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Articles en anglais / Notes in english

Clear, Deep, Dark – The Hawn Gallery, Dallas

J’ai le plaisir de présenter mon dernier projet, « Clear, Deep, Dark », lors de mon exposition personnelle à la Hawn Gallery, Dallas, du 26 janvier au 11 mars 2018.
Vernissage le 26 janvier à partir de 17h.

« Morel is a net artist, and as such, her works use the internet as a canvas and medium. In addition, she incorporates other media into her work, including technology, books, typography, and drawings to realize the relationships between text and image.
Morel’s projects are never insular, as most of them involve collaborations with other artists, writers, and designers. One such project initiated by Morel is the AFK project (2014-2016); a series of exhibitions, online proposals, and plastic research. The first three of these exhibitions took place at the Galerie des Étables (Bordeaux) in 2014, followed by an online conversation with Karine Lebrun and exhibits at the Quartier Centre d’art, a project center.
The acronym AFK references “away from the keyboard,” which lets people know that the user is away from the computer. This project examines objects created digitally and distributed via the internet. This transmission creates a continuous cycle whereby objects transform and shift long after their initial creation. On her website, Morel describes the purpose of this project, “The AFK project aims to explore these [digital and textual] relationships through long-term plastic research in the form of exhibitions, online proposals, conversations, and publications.

Clear, Deep, Dark features new works by Julie Morel. Morel’s work examines the transformation of objects and their versions – their original physical forms and new manifestations the objects take online.
The exhibition at the Hawn Gallery presents a series of prints and drawings that are, in fact, titles of art works located on personal hard drives, in private spaces, or they are indexes of pages found on the Darknet, all of which remain inaccessible to the audience. These titles and indexes are literally “brought to light” within the exhibition space: all of the prints and drawings are made with conductive ink and embedded with LEDs. Viewers are therefore placed in a situation where they first see the exhibition as abstract constellations of light, and only after getting closer to the work can they read the actual inscriptions. »

Emily Rueggeberg, curator.

The Hamon Gallery’s blog
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Vagues scélérates

Un petit rappel, en anglais, de pleins de choses déjà vues, ou en cours, pour le projet Clipperton.
À lire aussi ICI.

On the first page of « Islands, still boats », his introduction to the « Atlas of Remote Islands« , Olivier de Kersauson reminds that heaven and hell are often close on faraway islands, but that islands are hardly innocent in the matter.
As for examples, he quotes 2 islands: Pitcairn, and Clipperton.
That was my first acquaintance to Clipperton, in French called « île de la Passion », an island that strangely looks like a ring. Yes, maybe islands are not innocent.
Reading more on the matter of remote islands, I was not surprise to see that one island could have many names (depending on the nation discovering or claiming it), and that once again, naming something gives it an existence, a history, a context, and indexes it, immediately.
Yes words have that power, weather it is territory in the middle of the sea, or a territory of research. Art words. Science words. That is my project on Clipperton: observing similarities and differences between the terms, language used in art and science. Defining a corpus of vocabulary from both of these fields, examining the gaps and common ideas they share to produce a visual work out of it.

So as a start, it is fair to look at a few words (sometimes pictures) that came to my attention this last 2 months – subjectively or by searching the internet or libraries. Some are self explanatory, some have comments. But I  think are all related to the temporality of the Clipperton project and classified as such:
– The journey
/ waves / being at sea. Anticipation & projection
– The stay / being there working
Being back / Undulations / The output of the project.

 

  • -The journey / waves / Being at sea.

Vagues scélérates (Rogue waves)
« Les vagues scélérates » are large and spontaneous ocean surface waves that occur far out in sea, they seem not to have a single distinct cause and for the longest time where a myth. The French “scélérate” means “perfidious”, which I quite like because it defines the phenomenon in relation to others (here sailors), not just its quality.

Vija Celmins
A few years back, at the Pompidou Centre, I saw Vija Celmins‘ desolated drawings of sea, sky and desert.

  • The stay, being there.

Clipperton as a boat

 

 

This picture was taken during a weeklong workshop at the Brittany School of Art (Lorient), where I teach. The workshop, with artist Laurent Tixador (who is actually on his journey to the Kerguelen islands), was a bivouac and occupation of the school. Coming across it recently, I realise how Clippertonian this exepriment was and how Clippertonian the boat I slept on was..
In the beginning of my participating of the project, I went on GoogleEarth to see what Clipperton Island « really » looks like. What I found was more the visualisation of a still floating vessel (or a little like a cloud) than an island as such.
This floating vessel sent me back to Olivier de Kersauson’s introduction, but also, and more importantly to Michel Foucault best example of heterotopias.

Heterotopia, from a boat to heterotopia.

Being on Clipperton is also the occasion to look at this expedition as an exploration of a sorts of heterotopias. An heterotopias is a concept in human geography: a concrete space that holds imagination, reality and fantasy at the same time.
They are spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there, that are simultaneously physical and mental. (ex: space of a phone call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror).
Contrary to utopia which is an idea or an image representing a perfected version of society, Foucault uses the term heterotopias to describe a physical representation or approximation of an utopia, or a parallel space that contains undesirable bodies to make a real utopian space possible.

