Hecceites

Digital exploration and deployment project, in collaboration with Regart art centre, Lévis, boadcast on the center’s website, November 2022 to November 2024

“Far from inhabiting a closed floor furnished with different objects, animals live and breathe in a world of earth and sky – or earth and sky in the making – where to perceive is to tune one’s movements in counterpoint to the modulations of day and night, of light and sun, of wind and climate. It is to feel the currents of the air as they penetrate the body and the textures of the earth beneath one’s feet. In the open world, to leave the last word to Deleuze, “there is no line separating heaven and earth; there is no intervening distance, no perspective or contour, visibility is restricted; and yet there is an extraordinarily fine topology, based not on points and objects, but on heccoeities, on sets of relations (winds, ripples of snow or sand, song of sand or crack of ice, tactile qualities of both).” These heccae are not what we perceive, insofar as there is no object to perceive in the world of fluid space. They are rather what we perceive with. To summarize, to perceive the environment is not to look for the things we might find in it, nor to discern their solidified forms, but to join with them in the material flows and movements that contribute to their – and our – formation.” Tim Ingold. Walking with Dragons, 2013. (loose translation)

Supernatural landscapes, emerging from the radiographic treatment applied to video excerpts shot in a fixed shot on the place where I live and another one located nearby, invite us to enter the imaginary of a nature in the making. From my initial look at the dispersion of poplar cottons, pollinators attracted by the blossoming of a linden tree, as well as the waterfalls of a river I frequent, issues related to humanity-nature emerge, such as the major loss of biomass and biodiversity, as well as the accelerated melting of glaciers, as if the subtle suddenly became visible.

This project is part of the Décroissance program at Regart art centre. It was produced as part of the Exploration et déploiement numérique program of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.