May 21, 8:37 a.m.

Marie-Ève Charron: I have the feeling that your work is at a crossroads with the date-video series. The installation certainly displays characteristics similar to those of your earlier work. I am thinking of the whiteness of the furniture and its grid-like structure, which recalls the spare, minimalist vocabulary of your most impressive installations. At the same time, you seem to be putting increased emphasis on the reverse side of this structure, on the disorder and incertitude of subjectivity. In truth, with video, the mooring to references is much stronger, the structure is not as opacified, meaning that the spectator doesn’t come up against it, but “enters” more directly into the images presented before shifting else where. Perhaps the site-specific series, Fiction (2003- ), and its first version at Circa, entitled Déjà (2001), already prefigured this concern by making a type of self-reference one of its areas of investigation.

May 22, 3:02 p.m.

Claire Savoie: I don’t know if the term “crossroads” applies here because, for the moment, the date-video series is still in progress and I intend to pursue it alongside other activities for some time. If it is still difficult for me to assess the series, given an obvious lack of hindsight, the parameters that encompass it—although they are the logical extension of my wor—call on other modes of language. Other than images of my hands, my head or my studio, I had never before worked with “visual” images in the literal sense of the term. Images turned inward, toward their own temporality, offering a thousand deviations that clashed from the beginning with my usual approach. For the most part, the images I have used are very simple. However, from the outset, the complexity of the (referential?) issues they presupposed left me somewhat confused in terms of how to anchor intentions to choices in order to pursue the exercise in a conceptual mode.

Moreover, in the Fiction series (whose most recent version was presented at the Musée régional de Rimouski), the framework is simpler, more direct. It involves highlighting the tactile quality of hands running over surfaces of the gallery (in which the video is presented). The tautological nature of the work is closely linked to its subjectivity (translated through the audio), the two melding in a scenario that operates as fiction. The video image and the superimposed audio images refer us to the concrete space of the gallery and to its subjective virtualities (its fictions). The presentation is transparent and is designed to display the video image at the very place it was made, turning the gallery into the support of both the artist’s and the viewer’s experience.

In this sense, the way it is presented might presuppose a more direct link with the engulfing visual experience of the date-videos. Here, freestanding modules are a direct representation of the temporal organization of the videos as a whole. Although intrinsically pertinent to the project and despite the fact that it determines a particular type of reading and movement, the installation remains functional as a support. In other words, the practical requirements of the project have dictated its form.

May 24, 9:23 a.m.

M.-È.C.: The tautological quality that you raise in Fiction encourages, in my opinion, the subjective experience of time and contributes to underscoring duration, to making it something we can grasp. This concern for temporality is also displayed in the date-videos, through exhibition modules that translate a conception of organized time reminiscent of the squares of a calendar. However, and this is where the referential range of each of the images becomes operational, the videos propose looped images that focus on details, isolating them in order to expand them more effectively. The choice of images, which you apparently see as demanding, relays this consideration of time by constituting a repertory of contemplative, ordinary images, often oriented toward nature and also unquestionably better suited to establishing a narration or giving rise to a story.

May 28, 1:46 p.m.

C.S.: In that sense, perhaps it is necessary to “give rise to a story” with regard to what constituted the foundations of the project before it even began, and to outline its premises once the work as such had begun.

This project arose out of a private epistolary practice I had been engaged in for some time and whose forms evolved according to circumstances. It primarily consists of a desire to account for a particular moment often riveted to the very act of writing. The core of this process of interiorization undoubtedly coincides with the desire to communicate a thought turned toward the present, at the precise moment that present occurs. Often alone—whether in the country or in the city—for more or less prolonged (I almost said “protected”) periods of time, I maintained a kind of correspondence with family and friends which in recent years took the form of very short, intimate clips, similar to postcards, that related small daily events and their share of offerings.

Applying myself to this practice with a growing intensity, on February 4, 2006 at 3:10 p.m., it became imperative that my practice draw from these same dispositions and that I consent to make it into a long-term experimental project in order to circumscribe its nature and possibly take from it new attitudes toward my work. At that point, I was leagues away from wanting to exhibit these exercises; I wanted to proceed without any constraints other than those that emerged from the necessities dictated by the development of this chosen route over time. The pleasure of discovery appeared to me then to be an essential element.

Although later modified, the initial objective—which constantly left me bankrupt—was ambitious: gather data (video, audio, text) and edit each piece in a single day.¹ The nature of the project relied on a methodology that required considerable availability, coupled with vigilance, flexibility and febrility. This goal, which was constantly catching up with me, was linked to another, which applied to the fabrication of these miniatures: the editing of this type of daily exercise had to some day lead to a fluidity comparable to that of writing, sketching, or drawing. For me, it was a matter of remaining as close as possible to the instant of perception and drawing awareness from its narrowest and most fleeting gaps. I also wanted them to give off something simultaneously light and deep, and for these laconic videos to operate like some songs do.