« First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.

There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places – places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias ».
(For whole text and various category/principle descriptions of heterotopias: foucault.info).


Collect & navigation

These 2 words could summarise both my usual computer-based practice as an artist, the general objectif on this expedition to Clipperton, and the method of my enquieries.
Coral Reef
A lot of the talk around the Clipperton project is about coral reef life. This could be one good case of study on how artists and scientists projects their works. Data and representation are probably two sides of the same coin. Where could they meet?
The Institute for Figuring offered an incredible answer a few years back, with their project “Crochet reef. » The inspiration for making crochet reef forms begins with the technique of « hyperbolic crochet » discovered in 1997 by Cornell University mathematician Dr. Daina Taimina. The Wertheim sisters adopted Dr Taimina’s techniques and elaborated upon them to develop a whole taxonomy of reef-life forms.

 


« Crochet Coral and Anemone Garden » with sea slug by Marianne Midelburg.
Photos © The IFF by Alyssa Gorelick.

Loopy « kelps », fringed « anemones », crenelated « sea slugs », and curlicued « corals » have all been modeled with these methods. The basic process for making these forms is a simple pattern or algorithm, which on its own produces a mathematically pure shape, but by varying or mutating this algorithm, endless variations and permutations of shape and form can be produced. The Crochet Reef project thus becomes an on-going evolutionary experiment in which the worldwide community of Reefers brings into being an ever-evolving crochet « tree of life. »

  • Coming back. The output of the project.

Graphical method
“La méthode graphique”, developed by Etienne-Jules Marey consist in a mechanical transcription (on paper or on a sensitive surface) of pulsations, vibrations, undulations, quakes, and shivering produced by the movement of all living bodies or moving objects. The obtained graphic is the spatial memory, which enables us to see the variation of movement during a certain time. This information can either be continuous or non-continuous.
The graphical method made possible the knowledge of a number of phenomenon in medicine, physiology, natural sciences, and physics. These recording devices have for the first time in history, a graphical representation of movement or phenomenon invisible to the eye.


Etienne-Jules Marey, walking.

To end this post, I would like to quote Georges Didi-Huberman, who, speaking about the mareysienne curve sayd that it “transforms the idea of the phenomenon and its possibility of image” ( transforme à la fois l’idée du phénomène et celle de sa possibilité d’image).

If I had a definition for what is art (I have too many) it would be very close.
A vast program J

 


Facebook as a symbolic fiction.

sondes

Facebook as a symbolic fiction /// Spectators 2.0 as the feeding material of that fiction.

So we all know that fiction is a way to structure reality. It enables me to perceive the reality and is a condition of my accepting it. And we use fiction as a way to interrogate it.
Ex : Like when an event is too traumatic or too violent, (whether it is overly happy or horribly sad), it shatters the coordinate of our reality, so you  have to fictionalized it.
If on the contrary you take away from our reality the symbolic fictions that regulate it, you can’t get hold of reality anymore… you lose ground

Facebook is for me a machine for fiction, or I should rather say, it is a machine that process events into a strange form of fiction. A kind of written (or multimedia, but not as often) fiction that is unstable and that fluctuates all the time. And a fiction without authors.
Variable & interactive narrations is often seen as a way to get to the structure of narration itself (instead of being an occurrence of a story). It reveals the archetypes and also enriches the questioning by multiplying it. But here, we are beyond variable, and as Camille noticed, we are in a totally instable fiction, that rearrange itself all the time.

So I am asking myself : if a fiction rearrange itself all the time, how can it fulfils its regulating role?

Finally, if I have enough distance and observe Facebook, it becomes a tool that allows me to perceive, not the reality behind the illusion but the reality in illusion itself. Facebook is like Wonderland: if you stay an outsider (a spectator) you can see reality “through the looking glass”, that is to say you can read reality that is contained into illusion. If you become an actor, then you are fucked! You become the thing Facebook feeds on.

Résidence Kom.post à la Chartreuse

Du 19 au 23 mars 2010, je suis en résidence invitée par Camille Louis / Kom.post à la Chartreuse – Centre National des écritures du spectacle dans le cadre des sondes.

« Internet, expression contemporaine d’un théâtre global, où tout le monde est susceptible d’être acteur, a comme conséquence la dissolution du quatrième mur du théâtre. Afin de mettre à jour la face cachée des spectacles (les spectateurs), la sonde 03#10 – Spectateur 2.0. propose de mettre en place un dispositif qui permettra de recueillir par la voie électronique (pour cette session, les spectateurs utiliseront Facebook) les regards et analyses de groupes de spectateurs (lycéens, étudiants, …) qui seront présents lors de la sonde 03#10- Chartreuse News Network Session 2. Ces données seront ensuite traitées par Kom.post »

Je participerai donc dans ce cadre à la ré-écriture dramaturgique pour Speech Space #8, une nouvelle lecture et présentation du spectacle « Speech » créé à Berlin en 2009. Pour plus d’infos sur Speech, télécharger le pdf.

speech

From 19 to the 23 march, I am in residency at la Chartreuse – Centre National des écritures du spectacle, taking part in the  sondes projects.

