DETONATIONS | Katherine Melançon

DAÏMÔN is proud to officially inaugurate its ambisonic studio by presenting DETONATIONS ; a sound art exploration and creation project.

Seven multidisciplinary artists and collectives are invited to invest our new studio to develop works and share their approach to sound spatialization under the theme DETONATIONS.

DETONATIONS is a conception by DAÏMÔN, realized within the framework of the Outaouais 2019-2020 Territorial Partnership Program and receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, the Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l’Habitation and the city of Gatineau.

The installation Daucus Carota consists of four collages of digital negatives in the front of the building and a large collage in the back of the building. The collages are made up of digital negatives and digital “positives” superimposed to create images referring to the traditional
photographic processes in darkroom (photograms, solarization effects, cyanotypes).

The works in front of the exhibition are placed close to the traditional darkroom DAÏMÔN, one of the last in an artist-run center in Canada. The large collage is placed at the back of the La Filature building, acting as a table to look at giant negatives.

The images in these collages are created by performative scanning of plants surrounding La Filature, specifically the specimen Daucus Carota (Queen Anne’s Lace). The Daucus Carota  is one of the most common natural specimens in the world. It is around the building, especially in the parking lot across the street, where it stands proudly where it stands proudly, dominating the field in both winter and summer. There are memorable images that raise the question of excessive mowing of lawns in the city.

The installation is an invitation to nature to invade the space occupied by humans, as they constantly do, everywhere they go. This idea is more explicit in the large collage, proposing images closer to abstraction, trying to abstraction, trying to suggest a certain urgency to rethink our relation to nature, but also in the nature, but also in the perspective to accompany in a more suggestive way the performances that will take place in the green space.

To follow her work, please visit her website: https://katherinemelancon.com