The facade of the Sant Pau modernist venue in Barcelona has become this Tuesday an open window to the culture and history of the Canadian city of Montreal with a spectacular mapping projected within the framework of the 27th international electronic art symposium ISEA2022 Barcelona.
The province of Québec, which hosted the previous edition of ISEA in a fully telematic format, is the guest of honor at this year’s symposium, promoted by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and which is being held in the Catalan capital from 10 to on June 16, and to honor her this great mapping has been programmed in Sant Pau, which can also be seen tomorrow and the day after in different shows between 10:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m.
The 35-minute mapping exhibited is entitled “Grand Tableau” (Large Painting, in French), and is one of the pieces within the project “Cité mémoire” (Memory City), which offers a poetic and playful look at the city and recounts the main stages of its history: the Amerindian presence, the French colonization, the British conquest and the most contemporary Montreal.
The travels of the French explorer Jacques Cartier, the burning of the Parliament of Montreal in 1849, the thousand orphaned Jewish children who were adopted by Montreal families after World War II, the Universal Exhibition of Montreal in 1967, the bedridden for peace of John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel or the 1976 Olympic Games are some of the historical episodes that are reviewed throughout the screening.
“‘Cité mémoire’ is about memory. We have to remember what our ancestors did, I think the only way we have to move forward is to remember,” Michel Lemieux told Efe.
The artist explained that the projection at the Sant Pau venue is a small sample of the great work of digital art that is “Cite mémorie”, a project that was prepared for ten years and has been exhibited in different spaces in Montreal since 2016.
“The whole project is about the soul of our ancestors, it is in the walls of the city and they come out of the walls and tell us their stories, we have to listen to them,” added Lemieux.
The mapping projected tonight is one of the highlights of ISEA, which today held its main ceremony at the Sant Pau site, where an exhibition space has been set up with an international sample of digital art.
Among the exhibited works, stand out “Sightseeing”, Thierry Fournier’s video surveillance camera that reflects aloud on his exhaustion; “Liquid Views”, a digital mirror created by pioneers Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strausson that will allow the public to live “a narcissistic experience surrounded by waves”, and “Quantum Chaos set”, an experimental work by Paul Thomas that explores the creation of an expression visual and audible of quantum chaos.
ISEA2022 debates around the central theme of the symposium, “Possible”, through multiple formats that include 140 expert presentations, 45 institutional presentations, 40 artist talks, 23 live broadcasts, 16 round tables, 13 workshops and 13 performances , all from the open call launched more than a year ago in which 1,100 proposals were submitted.
As a culmination to the conference, on the night of June 15, starting at 10:30 p.m., ISEA2022 Barcelona will offer a drone show open to the public at Playa del Somorrostro by Flock Drone Art Barcelona.
Combining technology, lights and electronic music, a set of synchronized drones will offer for the first time in the city of Barcelona an aerial show of unique shapes and figures.
