The fourth in a series of twelve annual events taking place on December 12 from noon to midnight EST (9-9 PST, 11-11 CST, 17-05 GMT, 18-06 CET, 1-13 CST, 2-14 KST).
Each year the event moves through each word of the 12-word phrase you and I are water earth fire air of life and death and activates the word of the year in myriad ways.
This year the word is ‘Are’, consequently the focus will be on plurals: multiplicities leading to infinities, polymorphs and polyglots, surrounded sounds, layers upon layers, etceteras upon etceteras. New this year is the inclusion of a subtitle: (Sommes Sonnes), this translates from the French simply to ‘are sounds’. Also new this year, Myriam Lambert and Alexandre St-Onge are joining the project on the curatorial side.
The first year it started with ‘You’, then in 2021 ‘And’ came to connect you to anything and everything, and last year that point of connection was ‘I’—the porous one, the sole collective. This year with ‘Are’ action enters the fray. What are you and I to do? Well, let’s begin with being, however tenuous or contentious that may be. ‘Are’ points to fact, to status, but it also suggests question marks, suggests that the known might not be as it seems.
‘One’ is part of the series that runs alongside the ‘You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death’ series of 12 events over 12 years. ‘One’ is the 4th in the series that has its own 12-word sentence: ‘Different From The One Place Time Mood Mindset You Are In Now.’
The single-take recordings will be stretched from 12 to 15 minutes (à la Warhol). Eight of the resulting 15 minutes will be presented in groups of four at for the first and last hours of the 12 hour event. The remaining four will be presented at the end of hours 7, 8, 9, and 10.
ARE (SOMMES SONNES) HOUR 2 (11 MST, 12 CST, 13 EST, 18 GMT/WET, 19 CET, 20 EET)
Crónica Presents Miguel Carvalhais, Rodrigo Carvalho, Pedro Tudela, Patrícia Viana de Almeida
@C
Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais collaborate as @c since 2000. They publish and perform extensively, and work on sound installations, often collaborating with other artists in a practice marked by radical experimentation. In 2003 they established Crónica, a label they still run. In this performance they are accompanied by Rodrigo Carvalho on light design, programming and performance, and Patrícia Viana de Almeida, on video and cinematography.
ARE (SOMMES SONNES) HOUR 3 (12 MST, 13 CST, 14 EST, 19 GMT/WET, 20 CET, 21 EET)
Performing at NAISA in person and in a space designed and built by the artist within a social perpetual virtual world, she uses her weaving loom as an instrument of sound. Using contact microphones and effects pedals she creates music that evokes histories past and future.
ARE (SOMMES SONNES) HOUR 4 (13 MST, 14 CST, 14 EST, 20 GMT/WET, 21 CET, 22 EET)
It’s the cloud, it’s the preferences. They are your predictions. They come from possible search terms that relate to what you are looking for and what other people have already searched for. It’s a kind of seer. Surfing the Web requires a particularly intensive form of mental multitasking. In addition to flooding our working memory with information, the juggling imposes what neurologists call “switching costs” on our cognition. As Maggie Jackson explains in Distracted, her book on multitasking, “the brain takes time to switch targets, remember the rules necessary for the new task, and block out the cognitive interference of the still-living activity that was occupying it.” So we ask the internet to keep interrupting us, in ever more numerous and varied ways.
Joint Venture by Milo Thesiger-Meacham
A tale of discovery told from the combined perspectives of multiple joints on the human body.
ARE (SOMMES SONNES) HOUR 5 (14 MST, 15 CST, 14 EST, 21 GMT/WET, 22 CET, 23 EET)
This solo performance is fundamentally based on the principle of chance. The artist deploys a device that simultaneously broadcasts excerpts from films sourced from the Spira and Vidéo Femmes catalogues. The device handles the switching, mixing, and analog effects, orchestrating a blend of images and sounds aimed at unveiling unexpected contrasts or synchronicities. At the heart of this performance is the exploration of the unpredictable. Chance determines the progression of each sequence. The artist doesn’t directly control the displayed images, but adapts his actions based on the randomly generated selections. This artistic approach highlights the creativity that can spring from the meeting of chaos and structure. The synthesis produced by the performance stands as a kind of collective work, straddling the line between cinema and video performance, offering a unique experience that celebrates the art of randomness and spontaneous creation.
ARE (SOMMES SONNES) HOUR 7 (16 MST, 17 CST, 14 EST, 23 GMT/WET, 24 CET, 00 EET)
What forges Being, in the singular and plural? A mass of encounters between people, situations, places, contexts, things, images, sounds… magnetic contacts between ourselves and everything else. With this performance, I want to play with this point of contact, this fine line that makes us, that connects us to these encounters. I therefore propose 58 minutes of context. In french, ‘Are’ and ‘Being’ are homonyms = Être.
ARE (SOMMES SONNES) HOUR 9 (18 MST, 19 CST, 14 EST, 01 GMT/WET, 01 CET, 02 EET)
Université Laval Presents Agence Augmentée Collective with Lé, Max St-Pierre, and Juan David Molina Velasco
*LIVE*
Agence Augmentée
Agence Augmentée est un projet de recherche-création portant sur l’émergence de savoirs artistiques à travers la saisie en actes de méthodes ou de corpus artistiques ainsi que d’ouvrages théoriques afin d’explorer diverses formes d’agentivité. Cette notion se définit comme la capacité d’action d’une entité qui lui permet de transformer ou d’affecter le monde, les choses et les êtres. Elle est examinée non pas en tant qu’action transformatrice non unilatérale sur la réalité et la pluralité des entités la constituant, mais en observant si les interactions entre celles-ci peuvent générer un matériau conceptuel ou plastique inédit qui excède les agents impliqués. Pour cette itération, Alexandre St-Onge a invité quatre artistes-chercheur.e.s à aborder ces questions de façon singulière.
ARE (SOMMES SONNES) HOUR 10 (19 MST, 20 CST, 14 EST, 02 GMT/WET, 02 CET, 03 EET)
Three works: Poker, Éternuité (Forever Sneeze), Oreiller (Pillow Talk)/Pillow Talk (Oreiller). All three have the head in common. All involve several participants.
Two hands holding a variety of microphones scrape, scratch, pinch and poke eleven participants poker-faced in front of the camera. Participants: Katie Bethune-Leamen, crys cole, Michel F. Côté, Anni Lawrence, André Éric Létourneau, Jonathan Parant, Leila Pourtavaf, Sam Shalabi, Marie-Douce St-Jacques, Alexandre St-Onge, Roger Tellier-Craig. Remixed and reedited in 2023.
The sneeze as an attempt to become eternal. Participants: Sally Baydala, Erica Brisson, Eryn Foster, Stephanie Khoury, Angus Leech, Wm Leler, Demian Petryshyn, Naomi Potter, Don Pyle, Duncan Speakman, Barbara Sutherland, Pandora Syperek, Janice Wu. Remixed and reedited in 2023.
