the month
Deployments
Comprised of works hand-picked by members of the Vidéographe team, video of the month explores Vidéographe's vast collection and offers insight into the team behind the centre. New month, new video.
Joseph Rozenkopf graduated from the University of Montreal with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and from UQAM with a certificate in museology and art diffusion. At the crossroads of these two disciplines was born an interest in the operations of cultural institutions in Quebec and questions about their practices. It is with the discovery of artist-run centers and Vidéographe that he was able to begin his career within these institutions.
Synopsis
Deployments deals with the practice of control, both physically and symbolically. The video draws a parallel between two types of simulation: a team of fighter pilots mentally preparing for an air show, and a piece of software that simulates the behavior of a crowd of protesters.
A word from the team
There is something striking about Deployments that keeps drawing me back to experimental video. This collage of images, meanings, and masterful ideas creates an explosion of ideas within me. How do these images create such a reaction in me? Is choreography synonymous with coercion, the control of bodies by the state, the beauty in the control of every gesture and the terror that this implies when this power is overwhelming? The beauty of these pilots in perfect harmony, their code and gestures, applied to the coldness of control and simulation software. These captured, interspersed, and diverted images perfectly arrange the smallest gestures with those of anonymous and general control.
Through these mediums, Stéphanie Lagarde presents a sociological reading of choreography in its most structural form, the control of bodies by the state, in short, in its most Foucauldian form. In Deployments, I was caught.
Joseph Rozenkopf
Executive Assistant
