20:00 Mákó Mári (30”)
20:45 Martin Messier (30”)
On stage, Martin Messier interacts with two aluminum panels with multiple patches whose inputs and outputs are interconnected.
The sound and light composition emerges through a continuous movement of plugging and unplugging between the panels – the possibilities are endless. By his performative gestures, Martin improvises audiovisual configurations that are similar but never exactly the same.
Variations between the ambient electromagnetic flow and the connections made by the artist generate an effect of fluctuation from one performance to the next – a fluctuation that constitutes the constant of the work.
With FIELD, Messier gives material form to this otherwise inaudible, invisible flow. He becomes the operator through whom the work is activated and brought into the real world.
A veritable mimesis of electromagnetic current, the visual aspect can plunge the audience into a hypnotic state: the omnipresent imperceptible power that surrounds us is stripped of it mystery here and finally seems accessible to us.
FIELD speaks to the invisible forces around us: their ascendancy and their interdependence.
Although they interact at an absolutely indiscernible level, they underlie our gestures and movements and carry us in a way.
In this sense, the work and the artist arrive together at an exchange that determinees the conditions of the visual and sound elements of the performance: blinding lightning and electricity conduction.
Concept, audiovisual composition, programming and performance
Martin Messier
Interface
Thomas Payette
Technical design
Thomas Payette, Maxime Bouchard, Frédérique Folly
Production
14 lieux
MARTIN MESSIER
For more than 15 years, the artist Martin Messier has created artworks in which sound art meets light, robotic and video. In the form of performances and installations, these works place the body front and center.
After studying composition at l’Université de Montréal, Martin began an experimental sound practice that integrated video images. He quickly developed performative audiovisual apparatuses that brought everyday objects and the sound potential of their various materials to the stage. A number of collaborative projects were carried out over the years, notably with artists Nicolas Bernier, Caroline Laurin-Beaucage, Anne Thériault, and Jacques Poulin-Denis. Martin Messier’s latest works include Innervision (2019), a monumental outdoor project performed by 60 dancers, the audiovisual performance Echo Chamber, the choreographic performance Con Sordina, and the light and sound performance Elusive Matter.
Presented in some 50 countries, Martin Messier’s productions have received several prizes and nominations: a special mention at Prix Ars Electronica in 2010 listed for a Prix Opus in 2012 Best Experimental Short Film at the Lausanne Underground Film Festival in 2013 the Canada Council’s Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award in 2014; a special mention by the jury at the 2015 Japan Media Awards; the World OMOSIROI Award in Japan in 2018; and in 2021, the 2nd Prize at Athens Digital Arts Festival.
In 2010, he established 14 lieux, a company dedicated to producing performative and installative artworks, and has been its general and artistic director since then.
He lives and works in Montreal.
ARTISTIC APPROACH
Exploring links between sound and material both living and inert, Martin Messier’s sound works are given tangible form in complex performative electromechanical and digital devices. He is interested in the motifs of the visible versus the invisible, presence versus absence, and the potential of metamorphosis through the transformation of objects and the manifestation of the imperceptible properties they possess.
Placing the body front and centre, his works – whether they are installations, performative pieces, or more directly choreographic – express a recurrent commitment to an acknowledged physicality – that of the performers, the artistic collaborators, and the artist himself. Underpinning his choreographic works is the desire to overturn the hierarchical relationship that exists between music, lighting, scenography, and dance, to allow sound to drive the movement (Hit and Fall, Derrière le rideau, Soak, Corps mort).
Martin Messier’s objects have a life of their own. He gives voice to the material by endowing it with movements and sound waves. His works involving invented machines (La chambre des machines, Machine_Variation) or audiovisual devices (Sewing Machine Orchestra, Projectors, Boîte noire, Field, Impulse) are always guided by a powerful principle of synchronicity between sound and image. Developing this link consistently and repeatedly, Martin becomes the motor of the creative process.
Light is also a powerful element in Martin Messier’s works. Crossing through the space of the screen and that of the seating area, light acts as a visual support that reveals the invisible and the imperceptible. Treated as a material like everything else, light is a participant in a holistic approach on the cutting edge of transdisciplinarity.
https://martinmessier.art/
