PRESENTATION

Quebecois video is nomad
A tent is suspended on top of the "19", the place where the 6th MIV.TV is being held. Laurent, François and Yves, three Quebecois video artists, look at the video through the camera viewfinder.

" La tente de l'attente" is a unique place in Montbéliard. Mounted on one of the metallic footbridges of the 19 avenue Clémenceau, it houses a video that is as original as it is nomadic. Three of the "Champ Libre" artists are on the hunt for video tracks and impressions.

"What has been uniting us for more than a year now, is the mass of idiotic and meaningless images that television and cinema are now flooding Quebec with," explains François Cormier, an urbanist who began working in cinema at a later stage in his career. We are trying to become a gathering place and in this sense we have much in common with the goals of the Montbéliard MIV.
Under a tent decorated with odd objects, four old and torn cinema seats wait for the artists, the critics and distributors.

Laurent Lavoie and Yves Shériff respectively invite Pierre Bongiovanni the organizer, and the video artists Robert Cahen and Francesco Marcello to take a seat in front of an 8mm camera.

The first interviewer defines electronic image artists as mutants of our gaze, because they make us see the world in a different way. The second speaks of the telluric forces that drive his works as well as of the—necessarily—slow gaze of the artist in an increasingly fast-paced world.
Involvement and rewards

The interviews that were made on the occasion of this important and unique encounter between video artists, will be brought together in a work that will seek to define what electronic creation is today.
"We are trying to show what the work and ideological involvement of video artists consists of;" Laurent Lavoie states, and as he goes on to say: "But in such a way that will make it accessible to non-specialists. Sentences are interwoven with images, and the excerpts of works. All this speaks of and unravels what many consider as esoteric thought."

"La tente nomade" ("The Nomad Tent") will transpose the audio and visual ambiance of the 6th MIV.TV.: a video logbook of a video event. Moreover, the video 'writing' of these Quebecois artists/journalists will be co-produced by the Videograph, an important Montreal distribution and presentation organization. Laurent, François and Yves now wish to make a place for Montébelardian resonances, in order to bring life to words and to promote the essential circulation of ideas in a free space.
Alain Roy

Le Pays - June 20, 1992