Internet, contemporary expression of a global theater, where everybody may be an actor, has for consequence the dissolution of the fourth wall of the theater. To update the dark side of the shows ( the spectators), the probe 03*10 – Spectator 2.0. Suggest setting up a device which will allow to collect by the electronic way (for this session, the spectators will use Facebook) the glances and the analyses of groups of spectators (high school students, students) who will be present during the Chartreuse news network. The datas will be treated by a collective of artists just after.

WJ-Spot / Vendredi 18 dec. 09 à 18h30, Maison des métallos – Paris

Julie_morel

Dans le cadre de l’entretien que j’ai réalisé pour le hors-série de « Musique Culture Digitale » :
WJ-Spots #1 new publication on « 15 years of artistic creation on the Internet »
WJ-Spots #1 nouvelle publication on « 15 ans de création artistique sur Internet »

> Télécharger l’entretien

Jeudi 17 décembre 2009 / Thursday December 17th 2009, 18h30/20h
Mezzanine de la Maison des Métallos
94, rue Jean-Pierre Timbault
75011 Paris
M° Couronne ou Parmentier

>>> Venez rencontrer les participants à l’événement WJ-SPOTS#1 et découvrir
le Hors série de MCD « 15 ans de création sur Internet »

120 pages, 44 interviews en français et en anglais + 1000 liens internet
http://www.wj-s.org/WJ-SPOTS-1-15-years-of-internet

>>> Come and meet the participants of WJPSOTS#1 and discover the Special edition of MCD on
« 15 years of artistic creation on the Internet »

120 pages, 44 interview in French and in english + 1000 weblinks

http://www.wj-s.org/WJ-SPOTS-1-15-years-of-internet
http://www.digitalmcd.com/

« I Scream » à V.O.S.T. , Imal/Nova cinéma Bruxelles, 23 mai

Je participe à V.O.S.T., avec la projection d’une version linéaire de « I scream » (un projet en collaboration avec Jocelyn Cottencin) // I am leaving Thursday for Brussels to participate to the opening of V.O.S.T., where « I scream » (a collaboration with Jocelyn Cottencin) will be screened on the 23rd.

V.O.S.T. OV/OT
http://vost.nl
BRUSSELS: 21-31 MAY09 > iMAL & NOVA

V.O.S.T. OV/OT explore les relations entre le cinéma, l’art vidéo et l’art numérique et prend pour points d’accroche le sous-titre et le doublage. Ces éléments discrets, intermédiaires et fonctionnels de l’industrie du cinéma apparaissent comme des brèches par lesquelles les artistes détournent et s’approprient les films. Cette programmation bruxelloise donne une place centrale aux questions du langage, de la transcription et de la traduction.

Avec :  Martin Arnold, Armel Barraud, Pierre Bismuth, Frederico Camara, Jordi Colomer, Christoph Draeger, Reynald Drouhin, Yan Duyvendak, Omer Fast, Xavier Gautier, Pierre Huyghe, Kuda.org, Florence Lazar, Danilo Mandic, Julie Morel & Jocelyn Cottencin, ProjectSinge, Nicolas Provost, RYbN, Anri Sala, Keith Sanborn, Antoine Schmitt, Peter Tscherkassky, Virgil Widric.
Commisaires : Alexis Chazard & Marika Dermineur.

*Exposition à iMAL, du jeudi 21 au dimanche 31 mai*
*Projections/Performances au Nova Cinema, samedi 23 mai, 20h-minuit*

/ INFOS PRATIQUES

iMAL (Center for Digital Cultures and Technology)
30 Quai des Charbonnages, 1080 Bruxelles
– Metro Comte de Flandre, Tram 51
du 21 au 31 mai 2009
Vernissage : jeudi 21 mai
contact : +32 (0)2 410 30 93 – http://www.imal.org/

Nova Cinéma
soirée V.O.S.T. OV/OT/
3 rue d’Arenberg, 1000 Bruxelles
– Metro Gare Centrale – Bourse
Samedi 23 mai, 20h-minuit
Entrée payante
contact : +32 (0)2 511 27 74 – http://www.nova-cinema.org/

Code Source

Rendez-vous du 16 mai au 14 juin 2009 / 20ème édition du Festival International de l’Affiche et du Graphisme de Chaumont.
J’y présente, dans le cadre de l’exposition « Code Source« , sur une invitation d’Étienne Mineur, le projet réalisé avec Jocelyn Cottencin « I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for an Ice Cream… »

I scream, Julie Morel & Jocelyn Cottencin, Chaumont

2009 may, 16th / june, 14th / 20th International Poster and Graphic Arts, Festival of Chaumont
During the exhibition « Code Source« , curated by Étienne Mineur, I will show the project produced with Jocelyn Cottencin « I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for an Ice Cream… »
See you there!

