Room 1

Caroline Hayeur

Mes nuits blanches

EXHIBITION /
SEPTEMBER 4 TO OCTOBER 11, 2003

OPENING / PERFOMANCE /
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 4, 8PM

In 1996, Caroline Hayeur began a photographic series on the Montreal rave and techno scenes. Over the years this research developed a variety of ramifications and made space for numerous series turning around nightlife. Mes nuits blanches brings together a multitude of studies captured on the artist’s exhibition tours, personal travel and nocturnal spins through town with her intimate circle or through chance encounters with stranger(s). Presented as immense contact sheets, these collections of images, encompassing over five years of shooting, occupy the gallery’s walls from floor to ceiling and form a syncopated assemblage.

The scenes, captured live in hotel rooms, friends’ apartments or nightclubs introduce notions of interiority and authenticity and reveal a particular sensitivity to the impalpable. Camera in hand, Hayeur tracks an everyday life woven with states of happiness, abandon, absence and idleness. “The art of the portrait,” as Régis Durand has it in La part de l’ombre, “consists of letting the richness of the exchange between the subject and the artist, between the subject and himself be glimpsed, and in giving the spectator the sense of an intelligence in these subtle stakes.” The images brought together in Mes nuits blanches form albums of a kind, through which are expressed the artist’s personal implication. In fact, more than drawing up a report on the state of a particular society, these crossings-through of friendships and encounters place us in the wake of her own trajectory.

debna

Caroline HAYEUR – Mademoiselle H. – invites Myléna Bergeron for a new collaboration following their shared performance at the 2003 MUTEK festival. Mademoiselle H. will perform live using two tools: the follow-spot and video projection. Myléna Bergeron studied electroacoustic music and voice in Montreal. Captured ambient sound is at the heart of her arrangements, used here to support new manipulations and digital treatments of the voice.

Caroline Hayeur is a member of Agence Stock Photo, an independent photographer’s collective. In 1997, she co-edited the publication, Ritual festif, Portraits de la scene rave a Montréal (1997). More recently, she held an artist’s residency in Mulhouse (2001-2002, France) that gave rise to the exhibition, Tanz Party (accompanied by a publication of the same title.) The events she has participated in include: Haiti regardé par le Québec (2002, Maison de la culture Cote-des-neiges), La fotografia tra stroria, fotografie della collezione, Fnac (2002, Milan) et Escales transcanadiennes (2001, Paris). During the summer of 2002, Parachute magazine (no. 107) published a photo serie in her “port-folio” project.