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Between 1997 and 2001, André Éric Létourneau was a collaborator, executive producer and radio announcer for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). He has also served as a professor of Theory of Multimedia, Communication Phenomena Analysis, Art History and Conception of Transmedia Events at various colleges and universities. In 2001, along with the Chinese artists and curators [[Shu Yang]] and [[Chen Jin]], he took part of the [[Open Arts Festival]], the first series of Performance Art Festivals officially organised in the Republic of China.<ref> Alors, la Chine ?, exhibition catalog, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003 </ref>
Between 1997 and 2001, André Éric Létourneau was a collaborator, executive producer and radio announcer for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). He has also served as a professor of Theory of Multimedia, Communication Phenomena Analysis, Art History and Conception of Transmedia Events at various colleges and universities. In 2001, along with the Chinese artists and curators [[Shu Yang]] and [[Chen Jin]], he took part of the [[Open Arts Festival]], the first series of Performance Art Festivals officially organised in the Republic of China.<ref> Alors, la Chine ?, exhibition catalog, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003 </ref>


Since the end of the 1980s, Létourneau has also been involved in cultural and political journalism in the written press and for various public and community media. He continues to produce radio
Since the end of the 1980s, Létourneau has also been involved in cultural and [[political journalism]] in the written press and for various public and community media. He continues to produce radio
documentaries about artists, including [[Zhu Yu]], [[The Residents]], [[Genesis P-Orridge]], [[Willem de Ridder]], [[Jose Luis Castillejo]], [[Juan Hidalgo]], [[Robert Ashley]], [[Christian Vanderborgh]], [[Stelarc]], [[Cosey Fanni Tutti]], Angéline Neveu, [[Charlemagne Palestine]], [[Eduardo Kac]], [[Michel Chevalier]], [[Esther Ferrer]], [[Denys Tremblay]], [[Julien Blaine]], [[Jac Berrocal]] , [[Richie Hawtin]], [[I Nyoman Rembang]], and [[I Wayan Suweca]]. <ref>CBC radio, Le Navire Night, rencontres, www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres.html , 1999</ref>
documentaries about artists, including [[Zhu Yu]], [[The Residents]], [[Genesis P-Orridge]], [[Willem de Ridder]], [[Jose Luis Castillejo]], [[Juan Hidalgo]], [[Robert Ashley]], [[Christian Vanderborgh]], [[Stelarc]], [[Cosey Fanni Tutti]], Angéline Neveu, [[Charlemagne Palestine]], [[Eduardo Kac]], [[Michel Chevalier]], [[Esther Ferrer]], [[Denys Tremblay]], [[Julien Blaine]], [[Jac Berrocal]] , [[Richie Hawtin]], [[I Nyoman Rembang]], and [[I Wayan Suweca]]. <ref>CBC radio, Le Navire Night, rencontres, www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres.html , 1999</ref>


Revision as of 05:03, 28 February 2008

André Éric Létourneau

André Éric Létourneau (b. September 25, 1967) is a French Canadian media and transmedia artist, author, musician, composer, producer and curator based primarily in Montreal, Canada. He uses several pseudonyms, most notably Benjamin Muon and algojo)(algojo. [1] His work has been associated with the development of action art, radio drama, BioArt, process art, photography, sound poetry and experimental music. [2] Since the 1980s, Létourneau has presented intermedia works in international performance art festivals, galleries and museums such as the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre (1992), the The James H.W. Thompson Foundation in Bangkok (one of Thailand's National Museums, 2006) and at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum (as part of Les Escales Improbables in Montréal, 2007). In 2006, he was one of the artists selected to represent Canada at the XVth Biennale de Paris under a pseudonym.[3]

Létourneau produced several radio art projects and music compositions for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC, Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster). In 1999, he was commissioned by the CBC to create an Hörspiel broadcasted from 10 to 12 PM on the night of December 31 for the passage to the new millennium. The Hörspeil "Standard III" (2002), produced by the CBC under a program developed and curated by Mario Gauthier and Hélène Prévost, was also commissioned for broadcast the night of Easter Sunday in 2003[4]. He received several grants and awards including grants from the Artists and Community Collaboration Program (ACCP) and the Inter-Arts Program of the Canada Council for the Arts and from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for his artistic and curatorial work.

Experimental music and radio-art

As a music composer and radio artist, Létourneau's works are influenced by the principle of indeterminacy in music, chance music, intuitive music, noise music, sound poetry, text-sound composition, spectral music, non-standard use of musical instruments, traditional music from different cultures (especially Balinese gamelan) and by the use of different systems of tuning involving the use of microtones. He also regularly constructs his own instruments and custom-built electronics.

