Always an outward-looking, globally-tuned organization, MUTEK was initiated to connect Montréal with international creators and to encourage creativity at home by giving local artists a quality platform for expression and development. The festival’s commitments to networks, interconnectivity and exchange culminate in another strong showing by Canadian and Québec artists at MUTEK Argentina, September 13-16.
Thanks to the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Embassy of Canada in Argentina and Paraguay, a total of 14 artists will present 10 performances during the festival.
France Jobin, Line Katcho, Magnanime and Sabrina Ratté are also part of the AMPLIFY project led by the British Council. The AMPLIFY network first took place at the MUTEK Montréal festival, from August 20-26, 2018. Participating artists engage in a series of workshops, creative labs, performances and exhibitions, as part of the programming of MUTEK’s Keychange, dedicated to empowering women in digital arts and electronic music to enlighten, embolden and contribute to the current cultural shift around inclusivity and gender issues.
Akufen
A native Montrealer who had spent the 80s and 90s engaged in the fervent experimental music community of this city, Marc Leclair began to gain notoriety during the first edition of MUTEK in 2000 when one of this singles found its way into the hands of Germany’s Thomas Brinkmann. Brinkmann noticed correctly that Leclair’s style had evolved into something utterly distinct, a cut-up, micro-sampled approach to house music that recalled the work of Matthew Herbert as it did the abstraction of Leclair’s homegrown influence, the painter Jean-Paul Riopelle.
Alexandre Burton & Julien Roy (artificiel) — Three Pieces With Titles
Who: Alexandre Burton and Julien Roy, co-founders of Montréal-based digital creation studio, artificiel
Style: Immersive audiovisual installations and performances, electroacoustic compositions, custom-built software and hardware
A MUTEK commission developed with the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Three Pieces With Titles relies on a new, souped-up, extreme real-time, audiovisual instrument that merges cameras, synthesizers, acoustic instruments, computers, and video projectors. The “three pieces” refer to three distinct movements: the image controls the sound (photographs trigger a camera plus a computer system linked to audio); the sound controls the image (an instrument triggers a camera plus computer system linked to photographs); and the sound is the image is the sound (colour turns into sound, acoustic vibration changes the colour and vice-versa).
➤ Read the interview with MUTEK Mag
artificiel — Trois Pièces avec des Titres à MUTEK.MX 2017
France Jobin — Intrication
France Jobin is a sound / installation / artist, composer and curator residing in Montreal, Canada. Her audio art can be qualified as "sound-sculpture", revealing a minimalist approach to complex sound environments where analog and digital intersect. Her installations express a parallel path, incorporating both musical and visual elements inspired by the architecture of physical spaces. Her works can be “experienced” in a variety of unconventional spaces and new technology festivals across Canada, the United States, South America, South Africa, Europe and Japan.
➤ France Jobin live at MUTEK 2014
Line Katcho — Sémaphore and Simulacre
Who: Montréal-based video artist Line Katcho, also known as La Hyèna
Style: Minimal analog soundscapes in transformation, intense abstract visual environments fluidly bonded to sound
With meticulous attention to detail, Line Katcho hybridizes styles, genres and applied tech methods to craft prismatic, enveloping electroacoustic-techno compositions and visual landscapes.
Line Katcho — Immortelle à MUTEK 2018
Magnanime
Who: Montréal musician and producer Sara Magnan
Style: Experimental tech house, IDM meets musique concrète, psychedelic dancefloor grooves
Magnanime creates a techno-house hybrid rife with experimental nuances, embracing mistakes of technology and recycling odd noises into her perpetually evolving, beat driven repertoire. Live, her forward thinking production process and enthusiasm for listener’s reactions shines, aware of her environment she manifests a dance music experience that is always an exchange with the audience.
➤ Magnanime live at MUTEK 2016
Matt Thibideau & Markus Heckmann
Who: Toronto-based producer Matt Thibideau and German-born, Toronto-based visual artist Markus Heckmann (also known as Wüstenarchitekten)
Style: Deep, dubby atmospheres and motorik movement, bent vintage synths; video signal analyzing experiments, layered abstract geometries.
Musique Nouvelle (aka Simon Chioini & Félix Gourd)
Who: Montréal-based composer and producer Simon Chioini, also known as SC, Chioini and DJ Voilà and Montréal-based 3D visual artist, VJ and scenographer known as Félix Félix Gourd Gourd
Style: Percussion-driven electroacoustic techno, experimental acousmatic compositions; 3D expérimentations, dreamlike worlds and abstract geometry
Bolstered by a community of harmoniously experimental artists in Montréal, Simon Chioini creates a hybrid of new music compositions and genre fusing underground club sounds – acoustic instrumental flourishes and synth waves layered in syncopated rhythms and unexpected distortions. After completing a degree at the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, Félix Gourd changed his practice towards visual production. His versatility has lead him to work with many local musicians, as well as international pop stars Britney Spears and Selena Gomez, alongside his established collaboration with Simon Chioini.
➤ Listen to Simon Chioini's 2016 live set here
Myriam Bleau — Soft Revolvers
Who: Montréal composer, digital artist and performer Myriam Bleau
Style: Physical A/V performances and art installations connecting gesture with sound and physical with virtual, artist-designed instruments
Sabrina Ratté & Roger Tellier-Craig
Who: Montréal and Paris-based video artist Sabrina Ratté, one half of audiovisual duo Le Révélateur with Roger Tellier-Craig
Style: Abstract sci-fi video architectures, hypnotic virtual parallel worlds, electric glitches within colourful fluid forms
Ratté performs Machine for Living, an immersive project combining video, sculpture and live performance alongside a soundtrack by Roger Tellier-Craig. Machine for Living investigates the 1960s architecture of towns and brutalist habitation buildings outside Paris, combining documentation and abstraction in utopian and dystopian atmospheres.
➤ Le Révélateur — Fakeaway Haptics
Vincent Lemieux
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
This initiative was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Embassy of Canada in Argentina and Paraguay.
AMPLIFY is led by the British Council, MUTEK festival and Somerset House Studios. In Buenos Aires, Amplify is supported by SKYY Vodka.
