February

We filmed on February 1st. Olivier and me. It was really cold outside!! I have two pairs of pants on me, big boots, big muffles and still… I was freezing! But it was worth it. I love the sky when it is cold and colour already give a cold feeling which marks a big contrast with the warm colour of October.

As predict, we got a lot of images (too much, maybe) around those spaces we chose the week before. And since this day, I had played with sound and images each day of the month … learning from technology and learning to be able to play with technologies (I learned what a proxy is). It was a back and forth between the sound composition and the video composition … because both give access to new relations and a different feel of what is happening and what should (or shouldn’t) appear. Adding a sound here gives an opening for an image here (and the opposite is also true).

As I said before, I like to play on different planes, sound and image doesn’t need to be fixed together.

I’ve made three different timelines, but I think the last one is gonna last. As the theme stays the same, what make the structure change completely my composition. So, the first timeline was more around videos with stillness, the second with videos of walking and the third is a twist in between. The third one seems to say something about life—birth and death—which is more what I found interesting about nature during the process. It was also easier to put older videos which bring riches warm colours to the film.

January

Place give us different time perception and alter our way of being. I’m feeling slowing down in wide space and peaceful in wood. Sound play an interesting part of this feeling for me. It’s like a hole. I feel sounds shrinking or expanding in space and my body follows this feeling. As time goes on and the project is in the last mile, I identified “places” or “universes” that will be part of the film. The train, trees in different spaces, the cabin, the studio. All of them are present in my life and are part of my nature. They will help me to find their relation(s) to Nature. And not only because they are part of the wildlife here but, like I said before, because the composition will rewire what I see. The train is part of the natural environment in Canada; the trees are literally everywhere; the cabin is made of wood and is now a place where animals, mushroom, wind define the nature of it. It shows how we build space to collect stuff and try to keep the memory of our own existence (which is finite). This observation brings a lot to think about dance, art and life for me and I like to explore this path. The studio is helping me to clarify new relation and open new relation to things because I can change the context. But … As I discuss with my collaborator (Olivier Arseneault), maybe the studio won’t be part of the film. 

Everything is still unstable at this stage.

This month, I was also working with sound, recording steps, nature, steps in nature, my life, etc. To try to explore what could be the soundscape for the film. How I can bring my dance practice into this realm to give more space to nature and still have a connection between both. I think I already said it: images and sounds don’t need to be a true relation for me. But I want to bring complexity to what the image said with sound. Like giving clues about what behind a human when you see a human in nature. And what could possibly have an impact on the relation I try to imagine with the film … because my relation with nature is complex and what I want and what I do is two things.

So … I need to think about it and I need to play with it.

As you can imagine, this project gives me lots of time to think about my relation to nature. Actually, I’ve seen how much “nature” is involved in our childhood and our house. How much we engage with animals, flower, insects in our first experiences of grabbing, sucking, touching, throwing … I didn’t realize it since the last month. Almost every little toy my little boy using to play is an animal. And what’s confusing, it’s the way playing mean at this age and how it stays in ourselves. For them, grabbing a little goat and throwing it away is funny. The goat is literally an object and I wonder if this relation stay in our way to engage with the world when we grow up…

December

Time is an essential part of my creative process. Obviously, it takes a central part in my rhythm construction. Time, in my work, is revealed by motion, sound or anything else that produce duration or have a duration feel. That’s what I do: I play with duration that engage myself into a sense of time. Involving Nature helps me realize that an important notion into being in a living place is how the aspect of “when” hook me. When is about relation. In Nature, wind, snow, rain, wildlife, etc. have specific rhythm. Those rhythms appear to be interrelated when I start to observe them. It’s a complex ecosystem where everyone seems to know when to be active or when it is time to listen to others. This makes a true shared place. Birds don’t sing at certain moments of the day (and seem to change their song…), letting the ear perceive the crickets, which let us absorb the evening duration. It’s the complexity of those relations that make Nature observation so beautiful for me. Seeing the same place going somewhere else by those transformations is magical and fluid. It’s like Nature giving us clues to anticipate what is coming up.

Although, this “when” thing is a puzzle for me because, it’s not something that is determined. It’s a relation but also a transformation (but only in the big picture. Individuality still exists.). It’s not a Q&A. It’s not a polyrhythm. It’s somewhere between hazard and responding to something. It's respect for the shared space.

As a professional artist (doing art for a living), time is a non-finite resource. It’s something I need to grab to be efficient and productive. That’s how capitalism inducts me to see time. I’m kind of obsessed with the elasticity of time, using it as much as possible. I’m stretching my time to get more and more opportunities to do something. As a result, my dance is most of the time active and stay on a regular and repetitive rhythm. For a couple of years, I’m working hard to get out of this steady rhythm. For now, I can handle different actions to create rhythmic layers, but still: time stay linear in my way to embody it. I stay in the big picture instead of surfing into those multiple cycles that I created. To be more specific, the “when” doesn’t appear relevant here. The relation is fixed instead of being fluent. There is no shared space, but a place “we” already know.

