PRESENTATION

True to its in situ diffusion approach, it is under the theme of the DESERT that Champ Libre presents its 6th edition of the Manifestation Internationale Vidéo et Art Électronique, Montréal which will take place in an urban and industrial site currently under transformation. The site chosen for the upcoming Manifestation is the inspiring des Carrières incinerator situated in the Rosemont-Petite Patrie borough of Montreal. The site will be occupied and set up to receive an interdisciplinary program and multi-network presentation drawing from the fields of video, architecture, urbanism, literature and electronic arts.

The DESERT is a source of rich symbolism and meaning for humanity. For Champ Libre this theme which fascinates us through the wealth of its imaginary breadth, is above all a space for philosophical and artistic inspiration.

Fire and regeneration are the two main elements that contributed to the choice of the incinerator as a location to artistically treat the theme of the DESERT during the event presented by Champ Libre in the fall of 2004. The incinerator is an industrial and futurist allegory that carries a memory of burned, incinerated matter reduced to cinders and dust.

Moreover, the artistic event, by creating links between desert and city, seeks to explore a place that lends itself to a concrete and anthropological definition of the urban desert. This abandoned building can be likened to an image of a desert both from its exterior, and its interior with its large volumes of empty spaces. It is in connection with its former incineration activity of destruction through heat and fire that the idea of the desert unfolded. This process and place that both evokes and generates urban, architectural and social renewal aligns itself perfectly with Champ Libre's artistic activity.

Finally, for Champ Libre the desert is not only defined by the archetypical image of sand and infinite expanse, but also in a broader sense as a potential reading of the visible and the invisible contained within the literal meaning of the word DESERT: uninhabited place, water desert, sand desert, snow desert, interior desert, lunar desert, desertification of the world, virtual desert, desert of the senses.

Inspired by the metaphorical wealth of the juxtaposition of these concepts in relation to the symbolism of the DESERT, the current project is a poetic proposition that seeks to spread a fluctuating artistic program where the chosen theme serves as the sensible vector and prism through which contemporary artists working in the field of art and new technologies will express themselves.