Valérie Lamontagne Peau d’âne
Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker
From the Charles Perrault fairy tale Peau d’âne, Valérie Lamontagne draws on the motif of three fabulous dresses: one made out of moonbeams, one as warm and bright as the sun above and one cut out of the sky itself. Using innovative technologies and working with experienced collaborators, the artist has created three interactive dresses that react in real-time to atmospheric variations transmitted by a weather station installed on OBORO’s roof. The colours of the moon dress vary according to the moon cycles; the illumination of the sun dress corresponds to the intensity of the sun’s rays; and the sky dress swells and moves depending on the patterns of the wind. By making use of climate conditions in this manner, Peau d’âne addresses with an apparently banal subject matter, but one that hides valuable clues to our modes of cultural and social exchange. A multitude of performance possibilities emerge from these wearables, which bridge the worlds of fairy tales and technology.
At the opening, three dancers will wear the interactive dresses and mingle with the gallery public. The dresses will also animate the reading of Perrault’s fairy-tale Peau d’âne, presented by the artist for the Journées de la culture.
Opening
September 15, 2007, at 5:00 pm
the dresses will be presented from 6:00
Event
Story Time: Peau d’âne
September 29, 2007, at 3:00 pm
as part of the Journées de la culture
Further readings:
Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker
Valérie Lamontagne is a Montréal-based performance/digital media artist, freelance art critic and independent curator. Her media-based artwork/performances (Advice Bunny, Snowflake Queen, Sense Nurse, Mermaid of the Future, Sister Valerie of the Internet and Becoming Balthus) have been showcased across Canada, the United States and Europe. She received an MFA from Concordia University (Montréal) where she presently teaches in the Design and Computation Arts program and she is a co-founder, with Brad Todd, of the media arts collective MobileGaze. She is presently a Ph.D.