In Nature, time elasticity still appear, but instead of seeing a linear global activity which needs time to perceive in this gigantic context, I’m kind of forced to see each cycle before seeing the big picture. Giving myself access to rhythms with active and passive parts. And I feel there are some “clues” about this “when” things in those passive moments. Nature doesn’t feel the urge to answer or to say: “I’m here, I’m present.” Being alive isn’t about taking centre stage or to be “active”. It is just about being somewhere.

In this creative process, I engage into observation time, active or dancing time, research time, etc. And sometimes, I just rest. I’m trying to be passive and let’s the other ingredients of the creation (know and unknown) appear and involve into process…

And it’s not just a way to get more efficient after this “break”. No, it’s just a way to integrate another way to see time. I need to have those passive states to integrate this natural rhythm of active and passive parts into my creative process (and my life!) To push against a capitalist’s way to see time.

It’s helping me to give space to what I really want to present.

When I’m moving all the time, I don’t give space to those things: it start to be about me—which I don’t want.

I need to be a window of the world I want to present. Tempo will be my next step into this research. How Nature affects my “tempo”.

Starting with my heartbeat and my breath.

November

November isn’t my favourite month. The sky is mostly grey, the wind is sneaky, powerful and cold. There are all those little things you need to do before winter (because you didn’t do it in October to get the last moments of warm). 

At least, there is the first snow.

… Which is kind of a complicated feeling here …

I feel it’s not only a “month” thing, but it’s becoming a state of being for me: November is grey, windy and … chaotic. I share that, because I’m at this point where I go into chaos to explore what could emerge: I just go into action to see what happens and what could happen. It’s kinda the intuitive part of my process. So, I did some shot outside, exploring with sounds; with things from nature; exploring movement and sensations that the place could inspire me.

The brain is well done: unconsciously, he brings to us pieces of the puzzle; the one we looking for…

… or the one we didn’t know we were looking for.

It’s unclear at this point, but I guess it is still this relation-thing track. As I’m watching (and watching) my footage, I start unfolding things by making sound and video editing: one only with sound and the other only with images. It probably won’t be part of the final proposition, but starting here unravel things that are invisible without the big picture. For me, It helps to know what the choices are. And of course, I love doing this.

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Please use a headphone for a true experience. Be comfortable and available for about 8 minutes. Close your eyes.

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Please watch it without sound. Of course, sound will reinforce the composition, but as this is an exercise to bring different temporalities, it needs to be seen without sound.

October

First Notes on a Five-Month Project

Nature… What a splendid territory to explore as an artist. I don’t know if it’s the climate crisis that put the urgency to connect with it, but I’m clearly intrigued by this relation (or those relations) that we need to recover with nature. If I wanted to be briefer: I’m very happy to engage with this project.

That is said, let’s talk about our subject: Nature. In my work, I’m very intrigued with the naming process of thing before engaging it in my movement. It’s a door to a history of things that we, unconsciously for the most part, bring with us in our daily life. So, to start this project, I’ve no other choice than do a little research about the word “nature” and the way I’ll manage to unfold it with this project.

What Is Nature?

Borrowing from Old French nature, “nature, essential quality”; from Classical Latin natura, “nature, original quality”; from Classical Latin natus “born”, past participle of nasci, “to be born”. (Antidote Druide)

It’s also fun to notice that the word “nature” is used mainly for two different situations:

1. To describe “everything that exists and happens in the physical world independently of human activity.” (Ibid.)

2. To describe “the main or relevant qualities of something.” (Ibid.)

Both of them remain me the sensible relation we engage to describe things outside of us. Only the scope changes the situation: Do I look close to one thing or do I look over the big picture. And this scope reveal the distance we create between us and the world and I guess it’s something that I want to explore here.

I also love this idea of birth (that came from the etymology of the word) as the project should pass through three seasons (and they are really apparent here in Canada): autumn, winter and spring. Those seasons represent for me death (autumn), mourning (winter) and (re)birth (spring) and there is here something that connects to specific parameters of the percussive dance:

• Death

As the moment when the gesture brings sound to life. —> There is a death moment: the action is complete, there’s no more reason to move for this part of the body.

• Mourning

When the tension in the part of the body release, we finally know that’s no more sound will come from this action.

• (re)birth

When a desire comes from the heart, it brings back life to an action-oriented gesture —> I want to make a sound here and at a certain moment “in time ”.

Every aspect that comes into those three categories will be material for the piece. As it’s only a touch on the subject, the goal for the next four months is to gather information from Nature. Walking, observing, recording. Trying to reveal the transition in between each action…

Walking as a Guide

Let’s finish this post with a little recording of a walk I did this month. I found walking is a nice introduction to a sensible engagement with nature and a powerful tool when coupled with a recorder. It brings motion that invite sensations and the recording give me the opportunity to select what I want to isolate. Walking also gives me time to disappear and let the magic happen: it helps life to be seen. With this recording, you can hear this idea of “scope” and “distance” with Nature as a result of my walk.

When listening to it, close your eye, feel the transition(s) between places.

Antoine