Vases communicants
2021, 16min 49sec
Distributed by Vidéographe
Through the gestures and movements of bodies, a landscape is constructed, makeshift and evolving. It signals a world that is chequered with organizing and dividing infrastructures – borders, pipelines, surveillance networks – but that is also streaked with movement that can’t be captured: fugitive migration, occupation, exhaustion, accidents, escapes, rest. This is the movement of people, things and unruly materials, which leave traces behind and invite other leaps.
CREDITS AND SPECIAL THANKS
Script and direction : Edith Brunette and François Lemieux
Cinematography : Nicolas Villegas H.
Sound recording : Pablo Villegas Hernandez
Performers : Marine Gourit, Stephen John Quinlan and Simon Grenier-Poirier
Technical assistance : Simon Grenier-Poirier
Narration : Anne Lardeux
Color correction : Sylvain Cossette
Sound mixing: Bruno Bélanger
Translation: Jessica Moore
Produced as part of the LUX Creation and Distribution Residency, in collaboration with
Main Film, Oboro, Prim, and Vidéographe and supported by the Conseil des arts et des
lettres du Québec.
Acknowledgements : Martine Frossard, Julie Tremble, Sami Zenderoudi and the
Vidéographe team; Aaron Pollard, Stéphane Claude, Charlotte Clermont and the Oboro
team; Sophie Carrier, Sylvain Cossette, Bruno Bélanger, Charlie Boisvert and the PRIM
team; Gabrielle Bergeron-Leduc, Alexis Landriault, Erin Weisgerber and the Main Film team.
Documentation By: Allan Kosmajac
Documentation
Artists Bios
Edith Brunette
Edith Brunette is an artist, a writer, and a researcher interested in the discourses which make and break power as well as the range of modes of political engagement, particularly in the field of art. Her recent projects, created in collective forms of practice, have focused on the ways we inhabit the land, the political agency of artists and the act of speaking out in times of social crisis. These projects have been exhibited in many galleries and art centres in Canada, the Netherlands, and Japan. Her writings have been published in several art magazines and publications, including Esse, Liberté, ETC, Inter, and Cassandre / Hors-Champs. She co-edited the book Going to, Making Do, Passing Just the Same (2021, with François Lemieux) and To Spoil the Party, to Set Our Joy Ablaze (2016, with Journée sans culture). She is currently conducting doctoral research in political studies at the University of Ottawa, for which she received the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship.
Francois Lemieux
Francois Lemieux’s varied art activity melds practice, publishing and research in the form of installations, documents and situations that aim to prompt collective and anti-disciplinary thinking about the notions of value and commonality. In Canada, his workshops, films and works have been presented in venues including the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University, VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the Banff Centre. He has also exhibited at the 1646, Walden Affairs, De Aanschouw galleries and the Kunstvlaai festival (Netherlands); at the Springhill Institute (United Kingdom); at the Leipziger Kunstverein as well as the Künstlerresidenz Blumen and Kunstwerk galleries (Germany); at Fabbrica del Vapore and as part of the program of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti (Italy); and at the Next Wave festival (Australia). Between 2014 and 2016, in collaboration with Edith Brunette, he has been conducting an investigation of the curtailment of arts funding in the Netherlands, entitled Cuts Make the Country Better. He has also initiated group and independent projects such as the artist-in-residence initiative We left the warm stable and entered the latex void (2008–2010), and founded the artist' publication he co-edits : Le Merle, Cahiers sur les mots et les gestes, that can be accessed here : lemerle.xyz. He is a co-founding member of collectives Journée sans culture, Sur les soins and Action Indirecte. In 2022, he has been awarded the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec’; grant for Québec’s studio in Berlin’s Künstlerhaus Bethanien.