K3 Manifestation – quelques photos

Quelques photos du K3 que Jocelyn et moi avons prises la semaine dernière.

La manifestation a regroupé des installations, des projections, un concert, des workshops et des performances de Pierre Alferi / Jonathan Barnbrook / Etienne Bernard / Depth Affect / Pierre Di Sciullo / David Guez / Etienne Mineur / Dominique Moulon / Jean-Gabriel Périot / Antoine Schmitt / Trafik.
Je ne sais pas si ces photos peuvent témoigner de l’énergie positive qui a parcouru d’un bout à l’autre cette manifestation. Les artistes et théoriciens qui sont intervenus ont été, à tous niveaux, d’une qualité rare… Good karma people!

Winter Camp, à Amsterdam

Un Winter Camp un peu différent de celui de la résidence incident.net à Briant.. C’est celui auquel je vais participer avec Marika Dermineur (Upgrade! Paris) et Karen Dermineur (Upgrade! Dakar) du 3 au 7 mars à Amsterdam..

> Ici pour les infos

Next week, I’m going to the Institute of network Wintercamp in Amsterdam!
About Winter Camp
Winter Camp is an event, organized by the Institute of Network Cultures and will take place 3-7 March ‘09 in Amsterdam. Network Cultures Winter Camp will be a mix of presentations and work spaces with an emphasis on getting things done. It will be a four-day program of work spaces and plenary presentations, in which a dozen networks (each of which has 5-15 people) can work on their specific current topics.

> Here for more infos

K3 Manifestation / Du 16 au 21 Mars 2009, Lorient

K3 Manifestation / Recherches, workshops, conférences, installations & interventions dans l’espace public. (English Below)

Avec : Pierre Alferi / Jonathan Barnbrook / Étienne Bernard / Depth Affect / Pierre Di Sciullo / David Guez / Étienne Mineur / Dominique Moulon / Jean-Gabriel Periot / Antoine Schmitt / Trafik.
Commissariat, communication graphique : J&J (Jocelyn Cottencin & Julie Morel)

Mutation, c’est ce qui pourrait caractériser l’état du design graphique actuel, à la frontière ou plutôt dans une circulation permanente entre l’art, le design et la communication. Si le papier était à l’origine l’espace de travail privilégié, le web, les nouveaux médias (clip, téléphonies, consoles de jeux, etc.) étendent les domaines d’intervention possibles.
Mutation, c’est aussi ce qui peut définir l’environnement de l’école supérieure d’art de Lorient. Elle s’inscrit dans un espace à la fois portuaire et militaire. Dans les deux cas, beaucoup de bâtiments se trouvent actuellement désaffectés. Ces espaces posent, indirectement et directement des questions de société, d’activités, d’environnement, etc. Bon nombre des lieux étaient liés à l’activité portuaire (pêche, commerce) et aussi à des marques d’un passé militaire (la plus importante base de sous-marins allemands, ensuite utilisée par la marine nationale). Aujourd’hui pour des raisons différentes, réduction importante de la flotte de bateaux de pêche, restructuration des activités de la défense, ils sont inutilisés ou reconvertis. Ils sont les signes d’une société qui se transforme. C’est ce terrain dont va se servir «K3».

Le projet K3 n’est pas de faire une exposition de plus, mais de réunir sur un temps court (une semaine) des artistes, des graphistes et des théoriciens, qui sont au cœur de la production graphique et artistique actuelle.
Depuis l’école des beaux-arts, cet événement développe à la fois des workshops, des tables rondes et des propositions dans l’espace public, ainsi qu’un journal et un concert. Des temps d’expérimentation où les pratiques se confrontent, s’activent les unes les autres. L’événement n’est plus celui de l’objet fini (exposition) mais celui d’une pensée qui s’active durant une période donnée. Les étudiants des écoles d’arts d’Amiens, Lorient, Quimper, Brest, Rennes, Pau, Cambrai et l’ERG (Bruxelles) sont au cœur du projet, et la manifestation est aussi ouverte à un public plus large.
K3 se développe en partie sur l’ancienne base de sous-marins. L’idée n’est pas d’essayer de réhabiliter ces lieux, mais pour cet événement les «réaffecter», pendant une soirée ou sur la semaine de la manifestation. Les interventions se font sans restaurer les bâtiments, en s’installant dans ces environnements de manière précaire, comme on peut le faire pour un chantier.

K3 s’est construit sur une notion de propagation et de circulation, avec l’envie de réactiver certains lieux, de lier différentes disciplines. Le mode de fonctionnement de K3 se situe dans cette logique de connexions : que ce soit d’un médium à un autre, d’un moyen de diffusion à un autre ou d’un endroit à un autre.
K3 se développe sur trois axes : l’École Supérieure d’Art/ la zone portuaire (K3, cité de la voile) / le centre ville, mis en réseau par les lignes de bus et la mise à disposition de vélos.

K3 _ Manifestation 1 / 16 – 21 March 2009, Lorient, France
Graphic Design & Digital Week in Lorient.
Research, workshops, discussions, art interventions & installations in public space.