The choice of images, like that of the audio and the text, was therefore part of this surge of trust slightly devoted o indetermination. As soon as the private epistolary practice (sending clips to those close to me) gave rise to an artistic project, I could no longer rely on the communicational means I had used so far, which, employed in another context, didn’t have the same value and didn’t proceed from the same conventions. It was also necessary for each of the components of the series to function as part of a coherent whole without being stifled by a framework that was too narrow. Some of the traps to avoid were (still are) those that relate to the aesthetic pleasure of “nice” images and the fascination and emotion they arouse in and of themselves. And if this was what had to be assumed in my work, how would I proceed? Literally, or through circumvention? By underpinning aesthetic qualities, or not? I must admit that I have not completely clarified this aspect of my work (visual image); we might say that it is still being developed.

May 29, 9:32 a.m.

M.-È.C.: The date-videos exert their appeal by thwarting a feeling of immediacy that may be experienced regarding daily life. The effect paradoxically proceeds from the gathering protocol used to record what eludes perception, and from the fact that you come beautifully close to the flexibility of writing or drawing in the editing. The merit in all of this is that in wanting to capture fleeting moments, you in no way provoke their instantaneous reception. Despite the brevity of the video loop, you stratify the image, which slows down the reading, condemning the viewer to come back, to stay, to become captive to a moment that occasionally appears to have been framed “off centre.” You have compared the date-videos to postcards, because of their epistolary mode, which, it seems to me, also provides a very accurate image of what drives the project, which consists largely of addressing the other. But contrary to postcards, your images are not crystallized in a timeless dimension, aesthetically consummated by being established “for good.” They must be constantly re-engaged.

If the idea of a calendar is imposed by the structure of the exhibition furniture, the videos, for their part, are compared to the pages of a diary. A person tells her story, a narrative is revealed. In short, the project forges a narration that your works enlist, on par with the way they embody artistic experience, but perhaps with a more affirmed subjectivity today. Several segments of the date-videos ensue from your physical presence or allow us a glimpse of it, rendering, albeit in a fragmented and elliptical way, an intimist gaze. I am thinking of your projected shadow, of the subjective camera, of your notes and the questions that we feel are personal…

May 29, 12:04 p.m.
(revisited from 10:15 p.m.)

C.S.: To conclude the subject of the aestheticizing nature of images, I would like to add that when editing the video, audio and text, I seek strategies that allow me to air the results. Moreover, the absorbing effect you are referring to also proceeds from the looped editing of various layers of superimposed information. This type of construction closes the moment in on itself (something I come back to often), ties and unties it… or rather keeps it in a state of suspension, in a perpetual re-beginning (did you hear me say the word eternity?). In some cases, the choice of movements or images also pertains simply to their capacity to be looped. Playing catch with a dog, washing hands, doing singing exercises, reading Le naufragé by Thomas Bernhard, listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, etc. Many of our actions or activities are cyclical (repetitions and loops), whether in a formal or temporal way. The idea of repetition, in both senses of the term—of doing one thing several times, and of rehearsal²—occupy a very important place in my practice (intention, process and form). This idea also fosters notions of exercise and fallibility. For me, it is a matter of allowing for experimentation rather than for finished works.

But enough sidetracking, back to the narrative nature of my work (which you are seeking to outline and which I am trying to avoid). The fact that I use certain parts of myself in my videos (voice, hands, texts, etc.) cannot make me say that I am the subject (or would that be the object?). How can I describe it… although I sometimes slip in an “I” here and there, that I, like everything that participates in a representation of oneself, possesses (I was going to say “is sheltered by”) its fair share of fiction. That said, I don’t believe that my practice, in general, is related to an intention that pertains to self-representation or self-fiction. In my work, I have little interest in the issues raised by these forms of creation. Ideas relating to subjectivity, in its complex and singular nature, appear to me to be much more useful.

Although, curiously, I have never interpreted my work from a narrative point of view, it appears plausible to me that the date-videos could lead us there. We could therefore suppose that my earlier work already carried antecedents within it. Several factors contribute to revealing them: the titles of the works, the various sound components, the way they are organized in time, the movement of the images, the words, the texts… as well as, in certain cases, the visitor’s movements.

From this perspective, several titles of my pieces seem to have the potential to launch a story. I am thinking of Une date, le nom d’un lieu et l’heure d’un rendez-vous (1998), whose title refers to the work itself, from its reference to a rendezvous with the visitor. In this case, the visitor is specifically part of the narration’s deployment, which is also supported by the possible meeting, in time, of the two voices that untiringly count.

The voices can also achieve narration in that they name or don’t name, and in the fact that their respective inflection, musicality and flow succeed in “storying” outside the realm of the words spoken, beyond the pure intention of narration. As though this were being carried out through a dual semantics, one I like to compare with what Mallarmé, in referring to words and poetry, called a “higher complement.³

Thus, in Quelque chose qu’on croit pouvoir tenir dans la main (2000), two voices respond to one another in a kind of intrigue. The voices of the authors, like those of the “spellers,” presuppose the notion of the secret: on the one hand through a poem by Mallarmé, whose style is enamored of secret and, on the other, through the writing of Clarice Lispector, who alleges: “I achieve a state behind thought. I refuse to divide it into words and what I cannot and do not want to express keeps being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I’m afraid of the moments when I don’t use thought and it’s a momentary state, difficult to reach that, all secret, no longer uses the words with which thoughts are formed.⁴ Although made imperceptible through the intervention of spelling, these sentences condense the subject of the piece and turn it in on itself (through the effort of reading that is entailed). It seems to act in a direct, almost incantatory way (“performative” in the Austinian sense), and in so doing, suddenly communicates what makes the piece possible.

