With its works linked to technology and its ever-renewed deployment, with components of limited lifespan and often driven by energy-consuming consumption, it seems that the media arts can never be “ecological”. The advent of artificial intelligence within this artistic field, coupled with the actions taken to integrate the artist into the growth-oriented economy of cultural industries, only reinforces this doubt. At a time when our societies are approaching the point of environmental non-return, an ecological positioning is also essential for all players in the media arts sector.
While this position is self-evident, its translation into theory and practice obviously raises several questions and many problems. First of all, what would an “ecological” artistic practice in the field of media arts mean? What would be the consequences on its aesthetics, the technological imagination of its proposals and on its very definition? Are there any collective measures that the community could put in place? Should it have a Pacte de la transition? If so, would this mean limiting or even rejecting non-ecological artistic projects in the future? Would it slow down the artist’s creation or just make it more responsible? In short, and this is the great challenge posed by the current urgency, how can we reconcile artistic practice, technology and ecology in media arts from now on?
Guests:
_Julie Alary Lavallée, doctoral student in art history at the Université de Montréal and general coordinator of the Studio XX artist centre whose next program entitled Slow tech proposes to take a “technocritical step back” focused on the environment, interactions and temporalities;
_musician, thinker and gallery technician Stephen Beaupré, commissar of Permaculture (titre refusé) , a serie of events presented last fall at Oboro to think about the anthropocene, global warming and how the artistic community can address these issues;
_Alice Jarry is an artist, researcher and educator who specializes in site-specific responsive works, socio-environmental design, digital arts, tangible media, and community-oriented projects.Her current research focuses on residual matter and recycling/upcycling processes for glass (Dust, 2018);
_art historian interested in ecological art to which she devoted her doctorate, Bénédicte Ramade is a lecturer at the Université de Montréal and the Université du Québec à Montréal, an art critic and independent curator.
CQAM wishes to thank Studio XX for its collaboration!
Date: Thursday, May 2, 2019
Cost: Free for Studio XX’ members, $5 for CQAM members, non-members $10
Time: Doors at 9am, 9:30am to 11:30am
Location: Studio XX, 4001 Berri Street, 2nd Floor, Montreal
Registration period: Until May 1th , 2019
Info : info@cqam.org