The opening of a Graphic Art & Design department at the Fine Art School of Lorient (Brittany) has been the motor for developing a working space related to design graphic & visual arts, and to question what it is to teach graphic design today.
It seemed natural to invite graphic designers, artists, art & design historians, to mix various mediums and practice in order to activate a space for exchanges and experimentations.

Mutation is the word that could summarise the current state of design graphic in France: a discipline that is at the border – or in constant circulation between – art, design, and communication.
If print was originally the main frame of work, the web and new medias (video, mobile phone, videogame..) now broaden and redefine this frame.
Mutation is also the word that could define the Lorient Fine Art School environment and site. The school is built on a location both industrial (fishing harbour) and military. In both case, most of the buildings around it are vacant. These abandoned spaces question more or less directly our society, activities, and environment…
A lot of them were formerly used for storage, industrial fishing, and business. They also bear the trace of a military past (the most important WWll German submarine station lays within 5mn from the school, and was still used by the French army until recently).
For many reasons, most of these buildings are left as they are, or are beginning to be restored. They are the signs of the society shift.
It is this territory that K3 is going to use.

The project is not to set up one more exhibition or festival, but on a short period of time (one week) to gather artists, graphic designers, art historians & critics that are cutting edge in the contemporary production. K3 is not an exhibition or a festival but the activation of a thought, an ongoing discussion happening within one week. From the Fine art School, workshops, discussions, art & design propositions in Public space are set up. The students are the actors of the project, and all events are open to the wide public.
K3 will mainly take place in the former Submarine station, with the will to re-affect this place without refurbish it, as if it were just a construction site.

With : Pierre Alferi / Jonathan Barnbrook / Étienne Bernard / Depth Affect / Pierre Di Sciullo / David Guez / Étienne Mineur / Dominique Moulon / Jean-Gabriel Periot / Antoine Schmitt / Trafik.

currators : Jocelyn Cottencin & Julie Morel

Oz

OZ, a internet piece for “La Revue du 104”

For a long time now, my work has questioned text in its written form, as well as translation between various languages, translatory movements, written text in general and more particularly, the moment, and conditions of its becoming an image.

When invited by Camille Louis, I was offered the possibility to create a work specifically designed for internet, the context being the first issue of “La Revue du 104”, which focused on Aby Warburg’s work and research.

When I read the 104 journal project, I immediately decided to take one of my artworks as a starting point and case study. The work in question is an interactive installation called « Sweet Dream (Toulouse-Paris) ». I selected this work for two main reasons: first, because it was a work in progress, and second, because I was using the Internet both as a link and as an interstice.

« Sweet Dream (Toulouse-Paris) » – A summary.
The installation is displayed in two different geographical spaces simultaneously:
– “Duplex Gallery” in Toulouse – France.
Two common keys from a computer keyboard are embedded in one of the walls of the gallery. These keys bear the words “Wake up” and “Sleep”. Visitors can press any of these keys at anytime.


– My apartment in Paris – France.
My bedside table lamp is switched on and off whenever a visitor presses the “Wake up” or the “Sleep” button.
For the duration of the exhibition, the installation allows visitors to control the lamp, through a computer application and a signal sent via the network.
The installation questions two different physical spaces as narrative components of reality and fiction. One is public (the gallery), one is private (my bedroom).
Even though the info card gives the audience enough clues to what is at stake (the title, the list of the various elements of the installation, and their locations), the challenge of such an installation is that there is no immediate proof that the two spaces are connected, and that there is a consequence in pushing a button.
So this piece relies on the visitor’s belief that is, for him to engage in the work, he needs to believe in it. And of course, this in itself is a hurdle, since the minimal aspect of the installation is off-putting, and it is an immaterial, empty space (the internet) that connects him or her to the other side of the installation.

OZ.
For “La revue du 104”, I really wanted to work on this empty space, but didn’t want to make this interstice visible as such. Instead, my intention was to infuse it with something new, in order to reveal it.
Searching how to affect the interstice was deliberately paved with detours, digressions, intervals, and drifts.

In his work, Aby Warburg speaks about the iconology of the in-between, where the in-between gap is a kind of revelation, and is essential to an iconology which aim is not to explain, resolve a problem or a complexity, but to exhibit it, to show it in a new light and through a new production of signs (a montage).
This way of dealing with iconology was very familiar to me, so I consciously took on this method.

