{"id":144632,"date":"2015-05-01T19:13:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-02T00:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/entretien\/loperation-venise-de-jean-pierre-aube\/"},"modified":"2023-09-13T14:44:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T19:44:53","slug":"operation-venice-by-jean-pierre-aube","status":"publish","type":"entretien","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/interviews\/operation-venice-by-jean-pierre-aube\/","title":{"rendered":"Operation Venice by Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Of particular note among the events scheduled for the opening of this year\u2019s Venice Biennale (May 6\u200a\u2013\u200a8) are the live interventions of Qu\u00e9bec artist Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9. Under the guidance of Galerie de l\u2019UQAM and its director, Louise D\u00e9ry, this project aims at highlighting the singularity of an artistic practice that, by tackling hot-button issues such as electromagnetic pollution and cyber-surveillance, deserves both national and international recognition. In addition to the presentation at Venice, D\u00e9ry has organized a more substantial exhibition of Aub\u00e9\u2019s work to be shown at RAM radioartemobile, a flagship institution for sound art based in Rome that has recently showcased major artists such as Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Jan Fabre. This exhibition, beginning May 14, brings together several of Aub\u00e9\u2019s most ambitious projects from the past fifteen years, including V.L.F. Natural Radio (2000\u200a\u2013\u200a04) and the magnificent landscapes in the Electrosmogs series (2009\u2013), to which two new works\u200a\u2014\u200aElectrosmog Venezia and Radio Vaticano, created with material collected in Italy\u200a\u2014\u200ahave been added. The following text draws on excerpts from a discussion in which the artist and curator shared their thoughts regarding the execution of this dual project.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9<\/strong>
Electrosmog Venezia<\/em>, 2015, capture vid\u00e9o
Photo : courtesy of the artist <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"\"
Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9<\/strong>
Electrosmog Venezia<\/em>, 2015, capture vid\u00e9o.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Following her notable presentation of David Altmejd\u2019s work at the Canadian Pavilion in 2007, Louise D\u00e9ry received the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Qu\u00e9bec to elaborate what she calls \u201cbuilding-site exhibitions\u201d for the Venice Biennale. The performance En exercice <\/em>\u00e0 Venise<\/em> by Rapha\u00eblle de Groot, presented at the 2013 edition, was the first of these experimental projects, whose initial objective was to increase the presence of Qu\u00e9bec artists on the international scene.1<\/sup><\/a> 1 <\/a> - For more on this project, see Sylvette Babin, \u201cRapha\u00eblle de Groot. En exercice \u00e0 Venise<\/em>,\u201d esse<\/em>, no. 80 (Winter 2014): 82\u200a\u2013\u200a85.<\/span> Created without a specific infrastructure and with very restricted material and financial means, this \u201ctesting ground\u201d allowed for the exploration of various possibilities for action as well as new strategies aimed at raising public awareness, in a hip, globalized artistic context which seems increasingly monopolized by the market and advances a glamorous conception of contemporary art. Going against this prevailing trend, D\u00e9ry has in recent years sought to \u201cre-centre [her] work on practices that are extremely focused and restrained, if not deliberately restricted: in terms of budget, duration\u200a\u2014\u200ain all respects.\u201d Indeed, it has become paramount for her to adopt a stance that considers not only the specific conditions under which an artist\u2019s work may be shown at Venice, but also the aesthetic, logistic, ethical, ecological, and political implications inherent to this kind of project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choosing to launch a second \u201cOperation Venice\u201d with artist Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9 resonates perfectly with this logic. As D\u00e9ry explains, \u201cThere are many artists with whom I could create a building-site exhibition, but only a few with whom I can see a direct link with the context of the Biennale. For it to work, this must be obvious.\u201d In the same way that the 2013 performance by de Groot\u200a\u2014\u200awho, in an elaborate disguise, glided along the city\u2019s canals on a gondola\u200a\u2014\u200aseemed evident, the pursuit, on Italian soil, of Aub\u00e9\u2019s experiments using radio frequencies emanating from wireless communications systems seemed highly consequential on a conceptual level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I did the project with Rapha\u00eblle de Groot,\u201d explains D\u00e9ry, \u201cI imagined the Venice Carnival procession. I saw the baroque splendour of the city, velvet capes, pageantry, wolves, masks, and wigs. For me as an art historian, it was therefore logical to envision such an intervention at this specific site. Two years later, at a time when we are urged more than ever to situate ourselves in relation to our communications, our methods of communication, and our relationships with the outside world, Aub\u00e9\u2019s approach seemed extremely pertinent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9<\/strong>
