[Summer 2020]
The works in this special section address dimensions of human activity that have considerable significance in today’s globalized society in view of the role of technology, the use of energy resources, and respect for human rights. These complex works combine multiple voices to reflect ethical issues and their impacts on individuals and communities.
BENOIT AQUIN
La dimension éthérique du réseau par Anton Bequii
This self-fiction work, first conceived as a book, testifies to the uneasiness provoked by the omnipresence of technology in societies and its impacts on human lives. Aquin traces the manifestations of the digital network into the most inegalitarian societies. He illustrates the derealization of the world engendered by digital abstraction with manipulated images and quotations from studies, and he meditates on the difficulties of making sense of the world.
With an essay by Alexis Desgagnés
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
More Sweetly Play the Dance
As a brass band plays, a succession of characters – filmed, drawn, or shadow puppets – file by in what resembles, in turn, a funeral procession, an activist demonstration, and a carnival parade. Spectators are literally swept up in this procession, which crosses a series of huge screens over a length of some thirty metres, in which figures evoking different aspects of the anti-apartheid movement display their contradictory demands.
With an essay by Érika Nimis
MARY KAVANAGH
Daughters of Uranium
In this exhibition, Kavanagh investigates the fallout from the presence of nuclear energy, for both military and civilian purposes, in Western society. She juxtaposes archival documents and artefacts against video interviews and a series of drawings and sculptures to expose the very long life of nuclear waste and its deleterious effects on human and animal life. She also alerts us that we are all guinea pigs in this immense laboratory.
With an essay by Blake Fitzpatrick
See the magazine for the complete article and more images: Ciel variable 115 – THE MARCH OF THE WORLD