Firstly, I observed the two images produced on each side of my installation.
In Toulouse, I saw a very minimal image: a white wall with two black keys. In Paris, a very classical Still Life appeared each time my lamp was switched on.
I liked the fact that the simple act of pressing a button could produce a real Still Life. And while observing this, I realized how much I favoured the “On” in the process. I told myself that the pressing of a button (ON) was producing an alternative to the usual, a kind of variation of reality, something nearly magical (OZ).
Very naturally, this led me to the “Wizard of Oz”, a film in which the concept of belief is essential. When viewing this film again, still questioning the interval, I focused on the transition between the real world and the world of OZ.
In that particular segment, Dorothy is running away from the tornado and takes shelter in the house. Knocked out by a flying window, she passes out (she falls in Oz if I may say). When she comes to, she gets up, stands by the window and looks outside. The layout of this scene is pretty obvious: she stands in front of a cinema screen, she’s become a spectator. From then on the film metaphor appears clearly: Oz is the magic of cinema, it’s the land of fiction, where reality is twisted and becomes an alternate space where illusion is more real than reality itself.
When Dorothy eventually comes out of the house, she looks around her, puzzled, and says: « Toto, I have the feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore », which can literally translated into: Toto, I have the feeling we’re not in reality anymore. From then on, the metaphor of an alternate space will unfold, telling us how much staged machinery can fascinate, how much we can believe in it, even though we know it isn’t reality.
The end of the movie holds the resolving of the magical mystery, thus speaking about the main and ambivalent belief in cinema:
When the powerful wizard appears solely as a common man, he actually has the same features as the illusionist that Dorothy met at the start of the movie, the same person that was faking reading in a crystal ball…

With these concepts in mind, I worked on my proposition for the 104. I tried to synthesize them and show how the internet could integrate them all at once.
I also realised that there was a connection between the word “ON” and the word “OZ”. That is, they were formed by the same signs. And finally that, by rotating one, you would end up with the other.
The end piece uses this relationship metaphorically, and tries with very minimal formal means such as typography, rotating movement, sound piece, and velocity implied by the users’ connection speed, to express the singular relation one has with reality when on the internet, and especially when one practices fiction on the internet.
It shows how a simple repetitive movement can take you from one universe to another.

Artiste invitée & enseignement à l’USF (University of South Florida) – USA

tampa.jpg

Je pars vendredi pour 10 jours, pour une conférence sur mon travail, pour enseigner et mettre en place des échanges avec l’Université de Floride du Sud, à Tampa, Floride.

I am leaving Friday for Tampa – Florida, for 10 days, where I am going to be presenting my work, teaching and setting up exchanges in collaboration with Julie Weitz..

Le révélateur du titre

Voilà que depuis quelque temps, j’avais envie de revoir « The Pervert Guide to Cinema » qui passait il y a quelques années sur Channel 4. J’ai finalement regardé le premier, à nouveau, hier. Et je sais maintenant pourquoi cette envie coïncidait avec les questions relatives à mes travaux récents.
Le lien se résume notamment dans cette phrase de Zizek à propos de « Matrix », qui ouvre le tout premier épisode :

« But the choice between the blue and the red pill is not a choice between illusion and reality. Of course Matrix is a machine for fiction, but these are fictions which already structure our reality. If you take away from our reality the symbolic fictions that regulate it, you loose reality itself…
I want a 3rd pill.
So what is the 3rd pill? Definitely not some kind of transcendental pill which enable a fake fast-food religious experience, but a pill that would enable me to perceive, not the reality behind the illusion but the reality in illusion itself.
If something gets too traumatic, too violent, even too filled with enjoyment, it shatters the coordinate of our reality, we have to fictionalized it. »

Et plus loin, en introduction de l’analyse de « The birds » :

« It is not enough to say that the birds are part of the natural set up of reality. It is rather as if a foreign dimension intrudes, that literally tears apart reality
We humans are not naturally born into reality. In order for us to act as normal people who interact with other people who live in the space of social reality, many things should happen, like we should be properly installed within the symbolic order and so on, when this / our proper dwelling within a symbolic space is disturbed, reality disintegrates. »

Ces 2 phrases, je crois, me donnent une clé sur la raison pour laquelle j’ai donné le titre « My Life is an Interactive Fiction » à l’expo qui va avoir lieu à la galerie Duplex.
Je me suis questionnée sur ce titre (au départ une sorte de blague à épisode avec Marie Daubert pour décrire notre vie sociale), qui m’est venu comme une intuition. Mais je savais que derrière cette intuition, il y avait quelque chose de très réel, que je n’arrivais pas à définir précisément.
Et depuis le début de la conception de cette exposition, le mot fiction – et son compagnon en ion – narration – me posaient problème. Car, malgré leur présence qui me semblait essentielle, je n’étais pas en présence d’une réflexion ou dans la construction d’une narration fictionnelle.
Oui, bien sur, ces travaux en cours parlent de la réalité contenue dans toute œuvre de fiction. Mais surtout, l’idée est plutôt de réfléchir à la connexion de ces deux modes de construction du récit, sans qu’ils deviennent des éléments constitutifs des propositions.

La lecture du catalogue « Just a Walk » et quelques discussions plus tard, je réussis à définir que ce principe d’extension, ces débordements de territoires présents dans les différents travaux que je suis en train de produire sont à la fois structures et principes révélateurs.
Ce sont soit des crossovers formels, des extensions de types référents comme dans « Still On » (références à, et extensions du travail d’un artiste – ici On Kawara – dans un autre médium et dans une autre réalité) ou encore des débordements d’espaces géographiques réels, comme dans « Sweet Dream ». Parfois aussi extensions entre postures sociales et réalité (les statuts dans facebook utilisés comme matériaux, dans « This Face of the Earth » un projet en développement : ).

