Fabricate your own truth for free.
Appropriate words and gestures, embody radio news and contribute to the propagation of information without verification.
A total sensory and immersive experience, RADIOMATON questions the construction of truth, media contamination, fake news and the role of the body in the perception of information.
Installed in a cubicle resembling a photo booth and equipped with headphones broadcasting live a local radio station, each RADIOMATON user must repeat aloud the words they hear, while imitating the gestures that are displayed on the screen in front of them. This recorded performance, mingling movements and words that do not match together, is remixed in a kaleidoscope where all meanings intersect.
AUTOMATIC – INSTANTANEOUS – TECHNICOLOR
IN ONLY 5 MINUTES
Co-designed by Marie Béland and Simon Laroche
A coproduction by MARIBÉ – SORS DE CE CORPS and MONTRÉAL DANSE
The RADIOMATON installation is conceived to be either a stand-alone or an experience to co-exist with the show BESIDE.
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Teaser
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Photos
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Calendar
Next dates : July 26th to August 6th, 2023 at Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur
For more information, visit our calendar.
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Artistic credits
A creation by Marie Béland and Simon Laroche
A coproduction and artistic partnership by MARIBÉ – SORS DE CE CORPS and Montréal Danse
Performers : Rachel Harris, Sylvain Lafortune and Bernard Martin
Dramaturge : Kathy Casey
Booking : Art Circulation
RADIOMATON receives the financial support of Canada Council for the Arts.
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RADIOMATON: its origins and intentions
Seeking to give the public a concrete experience similar to that of the performers of the stage work BESIDE (creation Marie Béland, presented since 2019 in Quebec and Europe), we, Marie Béland and Simon Laroche, began the creation of what would become the RADIOMATON.
The RADIOMATON offers a great challenge for participants: they have to speak and move at the same time while listening to a live radio station, superimposing gestures and words that do not do not belong together. RADIOMATON, like BESIDE, questions the construction of truth, media contamination, “fake news” and the role of the body in the perception of information.
We are interested in glitches, glitches of systems, but also glitches of individuals by placing them in situations that are practically impossible to get out of brilliantly. RADIOMATON has the potential to bring out a touching and authentic state of cognitive overload in participants. This is a fascinating state, to our eyes, of an ultra-presence to information that translates into a quasi-physical absence where social filters disappear for the benefit of the task at hand.
Our research revolved around three axes:
– creating a mediation work, in the sense of creating a bridge linking the real, kinesthetic experience of the users of RADIOMATON to their visual and sensory experience of the stage work BESIDE. We wanted to bring to life a state of mental overload, generated in part by the dissociation between reproduced gestures and repeated words, similar to the way the performers experience it on stage. We also wanted RADIOMATON to be an autonomous object, unlinked to BESIDE, allowing participants to experience this state of dissociation within their own body;
– using the digital technologies specific to Simon’s work, to revisit the movements coming from screens, television and digital media that were the origin for the movements used in the show BESIDE. The RADIOMATON programming algorithm combines, then deconstructs and fragments both visual and audio information, bringing into play our own view of the validity of the content that our screens send us. By giving users the opportunity to see themselves mechanically repeating what has been dictated to them, and by integrating fragments of these performances into a large video kaleidoscope of all the participants in a web of words and gestures, we wanted to accentuate this disconnection between movement and discourse, and thus bring out aspects specific to each – normativity of bodily expression on television, semiology of gesture, informational entropy;
– deepening the themes at the heart of Marie’s approach to dance, which consists of examining the discourses and counter-discourses of movement. Marie is particularly interested in the choreography produced by our speaking bodies: which body, which movement and for which discourse? While questioning the impact of the media on our ways of perceiving and understanding information and opinions, as well as the role that body and gesture can play in the credibility of discourse, we wanted to see how dance, media and interactive arts, can help us understand how we are affected by the way information is transmitted to us today.
In order to encourage participation and create an inviting, accessible work, we created an object looking like a photo booth. By playing with the codes of installation art and the image of these booths present in the collective imagination, we created a familiar space, easy to use, but one that disturbs at the same time, by the performance stance that we invite participants to take, staging of their own image.
Marie Béland and Simon Laroche
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Contacts
Marie Béland | General and Artistic Director of MARIBÉ – SORS DE CE CORPS
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Kathy Casey | Artistic Director of Montréal Danse
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Jamie Wright | Codirector of Art Circulation, representation Québec and Canada
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Karolina Rychlik | Codirector of Art Circulation, representation Europe and Asia
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Luce Couture | Booking agent – Québec and Canada
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