Marie-Eve Levasseur

http://marieevelevasseur.com

SKIN | TACTILITY | SURFACES | CONTENT | HUMAN BODY

NEUROLOGICAL PROSTHESIS| THE OTHER | POTENTIAL EMANCIPATION

or

Are Images and Words Enough to Transmit the Complexity of Intimacy?

There are many reasons why one’s social life takes place, to a certain extent, on and in her or his screen. Failed attempts to connect socially, inherent cultural or language barriers, or just the feeling of not belonging within a specific group or location can lead to a search for connection and intimacy in one’s personal mobile device. Such experiences brought me to intensify my research on the screen space, what it allows and what it does not yet provide. This common but personal space enables an advantageous speed of exchanges, possibilities and flexibilities of a ubiquitous way of existence and a suppression of physical or even temporal distances. We are becoming partially nomadic without necessarily moving.

My work often deals with the questions of surfaces, storage of content and prosthesis. The mediating surface of our bodies (the skin) and the communicating surface of our devices (the screen) are the core elements of my research. How we perceive these by means of touch and how we position the informational or emotional content of our interactions inside or outside these surfaces, the outside becoming an extension or a prosthesis to the body, allows us to perform life differently.

We, human or non-human, never stop producing DATA, that is to say, an informational flow of language and meaning through texts, images and bodies. That makes us assist a gradual mutation in the way we share information, use written languages and express emotions. Tactility is also gaining importance in the way we touch our machines while losing some in the way we touch each other. I am especially fascinated by the current changes in communication, integrating totally (touch) screens and devices (machines) into human interactions. Looking at these metamorphoses is particularly relevant to my artistic process.

I orientate my praxis in an affirmative, posthumanist and processual way. I currently read a lot of philosophy, critical media theory or science fiction. The conceptual materia I extract from these texts becomes the main source of alimentation for my artistic work. Tinted with my own experiences, interests, location and position, I translate concepts into material and images. I work with video as “tableau vivant,” sculpture and installation of objets in a given space. It makes sense for me to work with video as a fixed camera depicting a simple action in its duration, because it reinforces the processual aspect of my work. Installation allows me to open the reception of my ideas in a non-linear way, which is important for underlining the dependence of the work with its time and space and to give the reception a greater flexibility of interpretation. Silicon, hair, digital images printed on fabric, sound metal and light are currently relevant material in my work of creating impossible prosthesis with imitation of human skin or technological surfaces that are central elements of my research. 

 

Marie-Eve Levasseur was born in 1985 in Trois-Rivières, Canada. In 2008, she completed a bachelor in Visual and Media Arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada). During her studies in Montreal, she coordinated the Off-Space project L’Art Passe à l’Est for young artists, and also the Actio Performance Festival.

Since 2008, she worked and studied in Germany, especially in Leipzig. Between 2010 and 2014, she was in the class of Prof. Helmut Mark / Kilian Schellbach in the Academy of Visual Arts of Leipzig. Since 2014, she is Meisterschülerin in the class for installation and room of Joachim Blank / Fabian Bechtle.

Her works have been shown in many group exhibitions in Montreal, Berlin, Leipzig, Copenhagen and Budapest. Her videos have been shown in different video festivals in Montreal and Marseille. Since 2011, she receives a scholarship from the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in Germany and obtained the DAAD-Price for foreign students at the Academy of Visual Arts of Leipzig in 2012.

Marie-Eve Levasseur