1 week status

Julie is…

trying to listen to Hawkins’ Brief History of Time while cooking pumpkin, which is prouving to be quite a chalenge…
cold, her flat is freezing, paris is grey
editing video
magnetized
happy
looking through the window
at Marie’s office
listening to grandaddy
wearing her favorite jumper
back on her bike
feeling nostalgic
at a party
thinking about the futur
reflecting on the sentence « Hay un mundo más allá »…
enjoying her week-end in Paris with Math.
is thinking « yes! » and listening to Banhart
back in Paris
not just a pretty face
Oh yeaaa
woopidoowaaaaaaa!
still thinking her life is an interactive fiction
in Lyon
packing
clearly not going to
alive and kicking
working for the man
having the slowest computer on earth, but she doesn’t care because it is pretty
reading
feeling crap
out for a walk
singing
(still) working on her comp
an amateur
having diner with Joelle and David

Paul Auster, Humpty Dumpty & the Power of Words

– The initials HD in the name Henry Dark refer to Humpty Dumpty.
– Who?
– Humpty Dumpty. You know who I mean. The egg.
– As in « Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall? »
– Exactly.
– I don’t understand.
– Humpty Dumpty: the purest embodiment of the human condition. Listen carefully sir. What is an egg? Is it that which has not yet been born. A paradox, is it not? For how can Humpty Dumpty be alive if he has not been norn? And yet, he is alive – make no mistake. We know that because he can speak. More than that, he is a philosopher of language. « When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less. The question is, said Alice, whether you CAN make words mean so different things. The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master – that’s all. »
– Lewis Carroll.
– Through the Looking Glass, chapter six.
– Interesting.
It’s more than interesting, sir. It’s crutial. listen carefully, and perhaps you will learn something. In his little speech to Alice, Humpty Dumpty sketches the futur of human hopes and gives the clue to our salvation: to become master of the words we speak, to make language answer our needs, Humpty Dumpty was a prophet, a man who spoke truths the world was not ready for.
– A man?
– Excuse me. A slip of tongue. I mean an egg. But the slip is instructive and helps to prove my point. For all men are eggs, in a manner of speaking. We exist, but we have not yet achieved the form that is our destiny. We are pure potential, an example of the not yet arrived. For man is a fallen creature – we know that from Genesis. Humpty Dumpty is also a fallen creature. He falls from his wall, and no one can put him back together again – neither the king, nor his horses, nor his men. But that is what we must all now strive to do. It is our duty as human beings: to put the egg back together again. For each of us, sir, is Humpty Dumpty. And to help him is to help ourselves.
– A convincing argument.
– It’s impossible to find a flaw in it.
– No cracks in the egg.
– Exaclty.
– And, at the same time, the origin of Henry Dark.

Paul Auster, City of Glass, Chapter 9.

Icebergs, split screens et dérive identitaire

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Autre référence, Marie me fait découvrir le travail “True North”, d’Isaac Julien, un travail de ré-interprétation méditatif de l’aventure au grand nord de l’explorateur Matthew Henson. Le travail est un mélange de moments kitchs (à voir la thématique, je doute que ce soit voulu ?) et sublimes, un montage fragmenté grâce au split screens, qui me fait penser aux expérimentations que j’avais faites à Québec… À l’inverse de ce que nous voulons faire apparaître (la dérive des glaces), cette vidéo révèle la dérive des personnages face à l’immobilité des paysages glacés.

“True North, is meditative and comprises reflective images of the sublime, uses the landscape as a key location and theme. Loosely inspired by the story of the black American explorer, Matthew Henson (1866-1955) who accompanied Robert Peary and was one of the first people to reach the North Pole, later writing an account of his experience. In this fragmented narrative, Julien contemplates on ideas and histories of the hierarchical as well as in the struggling figure we find a succinct metaphor of endless traversing, symbolising the voyage of the modern that has to be experienced by others. The installation offers a fascinating new visual reading of space and time and its relation to counter histories. Here, the sublime moment of cognition of the image is presented to the mind which, in turn, can only comprehend the absolute of magnitude which itself defies conceptualisation. The installation contests binaries which are present in many notations of the expedition and of adventure that clutter the history of discovery- here reason, order and stability are replaced by irrational meanderings, symbolic gestures from shamanistic tropes and the constant seeping inertia of the ice.

> http://www.isaacjulien.com

Générateur Blanc, en ligne – The White Generator is online

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> Générateur de textes + fuseaux horaires : générateur blanc // English bellow

Ce projet a été produit en résidence à la Chambre Blanche, Québec, et a bénéficié de l’aide financière du Consulat général de France à Québec.

