Articulation
- Diane MORIN
The floor of the gallery is animated by awkward, seemingly semi-conscious, machines. Limb-like in their construction, as they are jointed and articulate, the machines are easy to anthropomorphize. Their somnambulist pacing and awkward flailing conjures emotional response as we wish them better, successful passage, worry if they will endure, anger at their slowness, and listen for their cries.
Cry they do not, though there are many sonic emissions – subtle metallic turnings as motors desire forward are muffled slightly by the rubber bulbs that engulf them. There are scrapings of the jointed members on the floor punctuated by thin sounds of tension between tendon-like connectors, and the surprising density of sound – brittle but held warmly in the air – that seems to leak out of the ceramic “douche-telephone” that complete each machine-arm. The limbs are electric, and the their current-blood courses through spiraled telephone cable that defines their form as surely as it allows them motion. This along with the persistent references to the carrying of liquid embodied in the graduated cylinders, baster-bulbs and shower heads, articulate the fluid nature of the piece’s multiple potential narratives and allude to the waves that make up their utterance – their signal. These filled and spilled vessels suggest a sort of communication: one set out like a message in a bottle, protected and buoyant, but uncertain of reception or even of which direction it will travel.
While the sender may be uncertain, there is a larger pattern at play. It is a path set out and long delineated like the tides ruled by our dead guiding star, the moon.
Russian Futurist, Velimir Khlebnikov stated that “even starlight is a wireless signal” and Morinʼs automata seem in keeping with a futurist lineage that links the natural to the mechanical and mediated world. Luigi Russoli further tied sound to sentience and a mechanized modernity in his “Art of Noises” manifesto. Morinʼs motorized biomorphs engage in this existing conversation but offer an uncertain frailty and potential for failure that serve as both questions of those past productions and assert both phenomonological experience and affect as their lasting strengths. Triumphant in their weakness, a response has been conjured.
Their presence is registered: materially, spatially, sonically and projected and marked indexically on the walls of the gallery. This final linear utterance of the objects (in relation to all their other incarnations) forces them through multiple levels of what semioticians call articulation, to a point where there is no structure to be decoded, but an acceptance of the presence of being. These are not machines as people incarnate but instead, these are things that are. Is this being?
Jake Moore
2003 Maîtrise en Beaux-Arts, Université Concordia, Montréal
1997 Baccalauréat en Arts Visuels, Université Laval, Québec
Expositions individuelles
2003 Dessins, photogrammes et remuements, Galerie Bourget, Université Concordia, Montréal
2001 Résidence in situ et exposition individuelle, La Chambre Blanche, avec le support d’Avatar
2001 Séjour de production et exposition individuelle, Vu, Québec
1998 Installation sonore, résidence et exposition individuelle, Avatar, Québec
Expositions collectives et événements (sélection)
2005 Effondrements, installation vidéo
Disquiet, exposition collective, Modern Fuel Gallery, Kingston, Ontario
2005 Inertie / dessins cinématiques, court métrage réalisé avec le support de VU et Spirafilm (projet 100 pieds), Québec. Présenté au Festival de Cinéma des Trois Amériques, Québec et au Rhode Island International Film Festival, US
2004 Installation sonore in situ, Used/Goods, exposition collective d’art in situ à l’Armée du Salut, organisé par Cut Rate Collective et Articule, Montréal
2003 Installation in situ, Lucky Bastard, Laboratoire public, 11ième Festival International de Nouvelle Danse (FIND), Société des arts technologiques (SAT), Montréal
2002 Installation in situ, Machines festives, L’oeil de poisson, Québec
1999 Installation in situ, Machines festives, La Centrale / Galerie Powerhouse, Montréal
1998 Il y a en effet quelque chose, performance (oeuvre collective avec James Partaik et David Michaud)
Forum instants ruraux : l’art actuel comme atout du développement rural, 3e Impérial, Qc
1997 Occupation 97, exposition collective in situ, Au bout de la 20, Rivière-du-Loup, Québec
Résidences de recherche
2005 Sound + Vision, Collaborative Creative Residency, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta
2003 Film Farm Retreat, sur invitation de Philip Hoffman, Mount Forest, Ontario
2003 Résidence de recherche, Sagamie, Alma, QC
L’artiste tient à remercier le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec.
Photographie : David Jacques