Electrosmog World Tour 2012<\/em>, Mumbai & Istanbul, video stills
Photos : courtesy of the artist <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Having previously investigated the waves emitted by natural phenomena such as solar winds, lightning, and the aurora borealis, Aub\u00e9 has recently tackled technological disturbances caused by the various information, communication, and surveillance systems that \u201cpollute\u201d the urban environment with a staggering density of radio frequencies. By capturing, amplifying, and transposing this electromagnetic smog into audio and visual forms, the artist raises urgent questions about the excessive and often indiscriminate use of telecommunications today. Yet, as D\u00e9ry observes, technology\u2019s invasion of ecological and social space is a global phenomenon that the microcosm of the art world, coming together at major international events, obviously cannot escape: \u201cAt Venice, where we are all hyper-connected through our devices\u200a\u2014\u200amaking appointments here, sending reminders to go and see a certain artist there\u200a\u2014\u200ait is worrying to think that we are exacerbating an already acute problem. Even though many in the art milieu maintain\u200a\u2014\u200aor even flaunt\u200a\u2014\u200aa certain degree of global consciousness, it is important not to forget the active role that we play in these invasive mass communication mechanisms. This is what Aub\u00e9\u2019s work makes clear. Like a mirror, it shows us how banal we are, each with our iPad, photographing the same thing, lining up to see the same pavilion.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem raised by this normalized use of media devices has been the subject of numerous philosophical reflections in recent years. In his essay What Is an Apparatus?,<\/em> Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben contends that the technological formation of human behaviour brings into play a process of \u201cdesubjectification\u201d that cannot be countered by simply deactivating or destroying our cell phones, for example, or, more na\u00efvely still, by using them \u201cin the right way.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> 2 <\/a> - Giorgio Agamben, What Is an Apparatus? and Other Essays<\/em>, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2009), 15\u200a\u2013\u200a17, 20\u200a\u2013\u200a22.<\/span> In our daily \u201chand-to-hand\u201d struggle with such devices, according to Agamben, we must instead elaborate strategies that will restore to common use elements that, through technology, have been placed beyond our grasp or preserved in a separate sphere, like \u201csacred\u201d objects.3<\/sup><\/a> 3 <\/a> - Ibid., 17\u200a\u2013\u200a19.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echoing these philosophical considerations, Aub\u00e9 has, over the years, developed an ingenious method that consists of seizing certain technological powers deemed, in his words, to be \u201cfrom the realms of magic or science fiction, or sent from Allah or the planet Mars,\u201d to then \u201cmodulate them in the language of art\u201d in order to demystify their workings, at least in part. Through strategic use of his technical skills, Aub\u00e9 thus endeavours to make visible or audible an imperceptible dimension of our reality, which must be captured, intensified, and felt <\/em>for it to permanently pervade our consciousness. He also insists that his sophisticated technological manipulations are driven essentially by his aesthetic sensibility and an empirical approach to landscape inspired by documentary photography. In this respect, he says, \u201cI\u2019m not interested in developing a technique if I don\u2019t have a deep aesthetic rapport with the subject.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. As an artist, I am very aware that everything is processed with products by Apple\u200a\u2014\u200athe largest company on the planet\u200a\u2014\u200aright down to our fundamental relationship with art and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9<\/strong>
V.L.F. Natural Radio – Batiscan<\/em>, Qu\u00e9bec, 2001, video still
Photo : courtesy of the artist <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
\"\"
Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9<\/strong>
V.L.F. Natural Radio – 21.12.2002 Jerisj\u00e4rvi<\/em>, Finland, 2002, video still.