Un générateur de textes en ligne, qui se sert de la position dans le temps (fuseau horaire) de l’internaute et de la Chambre Blanche pour être lue.
« Durant sa résidence l’artiste décrit son séjour en écrivant de façon continue sur son ordinateur. Un générateur de textes, se servant de la position dans le temps de la Chambre Blanche pour être lu, produit du nouveau texte et virtualise ainsi une situation réelle. Pour l’internaute, la lisibilité de la page dépend de la position géographique et de l’heure à laquelle il se connecte. La couleur du fond de la page correspond au fuseau horaire de la Chambre Blanche alors que la couleur du texte correspond au fuseau horaire de la personne connectée. Ce projet met l’accent sur la lisibilité liée à la perte de repères géographiques sur Internet. »

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> http://incident.net/works/generateurblanc

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> Texts + Timezones : The White Generator

The White Generator is a project produced during an art in residence at “La Chambre Blanche” Art Center in Québec.
Financial support by the French Consulate in Quebec, Canada.

The White Generator is a texts generator, which produces sentences from original texts written during the 6 weeks of the residency. Those texts describe as thoughtfully as possible the place of production of the work.
The project focuses on the legibility of information depending on the time zones (and Universal Standard Time) of the connected person:
The color of the background of the page depends on the timezone of the Chambre Blanche server, whereas the color of the text depends on the timezone of connected person.

Chambre horaire / Time Zones Room

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Hier soir, après avoir décrit la position des différents groupes de meubles dans ma chambre (que j’ai appelé îlots), je me suis dit que j’allais tracer les différentes trajectoires dans cet espace pendant une journée. Puis je me suis dit que je pourrais y superposer les fuseaux horaires, comme si ma chambre était la Terre (c’est un peu ma petite planète…) et par analogie, voir quels pays j’aurai visités. Je risque d’être un peu jetlag à la fin de la journée… : )
Ensuite je suis me décidée, d’ici la fin de l’année, à refaire ce voyage en grandeur nature, et donc d’acheter un billet d’avion ouvert (environ 2500 euros) pour aller dans tous les aéroports correspondants à tous les arrêts dans ma chambre.

Yesterday night, after describing the different clusters of furniture in my room (I called them islands), I decided it could be interesting to trace my various trajectories in this space during one day. Then I realized I could superimpose the time zones to the drawing, as if my room was the earth (in fact it has been my « world » for a little while now) and then see what countries I was thus visiting… I contemplated the fact that I would be a little jetlagged at the end of the day….
Finally I decided, before the end of this year, to actually redo those journeys in real space. I would need to buy an open ticket (between 12 to 20 destinations) to visit all the airports corresponding to all the stops in my room that day…

Hidrazone, UK

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Julie Morel. Commissionnée par Hidrazone, UK, pour un projet d’art numérique.
Julie Morel. Commissioned by Hidrazone, UK, to produce a digital art project.

>http://hidrazone.com/artists/julie_morel/julie_morel.html

HIDRAZONE is a space for practitioners and writers in the field of digital and interactive arts. We seek to encourage practical and theoretical research into a wide variety of digital art (new media art) such as net art, interactive art, software art, digital painting, and computational video. Our main goal is to provide a forum for encouraging aesthetic quality in digital and interactive arts practice, as well as promoting critical discourse and theoretical commentary in this emerging field.

The Real Thing 1

The first day I arrived at the house, I was tired by my bus journey and went to bed early…
I was woken up at 3 o’clock in the morning by the flatmates I had not met: they banged on my door and i soon discovered that they were drunk. One was even more plastered and louder than the other, he was also the cutest. I decided not to hold grudges.
The next morning, i discovered he had a girlfriend,a fat and jolly pimpelled girl…
I decided he wasn’t that cute.

Sometimes, you need to let go.

The Real Thing 2

One night, we went dancing in Moseley, in a village near Edgbaston. I was really please, it was going to be a salsa night.
But once we arrived there, it seems I was the only one to be happy about it. No one was dancing… John gave me the explaination:
« we are not drunk enough ».

The Real Thing 5

There was that guy living in my house. Dave. He was the first guy I got chatty with and we got along well. One night the whole house went out, in a strange bar, with loads of gothic decorations on the walls. Students from the campus were hanging there. I found the place awful.
As the night went on, Dave became more and more aggressive around me. I thought it was because he was drunk as he was in fact, and tried to avoid him. Then suddenly he said to me his breath full of alcohol « you look like Snow White ». I replied, « Well you make me think of Mister Bean ».
He was never nice to me after that.
He really liked me and hated me at the same time, and I realized long after that my being French was partly the reason.

A few months after there was an exhibition at the something factory and his paintings were on display. I was surprised of how cool they were.
It made me proud not to be his friend.

The Real Thing 6

There was that guy living in my house. Paul. A boy from Liverpool who was trying to D-jay during the night and was sleeping during the day, or he would lie on the couch in the ground floor kitchen-living room, making the kitchen smell of his unwashed clothes. He was always eating cereals and they would get stuck into his brown teeth.
One morning I went into the bathroom. It was early and everybody was asleep. It seems they didn’t have the ability to get up before 10, so I had the big house all for myself.
Well that morning the bathtub and sink were covered in some brown grease, like from a car or something. When I came back at night it was still like this and I was told that Paul had done the mess and was not ready to do the cleaning up.

I waited a couple of days before cleaning the bathroom, using his toothbrush. He was not pleased and called me a bitch.