This brief talk by Nathalie Bachand – an independent Canadian curator – will consist of two parts: first, a brief overview of Canadian artistic practices in new media art; second, an overview of the exhibition The Dead Web – La fin, in particular its speculative nature and the artistic issues it raises, as well as a few words on the curator’s projects in progress.
Among contemporary art practices there are those that are linked to technological developments and which have been designated, with varying degrees of indistinction, as "media art", "new media art" or "digital art". This presentation foregrounds Canadian artists whose practices can be situated in this interstice of the art field, and whose works embody a movement that is sometimes placed at the periphery of more traditional approaches. This panorama is presented as a periodic observation, a portrait of what is currently being done through a diversity of media and creative means.
Whether they involve computer science, electronics, robotics, network connections, or hybrid systems at the intersection of the analog and the digital, these technologies sustain a vast feeding ground for artistic practices that contribute to renewing the field of contemporary art. The Dead Web – La fin is an exhibition that was first shown at Eastern Bloc (Montreal) in the winter of 2017. Bringing together five works by seven artists – Julien Boily, Julie Tremble, Projet EVA (Etienne Grenier & Simon Laroche), Frédérique Laliberté, Dominique Sirois & Baron Lanteigne – the exhibition raises the question of a possible Internet Capacity Crunch, which was the subject of talks at the Royal Society Symposium in 2015. With this premise as a starting point, the works in the exhibition question our relationship to the Internet and, more broadly, to the notion of connection as a point of contact with the world.
Nathalie Bachand is an art writer and independent curator interested in the issues of digital technology and its conditions of emergence in contemporary art.
Previously in charge of development for ELEKTRA-BIAN (2006–2016), she notably initiated, created and directed the publication project Angles Digital Arts [ELEKTRA10_Essays] (2009).
In 2016, she co-curated with Chloé Grondeau the exhibition ADC/DAC by the New York artist Phillip David Stearns, presented at Diagonale as part of the 3rd edition of BIAN. Most recently, she was curator of the group exhibition The Dead Web – La fin, presented at Eastern Bloc; of the project of 32 exhibitions UN MILLION D’HORIZONS of the Accès culture network for the 375th of Montréal which took place in the summer of 2017; and the exhibition Thresholds by Michel de Broin at the Âjagemô art space of the Canada Council for the Arts, presented in winter-spring 2019.
She is currently co-curator for the Espace [IM] Média 2019 festival of the Centre en art actuel Sporobole, and contributor to the blog “A Future Salvo”, which focuses on art-science relation.
Lead image: Julien Boily, Memento Vastum (2012), oil on board.
Language: English
Admission: free
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