May 30, 8:13 a.m.

M.-È.C.: Despite your resistance (?) to addressing the narrative side of your work, I find that you do so with quite a bit of eloquence! Without wanting to insist on this aspect again, I would like to suggest that the date-videos retrospectively contribute to bringing to light the narrative strategies present in your work, which is not to link them to the genres of self-portrait or self-fiction. The date-videos nevertheless record a place of enunciation, establishing a point of view whose coherence—and consequently the attribution to a person—may be ultimately detected. This is because their seriality offers recurring elements—a life setting, affective relationships, a pet, the tone of your notes, all the elements borne by a very personal breath that renders an intimist component barely revealed until now—that disclose the outlines of a silhouette, sketching the portrait of a person.

I have already told you about seeing—deep within them, or very allusively—thoughts on the artist, or perhaps I should say on one of his figures. I thought of this in relation to the textual statements that begin with “I am incapable of…” Negatively, these statements refer to the artist’s know-how, to the mastery of a discipline (painting, sculpture, watercolour…). The apparent incapacity would seem to suggest that the person does not place himself within this logic, that he identifies to a greater extent with a conceptual or literary mode. This proximity is further accentuated by a view of a studio, which shows a table set up with computers. This gives me the impression that the date-videos finely articulate two concerns: on the one hand, research to grasp the artistic approach in progress and, on the other, the desire to establish a framework that can pinpoint the irreducible quality of the present moment to open onto the vertigo of existence.

May 31, 11:06 a.m.

C.S.: Your minute reading of this production in its various ramifications touches me. Before continuing, however, I would like to be a bit more specific regarding the statements of incapacity,⁵ which also include video and performance (to which other artistic practices may be added). There is also the “difficulty of sustaining rhythm⁶ (that of editing the musical elements with a view to a desired synchronicity and the video production with a view to exhibition). A very recent date-video (made the day before yesterday) discloses the incapacity “to resist the desire” (to show what I show through this video and also to make another date-video when I should instead be absorbed in writing this text). Moreover, in an infinitive formula, we find a series of statements that are more akin to tentatives (e.g., “to resist anything that is outside this project⁷). In other words, beyond artistic fields, we might suppose that these “avowals” also seek to simply name a constant doubt and the idea of fallibility in its various manifestations, as insinuated in the statement, “I am telling you that I am incapable of ending this activity.⁸

To your last statements, I would add that, at the heart of this subjectivized archiving, which could be called obsessive, is, for me, more than anything, the idea of loss. Through its presence within the process in question—which implies abandoning some videos to the benefit of others, simply because I lack time to pursue their production—this concern, in a broader sense, infers a continual metaphysical interrogation regarding the entropic immanence that is borne as much by small private stories as by the big current events of this world. Are you familiar with The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives? It beautifully translates this interrogation.

Finally, as I have probably already told you, language exerts an inexhaustible fascination over me that is present in all my work. In the date-videos, this fascination sometimes clearly rises to the surface and I allude to it more than once in relation to the invention of the future perfect tense.⁹ This grammatical form places us at the centre of a complex and formidable reality in which a gap resembling a wound is created: I will have been. As for the word maintenant,¹⁰ it would appear to locate us between the words always and never. Paradoxically, it allows us to grasp time at the precise moment its matter eludes us. Which plunges me once again into the “living water¹¹ of Clarice Lispector, giving her the final word with a sentence that describes the very slender thread from which the production of the date-videos hangs: “Let me tell you… I’m trying to capture the fourth dimension of the now-instant which is so fleeting it no longer is because it has already become a new now-instant, which also is no longer.¹²

1. The new game plan allows for editing to be done at a later date, but using solely the data or notes recorded on the date that corresponds to the image. The image alone determines the date and hour of the date-video.
2. The French word for rehearsal is répétition.
3. Stéphane Mallarmé used this term to underscore the fact that the sounds of words do not necessarily produce evocations that are directly related to their meaning. He found within this defect languages, a fact that justified poetry; verse being their “higher complement.”
4. The Stream of Life, Clarice Lispector, translated by Elizabeth Lowe and Earl Fitz, foreward by Hélène Cixous, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1989, p. 3.
5. The first appearance is the result of an answer given to an artist friend on vacation who strongly encouraged me to work in watercolours at a time when I was trying to make videos along similar lines.
6. Date-video September 19, 2006.
7. Date-video August 22, 2006.
8. Date-video November 11, 2006.
9. Date-video August 25, 2006 and date-video August 26, 2006.
10. Maintenant (now) can be figuratively divided into main (hand) and tenant (holding).
11. The literal translation of the title of Lispector’s book Agua viva [“The Stream of Life”]
12. Quote taken from The Stream of Life, integrated into the date-video May 5, 2006. Clarice Lispector, op. cit., p. 58. Claire Savoie’s emphasis.

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