To celebrate the publication of Nathalie Bujold’s monograph “Ouvrage [Work]”,  Dazibao and Vidéographe present a special event. This occasion not only marks the launch of the publication but also showcases a curated selection of her artistic journey.

Publication of OUVRAGE/ WORK 

This monograph, the result of a long period of study delving into Nathalie Bujold’s body of work over more than thirty years, brings together her most emblematic works. The authors whose essays appear here have closely followed her explorations or consider her artistic approach in a spirit of discovery and adventure. Their gaze, both probing and playful, is reflected in their relevant, enthusiastic writings about Bujold’s multidisciplinary and multimedia practice, now focused particularly on video production. The questions they raise cut across disciplines, prompting us to re-examine certain specific aspects of the foundations of her oeuvre. In turn, Dominique Sirois-Rouleau, Nathalie Bachand, Sylvain Campeau, and Édouard Monnet write about works with content related to the concepts of the object, the motif, the image, time, and movement intrinsic to the making of Bujold’s “books.” Taking us through time and including the artist’s incorporation of new technological tools, this nonlinear, often light-hearted overview encourages us to browse and constantly piques our curiosity about the forms of a vision constantly renewed by movement and the fragmentation of the object. (excerpt of the preface of Sonia Pelletier)

Artist: Nathalie Bujold
Texts of: Nathalie Bachand, Sylvain Campeau, Édouard Monnet,Sonia Pelletier, Dominique Sirois-Rouleau
Graphic Design: bureau60a, Vidéographe
Edited by: Sonia Pelletier

Publishing: Vidéographe
Parution: May 30 2024

ISBN: 978-2-922302- 10-3 (printed), 200 p., 49.00$ + tax
ISBN: 978-2-922302-11-0 (digital – PDF)

Special launch event price: $40 + tax

Film Program  62 minutes

Spanning over two decades of experimental exploration, the film program features thirteen videos distributed by Vidéographe, ranging from “Emporium” to “Le chant des cerises.” Each video serves as a milestone in Bujold’s evolution as an artist, capturing her playful exploration of image, sound, and movement.

• Emporium, 10 min 55 s, 1999
• Comptes à rebours, 3 min 25 s, 2002
• La montagne Sainte-Victoire, 5 min 27 s,  2005. 
• Les trains où vont les choses, 8 min 30 s, 2006
• All the good things (we could have done), 5 min 13 s, 2008
• Permanent smile, 4 min 20 s, 2008
• O.K. Gerard, 4 min 11 s, 2009
• Cabaret, 11 min 10 s, 2009
• Merci, 1 min 15 s, 2013
• Textile de cordes, 1 min 20 s ,2013.
• Le meilleur de HIT, 4 min 45 s, 2009-2020
• Métronomies, 48 s, 2022
• Le chant des cerises, 1 min 07 s, 2023

Ouvrages, which accompanies the launch of the monograph Ouvrage, is a retrospective program of single-channel videos by Nathalie Bujold, distributed by Vidéographe. This selection of 13 videos, from Emporium to Le chant des cerises, exemplifies the joy of playing with image, sound and movement, and showcases pivotal moments in the evolution of an experimental body of work spanning more than 20 years. The first video, Emporium, was made in 1999 and saw the light of day thanks to a happy accident, when Fabrice Montal spotted an initial edit at Vidéo Femme made with salvaged three-quarter-inch tapes and linear editing machines with huge buttons. The curator put together a program entitled Moi, fille, with videos by Manon Labrecque, Sylvie Laliberté and Lydie Jean Dit Pannel. Comptes à rebours was made during a residency at Cyprès, Marseille in 2002 and comprises eight mini-videos linked to and influenced by flipbooks produced a priori or a posteriori. La montagne Sainte-Victoire, created during a second residency in Marseille in 2005, this time with Vidéochroniques, portrays the mountain viewed from the road to Tholonet and Mimmet, in nature yet within the parameters of the medium. Les trains où vont les choses (2006), which received the CALQ Prix à la création artistique in 2008, marked a major move forward in the artist’s practice. It is the first multitrack video in a textiles-inspired series that continues today. All the good things (we could have done) and Permanent smile are two 2008 videos from a series of four made in the style of music videos: the images are produced after the music. Released in 2009, Cabaret presents a succession of short pieces like skits in which there is an interplay between the medium and elements of daily life. In O.K. Gerard, from the same year, the soundtrack has been created using snippets of music collated before our eyes.

Merci was commissioned in 2013 to commemorate 50 years of video art. In this work, the years traveled are celebrated with a nod to the many approaches and mediums that mark this hybrid genre. With Isabelle Bozzini on the cello, Textile de cordes presents the same instrument playing the same note with different techniques. This is exponentially repeated, from 4 to 16 to as many as 67 108 864 times. A collaboration with Quatuor Bozzini and composer Taylor Brook. Le meilleur de HIT, featuring Michel Langevin on the drums and selected from a dozen videos from 2009, was reformulated in 2018, and presented in an installation with Jacquard weavings in 2021. Métronomies, a short single-channel video made in 2022, pays tribute to composer György Ligeti, who would be 100 years old today, and celebrates the 60th anniversary of his piece for 100 metronomes, entitled Poème symphonique. Le chant des cerises concludes the programme; this work was made with Patrice Fortier using ground cherries from the La société des plantes during a residency at the Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay in 2023.  

Curated by Nathalie Bujold

Biography

Nathalie Bujold is a multidisciplinary artist, living and working in Montréal. In 1985,  she was one of the founders of the artist-run centrel’Œil de Poisson in Québec City. She obtained an undergraduate degree from Université Laval in 1992, where she won the René-Richard Award. In 2008, she was awarded the Artistic Creation Award from the Conseils des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2016, she received her master’s degree in Studio and Media Arts from UQAM. Her one-channel videos are distributed by Vidéographe and she is represented by ELLEPHANT gallery.