Embrayage onirique / Clutching at Dreams was initiated when OBORO commissioned Diane Landry to produce a work in the fall of 2004, which then received financial support from The Canada Council for the Arts’ Media Arts Section. The works were developed in the course of residencies in 2005 – at OBORO in Montreal as well as Avatar in Quebec City. The first version of the exhibition Le Bouclier magique (The Magic Shield), which also included a video projection entitled Le Bouclier perdu (The Lost Shield), was presented at OBORO in the Fall of 2005.
“[T]he adventure of the Boucliers continued […] at the Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City during the Espaces bidules event presented by Folie/Culture and co-circulated with Avatar. The next step saw the works travel to Prince George, British Columbia, in the magnificent space of the Two Rivers Gallery, and, more recently, to the Horace gallery in Sherbrooke. In the meantime, Le Bouclier perdu travelled as far as Melbourne, Australia and Stanford, California. Like most stories, this one lives on in a book […]. It lives on today in the hands of the reader, on the walls of galleries and in the imagination of those who experience it through the intermediary of the video documentation [DVD included in the publication]. The story’s ending remains open”. D. Landry
The publication features two essays: one by guest writer Peggy Gale, an independent curator and writer who has collaborated with numerous Canadian and foreign institutions; and a second by George Harris, curator of the Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George (British-Columbia). The graphic design is a creation of bleuoutremer.