Photo : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the Venice project, Aub\u00e9 chose to focus more specifically on the proliferation of cell phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices that shape contemporary life. His intention was to show how heavy this infrastructure floating above our heads really is (an infrastructure we imagine to be so light, transparent, and ethereal). Indeed, it is easy to forget that \u201cevery time we connect to our \u2018gadgets,\u2019 hundreds of machines are set in motion to process this information.\u201d The little devices that we carry with us everywhere form an itinerant community ofwhat he calls \u201cmini communicational beings.\u201d \u201cThey constantly signal their presence and communicate their whereabouts to dozens of towers that criss-cross our cities. Among them, they share, encode, and decode millions of little information packets.\u201d Insofar as all of these messages are generated by humans, the crowd gathered during the professional days of the Biennale presented an ideal context for collecting and decoding information, and eventually retransmitting it in another form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having pinpointed locations during an initial visit with D\u00e9ry, who knows the city well, Aub\u00e9 imagined what he describes as a \u201ctheatre\u201d in two parts: during the day, he would wander the city with a small group of \u201cpirate\u201d assistants, tracking visitors\u2019 personal devices and gathering data via antennae, receivers, and computers placed on a gondola; in the evening, he would proceed with live experiments at campo<\/em> Santa Margherita, a typical Venetian square where a discerning public of art professionals, capable of detecting the covert presence of artistic gestures, usually gather for the opening of the Biennale. The exact nature of these experiments had to be carefully considered, as neither sound nor musical interpretations of radio frequencies, such as those in the Electrosmogs<\/em> series, easily lend themselves to outdoor performance. Hence the idea of a display of light signals that would surreptitiously light up in the darkness of the night\u200a\u2014\u200alike tiny \u201cfireflies,\u201d as Aub\u00e9 explained. The subtle radiance of these nocturnal insects, already invested with numerous poetic and political meanings,4<\/sup><\/a> 4 <\/a> - See, among others, Georges Didi-Huberman, Survivance des lucioles<\/em> (Paris: Les \u00c9ditions de Minuit\u200a: Paradoxe, 2009).<\/span> and whose existence is threatened by air and light pollution, functions here as a visual metaphor for ambient electromagnetic activity. In the more concrete form of light \u201cgraffiti\u201d projected on the buildings of the campo<\/em>, at the heart of which stands a police facility bristling with antennae and surveillance cameras, selected pieces of information concerning this communicational infrastructure will reveal themselves to those with a watchful eye. Thus, like the intermittent \u201cbeeps\u201d that punctuate our conversation in the artist\u2019s studio, signalling the passing of a spy satellite overhead, these luminous messages signal the presence of a \u201csystem of permanent registration,\u201d to use a term of Michel Foucault,5<\/sup><\/a> 5 <\/a> - Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison<\/em>, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1995), 196.<\/span> whose analysis of the theatre of surveillance in question here is still of great relevance today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9<\/strong>
Radio Vaticano<\/em>, 2015, video still.
Photo : courtesy of the artist <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As Foucault underlines in Discipline and Punish,<\/em> the machinery that assures the surveillance of contemporary society is governed by an automatic, disindividualized, visible, and\u200a\u2014\u200amost importantly\u200a\u2014\u200aunverifiable power. Consequently, and contrary to the idea that control is exerted by inaccessible forces, any individual can operate this machine, whether the motivation is protection, security, maintaining order, or the thirst for knowledge; or perverse curiosity, pleasure in spying, terrorizing, and punishing.6<\/sup><\/a> 6 <\/a> - Ibid., 201\u200a\u2013\u200a02.<\/span> In an era when the infiltration of IT systems and the invasion of privacy represent tangible threats, resorting to piracy for artistic purposes, as Aub\u00e9 does, raises both ethical and technical questions as to the limits of art. Put simply, artists must ask themselves how far they are willing to go ethically, and how far they are able to go technically, in face of this dilemma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For D\u00e9ry, what counts above all else is \u201chow an artist sifts through the constant deluge of information and events; in other words, how he chooses the issues that become the raw material for his artistic research. Because,\u201d as she insists, \u201cAub\u00e9 is not a hacker. He\u2019s an artist.\u201d An artist whose practice calls for a responsible approach by the curator\u200a\u2014\u200aresulting, in this case, in a project without a footprint: \u201cWe take nothing, we leave nothing, we just pass by.\u201d Together, D\u00e9ry and Aub\u00e9 have created a context in which certain experiments can be performed, without predicting the results or consequences, but with the firm conviction that they are making a sensitive and meaningful contribution to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

Jean-Pierre Aub\u00e9, Katrie Chagnon<\/div>
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