Bronfman Centre (now the Segal Centre for Performing Arts)
Curator: John Zeppetelli
The video-music performance is presented in collaboration with MUTEK May 31, 2005 and also includes a second part with a performance by Deadbeat and Cinetik.
Atelier communautaire photographique avec des élèves de l'École secondaire Saint-Luc, 2005 © Caroline Hayeur
Performance à la Galerie Liane & Danny Taran, Centre des arts Saidye Bronfman, 31 mai 2005 © Jean Lachance
SBC – Galerie d’art contemporain
MUTEK
DÉCARIE, publication, 2005
