As part of the exhibition Leonard Cohen: Une brèche en toute chose / A Crack in Everything, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal is delighted to join with centre Turbine in presenting the Autophonie project.
A residency by artist Cédric Chabuel at two high schools gave students an opportunity to create sound works inspired by the life of Leonard Cohen. For six weeks, one group of students aged 12 to 14, and another made up of 16-to-18-year-olds enrolled in a program of vocational studies, discovered different kinds of podcasts and explored the creative process.
As a follow-up to this residency, Turbine presents Autophonie, an installation designed to foster public interest in audio art, its aesthetic and musical value and its narrative power:
- A phone booth converted into a recording booth has been installed in the Musée rotunda. The public is invited to enter the booth and lift the receiver in order to share a personal memory or experience related to Cohen.
- A 1963 Chevrolet Impala, installed outside, at the museum entrance, acts as a listening station. Visitors are invited to take a seat in it and choose from various stations on the radio to tune in to recordings emanating from the phone booth, the students’ sound works or the musical ambience created by Cédric Chabuel. The soundscapes produced in the car will be streamed on webradio N10.as.
The public is invited to the opening, on Thursday, March 15, from 5 to 8 p.m.
Guided media tour, Wednesday, March 14 at 10 a.m.
Journalists are invited to a guided tour of the installation on Wednesday, March 14, starting at 10 a.m. in the rotunda and then moving outside the museum. Project originators Cédric Chabuel and Yves Amyot will be on hand to answer your questions. RSVP by Tuesday, March 13 to Nathalie Roy at: [email protected].
Audio clips from the works are available for members of the media, on request.
From March 13 to April 2, the public can visit the installation during MAC opening hours.
Autophonie forms rhizomatic connections by bringing together, in a new and different way, the voices of the museum public, students and artist Cédric Chabuel. Sound design, musical composition and documentary montage combine to offer us stories shared between the public and Leonard Cohen.
The installation arrangement offers a private place that consolidates the ambience created and the notion of shared experience. The car was chosen as listening station for the sound quality provided by the passenger compartment as well as for the proximity created among the passengers. The phone booth is an intimate space that encourages revelations of our personal stories.
Autophonie was produced by Yves Amyot, Julie and Marie Eve Bourgeois, Cédric Chabuel and Roby Provost Blanchard.
It is an initiative of centre Turbine in collaboration with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Monseigneur-Richard and Cavelier-De LaSalle high schools in the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school board and webradio N10.as.
The project was made possible by the agreement on the cultural development of Montréal, a joint venture of the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications and Ville de Montréal.
The installation will be open to the public during Musée hours until April 2, 2018.
