Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng

Research-Creation | February 2025

MYRIAM BLEAU |

Myriam Bleau (CA) is a composer, digital artist, and performer based in Montréal. Using music and sound as a point of departure, she creates audiovisual performances, video works, installations, and interactive interfaces that articulate sound, light, and movement. Her work is mainly channeled through performance, embracing ephemeral and elusive contexts. From code and machine learning to physical computing and devices, she considers technology as another agency that co-creates the output. Her hybrid practice explores porous spaces between the physical and the virtual world, between the natural and the synthetic. Her work has been recognized and presented internationally in festivals and events such as Prix Ars Electronica (AT), Sónar (ES, HK), Transmediale (DE), Sonic Arts Award (IT), Elektra (CA), Mutek (MX, CA, JP, AR), ISEA (CA, KR), ACT (KR), L.E.V et LABoral (ES), Scopitone (FR), Café Oto (UK)..

NIEN TZU WENG |

Nien Tzu Weng is a Taiwanese-Canadian interdisciplinary dance artist and lighting designer based in Montreal. She builds bridges between disciplines with an experimental approach to contemporary performance, and a laboratory approach to lighting design. As a choreographer and lighting designer, she focuses on presence and interactivity. She is curious about the relationship between movement practices and new media. She plays with the balance between reality and fantasy, working with light and multimedia materials to influence perspectives. For Nien Tzu, performance is a process of transmitting dialogues between internal and external spaces, where presence and image construct multiple, overlapping conceptions of time.

Nien Tzu received her BFA in contemporary dance from Concordia University in 2018. She has received numerous awards and scholarships, including the danceWEB scholarship in 2023 (AUT), the Mécènes investi-es pour les arts award and a CAM/La Chapelle residency in new artistic practices in 2019, the OFFTA Hybridité award, a research and undergraduate scholarship and an award in contemporary dance in 2018, and the James Saya award in 2015.

Her projects have been presented abroad at Sónar Festival (Barcelona, ES), Flipchart (The Hague, NL), Node Digital Festival (Frankfurt, DE), Biennale Némo (Paris, FR) and Ars Electronica (Linz, AT), as well as in Canada at IN/ON/OUT INTERARTS (Winnipeg, MB), SummerWorks (Toronto, ON), 1-ACT Fest (Vancouver, BC) and in Montreal at M.A.C.E. (Montreal, QC). B.) and in Montreal at Mutek, OFFTA, Elektra, Akousma, Tangente Danse, La Chapelle, and Montréal, arts interculturels.

Photo credit (portrait, right): Vjosana Shkurti

 

Second Self

Second Self is an audiovisual work and the first collaboration between choreographer and performer Nien Tzu Weng and composer and digital artist Myriam Bleau. Through movement, sound, and video, the performance explores the object of the screen as a tactile interface, prosthesis, mask, and mirror. Custom-made small LED screens of irregular shapes are worn on the bodies of the performers (Weng and Bleau). Gestures on the surface of these interactive devices inform the sonic and video elements. Amplifying the sense of touch, they reveal the porous and elusive surface delimiting our idea of a separate, autonomous self.

The project’s title, Second Self,  refers to Sherry Turkle’s book, published in 1984. The theorist suggests that intelligent machines that exhibit human characteristics act as a mirror or ‘second self’ through which we define the image we have of ourselves. The object of the screen, omnipresent in our societies, mediates this relationship to our ‘second self,’ acting both as a portal towards a hyper-connected network and also as a mirror, reflecting back an altered image.

Through different scenes, the artists explore the symbol of the mirror, social dynamics, and the myth of Narcissus and Echo. While specular and auditory reflections (echoes) multiply as in a mirror palace, a strange ritual unfolds, the performers becoming, in turn, reflections of the other, infra-human creatures, twins, shadows, or machines.

“At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg.”

– Donna Haraway, 1985

The Centre de production DAÏMÔN team is delighted to welcome Myriam Bleau and Nien Tzu Weng between February 2nd and March 2nd, 2025, as part of the Artist in Residency – Research and Creation Program.

Photo credit (banner): Jakub Dolezal

Photo credit (vignette): Gwendal Le Flem