Where does your desire to express yourself through art come from?
I do not think that desire is the appropriate word. It is more of a need, often an obsession. I do not perceive my activity as an artist as being one that I chose. It chose me. Since my teenage years playing keyboards in a blues/R&B group in Canada, I always felt the need, the obligation to express myself artistically – to formalize and present perspectives on my personal experiences and relationships with my environment and the world at large. If I was obliged to try and trace the origins of this involuntary necessity to express myself, I suppose I could trace a good part of it to the cultural-based, liberal arts upbringing I received from my parents. Although not involved in the arts, both my parents exposed me to various forms of art from a very young age, primarily in the area of classical music (my mother) and the blues/jazz (my father). I was encouraged to learn to play instruments (piano, tenor sax, cello) and to draw and create objects with my hands. Creative critical thinking was always prioritized. I was also extremely fortunate to have parents who loved to travel and provided me with the opportunity to experience various European cultures growing up. These cultural encounters had a lasting, enlightening impact.
Although I spent many years at university studying economic theory, I never believed I would work as an economist. I studied it simply because I wanted to better understand the micro- and macroeconomic relationships that in so many ways shaped the world in which I lived. I always knew my calling was elsewhere. I left my doctoral studies to become a photographer and within three years I had left the commercial photographic world behind to pursue a career as a photographic artist in Paris and New York. The diversity of my work (photography / video / music) is undoubtedly due to my work at the American Center in Paris where I founded the photography department and was later named Director of the prestigious Center for Media Art and Photography. This institution was responsible for my first contacts with the video art world as well as with the variety of world class contemporary music composers and musicians that generated an interest in audiovisual creation of various forms which persists to this day.
What are your goals as an artist?
Broadly speaking, my objective is to create work that addresses the human condition, work that speaks to the ambiguity, uncertainty and doubts that inevitably characterize our existence. I do not seek to pontificate or to convince the public of the superiority of any given position, including mine; instead, I wish to create work from a very personal perspective that raises questions about our existence – on both personal and more general conceptual levels – work that provokes reflection on what we think and feel, how we act and why. I want to raise questions of relevance to our personal and collective states of mind.
What is your opinion on the cultural industry?
Over the past 40 years, I feel that what was once an environment with a diversity of actors playing different complementary roles (some commercial, some promotional, some analytical, others purely creative) has, in fact, become an industry in the true sense of the word – one in which the pursuit of money and public recognition dominates the cultural landscape. This is not to say that these pursuits are not important, but in my view, they should only constitute a necessary complement to other more important goals involving the creation of quality works exploring new perspectives and demonstrating independent critical thinking on subject matter. Any field that is run like a business, ultimately becomes a business and I feel that in the cultural domain, money should be in the service of provocative, probing art, not the contrary.
Sadly, the group most affected by this evolution are young artists struggling to carve out a place for their work. They have fewer opportunities to confront the public in relatively risk-free contexts and therefore have less and less time to fail without potentially serious consequences. Such experiences are important to the development of truly personal perspectives. From the outset, the pressure to impress and succeed is significant and the price for failing to impress with the requisite monetary rewards for all, can be high and long-lasting.
Do you think independent artists today have enough opportunities to share their creativity?
The obvious answer is no. More new and diverse opportunities are, by definition, always welcome. We live in conservative times and yet, in spite of the rather negative evolution of the indie art universe over the past 30 years, I believe things are improving in what is perhaps a sustainable manner. In my field of experimental film and video art, there has been a proliferation of festivals and showcases specifically devoted to the field over the past five years. The internet has provided opportunities to share our work on a scale and in ways unforeseen only a decade ago. Add to this the fact that home audiovisual studios can today produce work of premium quality that liberates independent artists form the burden of finding financing to pay for expense post-production studios. What remains to be seen however, is whether these new opportunities to exhibit, promote and distribute work will be in the service of truly innovative art, raising relevant questions in provocative ways that stimulate thought or will simply go the way of much of the mainstream art world.
I remain optimistic.
What new project are you currently working on?
My most recent experimental video “NOISE” is, in fact, the introductory segment of my international, interactive installation project entitled “The Choir of Discontent” which is ongoing at the present time.
The project is designed to expose the frustrations, anxieties, hopes and fears of everyday people in countries around the world. More specifically, it deals with the fact that the Internet and social media platforms have provided most of the world’s population with a readily available and inexpensive outlet for expressing opinions and expectations on a daily basis. As a result, we live in a world in which expressing ourselves about the challenges we face has perhaps never been easier and yet, it is increasingly difficult to be heard and understood because of the level of “message noise” generated by the quantity of thoughts being simultaneously expressed as a direct result of such ease. Rather than making us more empathetic and attentive to each other’s needs, it has in many ways alienated us by creating a cacophony of grievances and expectations that is so vast, rich and diverse that it is impossible to pay attention to individual expressions of fear, apathy, hope or estrangement in any meaningful and effective manner.
The Choir of Discontent re-contextualizes this preoccupying situation in the form of a two-part installation consisting of the single channel video “NOISE” that serves as a thematic introduction to a multilingual interactive video installation composed of walls of video images of persons from different countries who have been asked to express themselves freely and spontaneously (without preparation) on topics related to their frustrations, deceptions and hopes. Individual interviews will rarely be decipherable as programmed waves of simultaneous presentation render them little more than meaningless noise. One or more microphones, video cameras and monitors will be installed to permit the viewing public to contribute their thoughts and feelings live in real time.
The interviews with participants from Brazil, Canada, the USA and France have already been completed by video artist collaborators in each of these countries. I am currently trying to organize interviews in Asia and Africa. Hopefully all of the necessary interviews will be completed in 2025 and post-production can begin in 2026.
