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 behaviour of a crowd of protesters.
A word from the team
There is something striking in Deployments that makes me return to this experimental video again and again. The collage of images, feelings and well-executed ideas inspires an explosion of ideas in me. How do these images create such a reaction in me? Is the choreography
synonymous with coercion, the control of bodies by the state, finding beauty in the control of each gesture and the terror that is implied when that power is overwhelming? There is beauty in the pilots’ perfect harmony, in their codes and movements, contrasted with the coldness of the control and simulation software. These recorded, choppy and distorted images perfectly juxtapose the smallest gestures with those of anonymous general control. Through these mediums, Stéphanie Lagarde offers a sociological reading of choreography in which it is more structural, and the body is controlled by the state – in brief, in which it is more Foucauldian.
Joseph Rozenkopf
Executive Assistant