He qualifies most of his works as site-specific (pieces to be performed or installed in a precise place) but also "time-specific" (pieces to be performed at specific time of the day or of the year).[5]. Since 1999, Létourneau has also involved himself with music composition and interpretation and as the creator of custom-made instruments which are used in his work with the sound performance trio mineminemine along with intermedia artists Magali Babin and Alexandre Saint-Onge. [6] The group regularly presents mineminemine's work in America and Europe.

Since the mid-eighties, Létourneau's also performed works from other experimental music composers such as Alvin Lucier, Juan Hidalgo, John Cage and I Wayan Suweca. In 2000, he conducted a radio performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the Korean composer Nam June Paik for the CBC radio. As an executive producer for the CBC radio, Létourneau also produced concert recordings of musicians and sound-performance artists such as Richard H. Kirk, Jean Dupuy, Thomas Buckner, Johanne Hétu, Brandon Labelle, Christof Migone, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Serge Pey, Sam Shalabi, Alexandre Saint-Onge, Roger Tellier-Craig and Joachim Montessuis.

Art (manoeuvers, site-specific actions, contextual art and transmedia works)

André Éric Létourneau's cultural manoeuvers work involves many mediums that are used simultaneously along with practices from other fields (such as science, sociology, psychology, community works, etc). It may be difficult to categorize his work as much as of the practique by this artist involves operating directly within the social fabric while involving different social and ontological phenomena. Létourneau works primarily with the creation of situations based on cultural and physical environmental processes. His actions are often structured so as to avoid the creation of objects or material products. These traces in reality are primarily works where the confusion between art and life emerges as the salient feature. While operating within different institutions, the works of André Éric Létourneau often raise the concepts of power and consensus within the community.

Interested by the idea that art can be used to question the effects of social conditioning, Létourneau adapts his materials and methods of production according to the environmental requirements of each project.[7] For example, the use of correspondences, legal agreements, CD publishing and radio broadcasts in his 2005 piece "Standard III". Létourneau also used other mediums such as ; integration of sign language and lip readings in various popular productions for television and Hollywood Cinema in "Biblical Consequences of the Representations" (2007-2010); photography, pyschogeographic factors and individual conversations in "Standard II" (2001 - present); radioactive material process in a particle accelerator at the Université Laval, aircraft and video in 1997's "3 9 30," [8] ; anagrams and floating custom built sound modules in "Sonata for the Wolf" from 2001. "Létourneau is calling upon the structures that have and do produce us, our notions of nationality and belonging, and he is using the self same tools that gave rise to our present day status". [9] Some Létourneau works are also raising issues about sex and human trafficking. These works were presented in collaboration with different NGO's, community groups and human rights associations in Canada.

Since October 2001, the artistic work of Éric Létourneau has been centered around a series of meeting-manoeuvers with citizens around the world. These manoeuvres take place in the United States, Canada, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Italy, Germany and France.

Collaborations

André Éric Létourneau collaborated frequently with worked with many performance artists to create performances, video and installations, among them Jean Dupuy (a French artist associated with the Fluxus group), John Berndt, Christof Migone[10], Jocelyn Robert, Benoît Fauteux, Arahmaiani, the Chinese performance artist Zhu Yu and the Estonian group Non Grata.

As a musician, he collaborated with other composers such as Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect), Roger Tellier Craig (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Et Sans), Joëlle Léandre, Alexander McSween, Michel Smith (Orchestre Vélo Karel), Helena Espvall-Santoleri, Jackie Blake, Dan Breen, Neil Wiernik (a.k.a. NAW), Réjean Beaucage, Johanne Chagnon, Marina Surbanovic, Suzanne Joly and Jocelyne Gingras.

Other activities

Between 1997 and 2001, André Éric Létourneau was a collaborator, executive producer and radio announcer for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). He has also served as a professor of Theory of Multimedia, Communication Phenomena Analysis, Art History and Conception of Transmedia Events at various colleges and universities. In 2001, along with the Chinese artists and curators Shu Yang and Chen Jin, he took part of the Open Arts Festival, the first series of Performance Art Festivals officially organised in the Republic of China.[11]

Since the end of the 1980s, Létourneau has also been involved in cultural and political journalism in the written press and for various public and community media. He continues to produce radio documentaries about artists, including Zhu Yu, The Residents, Genesis P-Orridge, Willem de Ridder, Jose Luis Castillejo, Juan Hidalgo, Robert Ashley, Christian Vanderborgh, Stelarc, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Angéline Neveu, Charlemagne Palestine, Eduardo Kac, Michel Chevalier, Esther Ferrer, Denys Tremblay, Julien Blaine, Jac Berrocal , Richie Hawtin, I Nyoman Rembang, and I Wayan Suweca. [12]

Letourneau published articles in many art magazines such as Inter, Parallélogramme, Esse, and The Thing, and essays in many performance-art festival catalogs (such as Rencontres Internationales d'art performance de Québec, Diverse Universe IV / Non Grata and on the CBC Web site).

