Pompidou at the MAC - Major Video Collections launch - October 20, 2010 to
January 4, 2011

MONTREAL, Oct. 20, 2010 /CNW Telbec/ - As part of its Projections series, the Musée d'art contemporain is launching a brand-new program, called Major Video Collections, focusing on the leading collections of video art around the world. The program will kick off with a presentation of four remarkable works from the New Media Collection of the Musée national d'art moderne/Centre Pompidou, Paris, scheduled to run from October 20, 2010 to January 4, 2011.

Major Video Collections will pay tribute to this medium that has been part of the main trends in contemporary art since the 1960s and 1970s. The inaugural presentation has been chosen from the Centre Pompidou's New Media Collection, one of the largest such collections assembled by a museum since video came on the scene nearly fifty years ago. It will feature four outstanding pieces: My Sneakers, 2001, by Michael Blum; Théâtre de poche, 2008 by Aurélien Froment; Albanian Stories, 1997, by Adrian Paci; and Floating Memory, 2001, by Liu Wei.

Milan-based artist Adrian Paci was born in 1969 in Shkoder, Albania. He draws on his own experience as an Albanian immigrant living in Italy for the basis of his works. In Albanian Stories, he filmed his then three-year-old daughter Jolanda as she made up a story for her dolls, about a family forced to flee its country, and then transformed the story into a fairy tale. Paci tries to understand the rightful place we each claim in the body politic and in society.

Liu Wei was born in China. He lives and works in Beijing. In Floating Memory, he revisits the gigantic Tiananmen Square twelve years after it was the scene of mass demonstrations aimed at democratizing the regime. "I carry all these forgotten memories with me into another phase of my life, not knowing where my destiny will lead."

Michael Blum was born in 1966 in Jerusalem, and is now based in Vienna, Austria. In My Sneakers, the artist travels back to Indonesia with his Nike running shoes to find out where they came from, and moves through the maze of bureaucracy and manufacturers all the way to the factory where they were made. His investigation turns into a geopolitical examination of the organization of labour and the global economy.

Aurélien Froment was born in Angers, France, in 1976. He currently lives and works in Paris. His works explore the coded nature of images and the mechanisms we use to construct memory. In Théâtre de poche, taking his inspiration from the 1930s illusionist Arthur Lloyd, Froment calls upon magician Stéphane Corréas, who pulls all kinds of cards and pictures out of his pockets and lays them out on a transparent vertical screen. Each different placement of the images prompts a new interpretation of the stories to be decoded.

Program

Adrian Paci, Albanian Stories, 1997, 7 min
Liu Wei, Floating Memory, 10 min 5 s
Michael Blum, My Sneakers, 2001, 37 min 30 s
Aurélien Froment, Théâtre de poche, 2008, 12 min

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Opening talk

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To inaugurate the Major Video Collections program, Christine Van Assche, Chief Curator and Curator of New Media at the Centre Pompidou, will give a talk on the issues involved in building a collection of audio and video works and multimedia installations, on Thursday, October 21, 2010 at 6 p.m in BWR Hall. In French. Free admission.

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