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La popularité d’outils de cartographie et de visualisation terrestre se fait grandement sentir dans l’expérience du web. L’emploi de systèmes de géolocalisation se généralise et infiltre l’univers numérique. À l’aide de ces technologies, des artistes explorent la volonté de « situer ». Les œuvres qui en résultent questionnent cette nouvelle conscience géographique issue des pratiques en réseau.
Réunis par la commissaire Sylvie Parent, les artistes Matthew Biederman (Montréal), Grégory Chatonsky (Montréal), Zahra Poonawala (Strasbourg, France) et Cheryl Sourkes (Toronto) ont bénéficié, en 2009-2010 de résidences et de soutien à la production de l’Agence TOPO pour la réalisation de leurs projets. Avec Spectrum Survey, Biederman prend la mesure des ondes électromagnétiques qui nous entourent. Dans Circulation, Chatonsky fait du trafic urbain le moteur d’un dialogue entre un homme et une femme. Poonawala nous fait découvrir le monde par la voix des haut-parleurs, dans Public Address System, et Sourkes propose GeoTag, une version web du jeu Géographie.
Lire l’essai de Sylvie Parent – Géoweb : création de nouvelles géographies – qui élabore sur le thème et décrit les quatre projets sélectionnés.
Production : Agence TOPO, 2010
Directeur de projet : Michel Lefebvre
Réalisateurs multimédia : Vincent Archambault,Guy Asselin
Stagiaires multimédia : Keshia Nau-Dominique, Alex St-Gelais

One lost cell phone, four ficticious identities. The curator Élène Tremblay has invited four artists, Marie-Josée Hardy, Maryse Larivière, Marcio Lana-Lopez and James Prior to create works where their probable identities could spread.
Presentation:

• Articule, septembre 2007, Articule, Montréal
• Festival Val d’Argent, Février 2008, France
• E-Fagia, février 2009, Toronto
• File, March 2009, Sao Paulo

This e-poetry project, is based on a poetic body of work of the Canadian-Welsh author Childe Roland and the images of the Canadian photographer Susan Coolen.
Astres / Stars / Goleuadau stands as a metaphorical representation of the black holes in astronomy and the death of supernovas. The series is composed of sound poems in which all verses first syllables start as an aspirated syllable which slowly dries up the throat. The spoken words only stand when read loud, “like a string of curses launched to pitiless stars” (Childe Roland). Written in three languages, French, English and Welsh, the texts are organized in sets of themes and approach various contemporary issues: environment, epidemics, computerization, globalization, etc.
The photographic work of Susan Coolen also evolves around the cosmos’ theme. In the ongoing project Astral Projections, Coolen stages objects and links her collecting of specimens to space imagery. Often playful, and linking to fictional accounts of travel to the Moon and beyond, Astral Projections opens up the imaginative possibilities of multiple entities and possibilities inhabiting our vast cosmos.
Presentation :

• E-Poetry 2007, Paris, May 2007
• Galerie Espace, Montréal, February 2006
• Harbbourfront Centre, Toronto, September 2006

Who is…? is a body of work presenting with texts, photos and videos artist’s portraits created by Swedish artist Magnus Bärtås. These «biographies» articulate themselves around a series of statements, short sentences reconstituted through the memories of conversations between the author and the artists met randomly during journeys throughout the world.

Agence TOPO proposes a multimedia adaptation of Bärtås’ work. Taking for starting point the narrative method of the artist, Agence TOPO adds an element of creation to it by opening a section where the Net surfers can in their turn build a portrait. (Notes about adapting Bärtås’ work for the Web)

In its interactive form, the project plays with the questions of identity with the Internet. Between the “googlisation” of the people, the multiplication of the data banks and the self-representation of the Net surfers who draw themselves a profile real or idealized in the community’s sites, the questions of identity remain fundamental while being sources of fiction, of staging.

Translated into several languages (French, English, Spanish, Swedish, Russian and Latvian), the original work of Bärtås makes it possible TOPO to approach the universalization of the communities increasingly curious to communicate and elucidate the eternal mystery of Who is… Who?

Inspired by the the musical object’s modes of circulation, its iconographic markers and its serial representations: (cds, vinyls, flyers), Post-Audio NetLab is a space of interaction, exchange and socialization that fictionally simulates the codes of today’s music culture.
The starting point is an invented collection of over 400 album covers, each one of which is associated with a musical style, texts and short videos, which allow one to enter Post-Audio’s fictional universe. Various interactive modules – listening, mixing and exchange rooms – are made available to the users who can handle the virtual albums, create their own musical compositions, or exchange texts, music, comments and information in a forum. The launch is now being held in order to invite the local and international community to intervene through the website and propagate the media culture of the hour.
Go beyond the Post-Audio_NetLab experience and get Post-Audio_DVD!

Civilities is a modular, collective fiction that brings together some ten Montreal artists from a range of disciplines and backgrounds who offer diverse perspectives on “living together.” The invited artists explore potential spaces of confidence, reconciliation and the cohabitation of persons, peoples and religions. From the rules of religious fundamentalisms to the movements of anonymous crowds in the city, the projects examine various aspects of social organization, cultural norms and the collective spaces of shared practices. Working from interfaces representing public space, that of the community and of civitas, small stories emerge like windows onto more universal situations, onto a certain state of the world, somber and violent indeed.