Awards and biennales

In 1997, André Éric Létourneau received the Media Art Award from the Pépinières Européennes. A book about his work P/ACT, was published by the Academy of Fine Arts in Enschede, the Netherlands. [13] Since 1999, he received several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and from several private foundations. At the opening of the XVe Biennale de Paris in 2008, it appointed director Mr Alexandre Gurita, declared about Letourneau's work : "La démarche d'andré Eric Letourneau s'inscrit dans le spectre de l'invisibilité opérante, qui constitue l'axe de l'économie de l'immatériel et de la connaisance vers lesquelles nos sociétés évoluent. Dans sa pratique, le temps de l'art se fait avoir par le temps réel." (The work of André Éric Létourneau is created within the spectrum/ghost of the principle of operative invisibility, which is the axis of the dematerialized world we are now living in - because of its ways of storing knowledge and memory. In his art, the time of art is snatched by the time of reality.")[14]

Residencies

  • 1997 - AKI, ArtEZ academie voor beeldende kunsten Enschede, The Netherlands
  • 2002 - Les ateliers convertibles, Joliette, Québec, Canada
  • 2006 - Le Lobe, Chicoutimi, Québec Canada, Canada
  • 2007 - Agence TOPO, Montréal, Québec, Canada
  • 2008 - La Générale, Sèvres, Ile-de-France
  • 2008 - Les ateliers convertibles, Saint-Jean de Matta, Québec, Canada

Writings

  • 2007 - Non Grata : The Pleasure of Intimacy, (introduction for the Non Grata Anthology) in Non Grata II, Non Grata Academy, Tallinn, Estonia (in English and Estonian)
  • 2007 - Non Grata in The Sirp, Tallinn, Estonia (in Estonian)
  • 2007 - Saint-Thomas l'Imposteur, XVe biennale de Paris, Éditions Biennale de Paris, France
  • 2002 - Mon truc à poil de Josée Fafard, Exhibition documentation, B312 Gallery, Montreal (in French)
  • 2001 - Une beauté suspecte quant à sa nature légale?, in ESSE#43,, Montréal, (in French)
  • 2000 - L’accident comme thésaurisation, in Inter Magazine, "L’accident”. Ed. Interventions (in French)
  • 2000 - Réflexions shématiques, essay, in ESSE, "Dossier performance"
  • 1999 - Robert Ashley, oralité - auralité, entrevue et essai, web site of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire (in French)
  • 1995 - La voix désincarnée et la «cybercarnation» (…), essay, in Inter Magazine #64 "Art et électronique". Ed. Interventions
  • 1995 - Première rencontre d'art performance de Québec, catalog of the event, Ed. Interventions, Québec
  • 1995 - Joseph Ng ou les fins de la censure à postériori / The Necessary Stage : pour une restructuration d’une éthique de la parole, articles sur la pratique de l’art performance à Singapour In. Inter Magazine #62, Ed. Interventions
  • 1994 - «Kreasi baru » outil séculaire des idéologies. (essai sur la situation de l’art contemporain dans la société indonésienne) In. Inter magazine #59. Ed. Interventions, Québec, No. 59
  • 1993 - Actions radiophoniques, In. Inter Magazine, No.55\56, Edition Interventions, Québec.
  • 1991 - L’empire des ondes (médias et nouvelle radiophonie) , A World of Waves (translated by Jean-Luc Svoboda) in Parallélogramme, Vol.16, No. 4, ANNPAC, Toronto, Canada

Discography

- lys lys lys tigrés tigrés tigrés, (with mineminemine), CD Canada, (to be published in July 2008)
- Standard III, Diffusion système minuit, Canada, 2CD, 2008
- Gingles et génériques (compilation with Les frères senseurs), CD, PPT, Paris, 2008
- Rappel/L'art téléphonique (compilation), CD, Ohm/Avtar no 006, Québec, Canada, 1996
- Radius 4 (compilation), What next?Recordings, CD, USA 1996
- 1,000,033e anniversaire de l'art sur CD, par Inter/Le Lieu, Québec, Canada, 1996
- Ding dong Deluxe (compilation), CD, Ohm/Avtar, Québec, Canada, 1994

References

Books

  • L'artiste enterprise, Éditions de la Sorbonne, Université de Paris, 2008
  • Biennale de Paris, XV, Éditions de la Biennale de Paris, Paris, 2007
  • P/Act, catalogue de l'exposition d'Éric Létourneau et de Sandra Johnston. M17, Academy of Fine Arts AKI, Enschede, Hollande, 1997, 60 pages.
  • Joly, Suzanne (Ed.), Le petit Joliette illustré, Les ateliers convertibles, Joliette, 2003
  • Lander, Dan, A Selected survey or Radio Art in Canada 1967-1992, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Center for the Arts, 1992. (répertoire des oeuvres radiophoniques de 1986 à 1992).

