115 (winter 2017)
Motionless Bodies in a World on the Go
The theme Faire Statue (Statue Play) is the special topic for this collection of essays that inaugurates the 30th anniversary of ESPACE art actuel magazine. Co-directed by Mélanie Boucher, a member of the editorial committee, this issue is concerned mainly with performance acts in which artists identify body and soul with certain aspects of statuary.…
Édition/Forme/Expérimentation : Rethinking the book
Created in 2006 in memory of Jean-Pierre Latour (1951-2005), the Jean-Pierre-Latour Prize is awarded yearly to a graduate or under-graduate student studying at École Multidisciplinaire de l’images (ÉMI) in order to encourage the development of critical thought in writing a text related to practices of art and museology. Jean-Pierre Latour was an art critic and a part-time teacher at ÉMI from 1985 to 2005, and from 2000 to 2005, he was also a member of the editorial committee of ESPACE sculpture magazine, now called ESPACE art actuel, which in 2009, published the posthumous work Jean-Pierre Latour, critique d’art : voir et comprendre. When this first text was published, ÉMI and the part-time teacher’s union of Université de Québec en Outaouais, who award this prize, entered into a partnership with ESPACE, which has resulted in the prize-winning text being published in the magazine each year.
Face Politics
Our relationship to the face, this frontal part of the head that is linked to what is most intimate in the human being, often serves to inspire various interventions of an aesthetic or political order. Does the face, which for a long time was considered “the symbol not only of the spirit, but also of…
Memorial to the Victims of Communism: Chronicle of a Political Coup
With the federal elections barely behind us, this is an opportune moment to take stock of the cultural heritage passed on by the Conservative government, which was in power in Canada for nearly a decade. In the national capital, Ottawa, several monuments have been erected since 2006 (War of 1812 Monument, Canadian Firefighters Monument, Animals…
Fetishes: When The Object Becomes Thing
In recent years, many visual art exhibitions have given a prominent place to objects.1 Not those that—due to their status or showcasing—are recognized in the art world and already have an inherent aesthetic value, but rather the everyday objects that we either accumulate around us or destroy when they are no longer useful. Hardly intended…
Art, Memory and Truth
The theme of this issue of ESPACE art actuel is “Monuments/Counter-Monuments.” The monument is not a new concept; the notion emerged with the awareness of history.1 With its roots in the Latin monumentum, which signifies “that which serves as a reminder,” the monument is an object of commemoration. Its presence draws our attention to what…
Migrations, Borders and… Creation
At the mention of human migration, we think immediately of people across the globe who are obliged to leave their native countries in search of safer territory. The reasons for these forced migrations may be political, economic, ethnic, religious, or even, as is more and more often the case, climatic. While most of these migrations have been occurring…