Articles in contemporary arts magazines

  • Bouchard, Gilbert, A., An artistic challenge, Edmonton journal, mai 2004, Canada
  • Chassagne, Boris, Quand l'art-radio bousille la colle in. Musicworks # 53, 1993.
  • Cron, Marie-Michèle, Cris et chuchotements in. Le Devoir, 7 novembre 1992.
  • Gagnon, Dominic, Au Travail/At Work, in. PAracvhute No. 122, "Work", 2006, Montréal Canada.
  • Hong-O-Bong, International Performance Art in. Art World, Korea, 1996.
  • Durand, Guy Sioui, Les denses interzones de Québec, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1993.
  • Durand, Guy Sioui, 2003 : Tranches radicales d'art au Québec, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 2003
  • Kuiper, Willem, Nederlands as kunstproject (Les Pays-Bas comme projet artistique), Twente Courant, Pays-Bas, 1997.
  • Pelletier, Sonia, Considérations à partir d'un festival d'art radiophonique pétant : Radio-Contorsions, Inter #51, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1991.
  • Pelletier, Sonia, Ondes fluides et points de forces, Inter #55, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1993.
  • Pelletier, Sonia, Une fête de zonard à Québec in. Inter #56, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1993.
  • Pelletier, Sonia, Bioskop codexcinétique : un champ cinétique exotique in. Inter#64, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1996.
  • Spencer, Karen, Deflecting the standard, in. Esse #47, December 2002, Montréal
  • Grégoire, Paul, Exit, Esse 44, Montréal, 2002.

Documentaries (radio and TV)

  • Bande à part, Déjà ailleurs, "André Éric Létourneau", Radio de Radio-Canada, CBC, first broadcasted nationwide on the March 6th 2005 at La Chaîne Culturelle de Radio-Canada
  • Standard III, Le Navire Night, Chaïne culturelle de Radio-Canada, 2004, produced by Hélène Prévost
  • Nouveaux territoires de la musique électronique, documentaire, Radio-Canada, 2004
  • Standard II, Radioneta, Valparaiso, Chile, 2004
  • mineminemine, CBC Radio, 2003
  • Le choix de Sophie, "Standard II", Télé-Québec, 2003
  • Open Arts Festival, TV, China, 2001

Notes

  1. ^ Prévost, Hélène, Le Navire Night, Text from the radio broadcasting of Benjamin Muon's 1999 concert, CBC radio, April 1999
  2. ^ Pelletier, Sonia, Bioskop codexcinétique, un champ cinétique exotique, in. Inter, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1996
  3. ^ Catalogue de la XVème Biennale de Paris, Editions Biennale de Paris, Paris, France, 2007
  4. ^ Gauthier, Mario, Standard III (ou un silence en cache-t-il un autre?), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Web site and Radio Program), Montreal, Canada, 2002 (http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/texte-pdf/standard3.gauthier.pdf)
  5. ^ Lander, Dan, A Selected survey or Radio Art in Canada 1967-1992, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Center for the Arts, 1992
  6. ^ Gingras, Nicole, Son : Le son dans l’art contemporain canadien, Artexte, Montréal, Canada, 2006
  7. ^ Pelletier, Sonia, Ondes fluides et points de forces, in. Inter #55, Québec, Canada, 1993
  8. ^ Martel, Richard, L'art en actes, Éditions Interventions, Québec, 1998
  9. ^ Spencer, Karen, Deflecting the Standard, in. Esse #47, Montreal, Canada, 2002, http://www.esse.ca/fr/article.php?no=47&article=7
  10. ^ Gingras, Nicole and Migone, Christof, Trou, Galerie de l'Uqam, Montréal, Canada, 2006 (ISBN 2-920325-38-8)
  11. ^ Alors, la Chine ?, exhibition catalog, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003
  12. ^ CBC radio, Le Navire Night, rencontres, www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres.html , 1999
  13. ^ Muller, Peter Baan, P/ACT : The work of André Éric Létourneau and Sandra Johnston, AKI, Enschede, The Netherlands, 1997
  14. ^ Amicale de la Biennale de Paris, Economie laborieuse et action imperceptible, Conference at Biennale de Paris, 2007
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