André Éric Létourneau
Encyclopedia
André Éric Létourneau is a French Canadian
media and transmedia artist, author, musician, composer and curator based primarily in Montreal
, Canada. He uses several pseudonyms, most notably François Quoirez and algojo)(algojo. His work has been associated with the development of action art
, radio drama
, performance art
, process art
, photography
, sound poetry
and experimental music
. Since the 1980s, Létourneau has presented intermedia works in international performance art festivals, galleries and museums such as the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre
(1992), the The James H.W. Thompson Foundation
in Bangkok
(one of Thailand
's National Museums directed under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn
, 2006) and at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum
(as part of Les Escales Improbables in Montréal, 2007). In 2006, he was one of the artists selected to represent Canada at the XVth Biennale de Paris
under a pseudonym.
Létourneau produced several radio art projects and music compositions for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC, Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster). In 1999, he was the producer for the CBC of the special Hörspiel broadcasted from 10 to 12 PM on the night of December 31 for the passage to the new millennium. Another Hörspeil, "Standard III" (2002), was commissionned by the CBC and broadcast on the night of Easter Sunday in 2003 under a program developed and curated by Mario Gauthier and Hélène Prévost,. He received several grants and awards including grants from the Artists and Community Collaboration Program (ACCP) and the Inter-Arts Program of the Canada Council for the Arts and from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
for his artistic and curatorial work.
, chance music, intuitive music
, noise music
, sound poetry
, text-sound composition, spectral music
, non-standard use of musical instruments, traditional music from different cultures (especially Balinese gamelan), by the use of different systems of tuning involving the use of microtones which incorporate electronics
and extended techniques. He also regularly constructs his own instruments and custom-built electronics.
He qualifies most of his works as site-specific
(pieces to be performed or installed in a precise place) but also "time-specific" (pieces to be performed at specific time of the day or of the year). Since 1999, Létourneau has also involved himself with music composition and interpretation and as the creator of custom-made instruments which are used in his work with the sound performance trio mineminemine
along with intermedia artists Magali Babin
and Alexandre Saint-Onge. The group regularly presents mineminemine's work in America and Europe.
Since the mid-eighties, Létourneau's also performed works from other experimental music composers such as Alvin Lucier
, John Cage
and I Wayan Suweca
. In 2000, he conducted a radio performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the Korean composer Nam June Paik
for the CBC radio.
As a musician, he collaborated with other composers such as Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect), Roger Tellier Craig (Godspeed You! Black Emperor
, Et Sans), Joëlle Léandre
, Jac Berrocal
, John Berndt
, Phill Niblock
, Alexander MacSween, Michel Smith (Orchestre Vélo Karel), Helena Espvall-Santoleri, Jackie Blake, Dan Breen, Neil Wiernik (a.k.a. NAW), Réjean Beaucage, Marina Surbanovic and Jocelyne Gingras.
As an executive producer for the CBC radio, Létourneau also produced concert recordings of musicians and sound-performance artists such as Richard H. Kirk
, Jean Dupuy, Thomas Buckner
, Johanne Hétu, Brandon Labelle, Christof Migone
, Guillermo Gómez-Peña
, Fred Frith
, Chris Cutler
, Serge Pey, Sam Shalabi, Alexandre Saint-Onge, Roger Tellier-Craig and Joachim Montessuis.
Létourneau adapts his materials and methods of production according to the environmental requirements of each project. For example, the use of correspondences, legal agreements, CD publishing and radio broadcasts in his 2005 piece "Standard III". Létourneau also used other media such as integration of sign language and lip readings in various popular productions for television and Hollywood Cinema in "Biblical Consequences of the Representations" (2007–2010); photography, pyschogeographic factors and individual conversations in "Standard II" (2001–present); radioactive material process in a particle accelerator at the Université Laval, aircraft and video in 1997's "3 9 30,"; anagrams and floating custom built sound modules in "Sonata for the Wolf" from 2001. "Létourneau is calling upon the structures that have and do produce us, our notions of nationality and belonging, and he is using the self same tools that gave rise to our present day status". Some Létourneau works are also raising issues about sex and human trafficking. These works were presented in collaboration with different NGO's, community groups and human rights associations in Canada.
Since October 2001, the artistic work of Éric Létourneau has been centered around a series of meeting-manoeuvers with citizens around the world. These manoeuvres take place in the United States, Canada, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Italy, Germany and France.
group), John Berndt
, Christof Migone
, Jocelyn Robert, Benoît Fauteux, Arahmaiani, the Chinese performance artist Zhu Yu and the Estonian group Non Grata.
and Chen Jin
, he took part of the Open Arts Festival, the first series of Performance Art Festivals officially organised in the Republic of China.
Since the end of the 1980s, Létourneau has also been involved in cultural and political journalism
in the written press and for various public and community media. He continues to produce radio documentaries about artists, including Zhu Yu
, The Residents
, Genesis P-Orridge
, Willem de Ridder, Jose Luis Castillejo, Juan Hidalgo
, Robert Ashley
, Christian Vanderborgh, Stelarc
, Cosey Fanni Tutti
, Angéline Neveu, Charlemagne Palestine
, Eduardo Kac
, Michel Chevalier
, Esther Ferrer
, Denys Tremblay, Julien Blaine, Jac Berrocal
, Richie Hawtin
, I Nyoman Rembang
, and I Wayan Suweca
.
Letourneau published articles in many art magazines such as Inter, Parallélogramme, Esse, and The Thing, and essays in many performance-art festival catalogs (such as Rencontres Internationales
d'art performance de Québec, Diverse Universe IV / Non Grata and on the CBC Web site).
French Canadian
French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...
media and transmedia artist, author, musician, composer and curator based primarily in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Canada. He uses several pseudonyms, most notably François Quoirez and algojo)(algojo. His work has been associated with the development of action art
Action art
Action art may refer to:*Action painting, a form of abstract expressionism*Performance art and art intervention...
, radio drama
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
, performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
, process art
Process art
Process art is an artistic movement as well as a creative sentiment and world view where the end product of art and craft, the objet d’art, is not the principal focus. The 'process' in process art refers to the process of the formation of art: the gathering, sorting, collating, associating, and...
, photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, sound poetry
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
and experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
. Since the 1980s, Létourneau has presented intermedia works in international performance art festivals, galleries and museums such as the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre
Banff Centre
The Banff Centre, formerly known as The Banff Centre for Continuing Education, is an arts, cultural, and educational institution and conference complex located in Banff, Alberta...
(1992), the The James H.W. Thompson Foundation
Jim Thompson (designer)
James Harrison Wilson Thompson was an American businessman who helped revitalize the Thai silk industry in the 1950s and 1960s. A former U.S. military intelligence officer, Thompson mysteriously disappeared from Malaysia's Cameron Highlands while going for a walk on Easter Sunday, March 26,...
in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
(one of Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
's National Museums directed under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn
Maha Chakri Sirindhorn
Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn is the second daughter of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thais commonly refer to her as Phra Thep, meaning "princess angel." Because her title in Thai is the female equivalent of the title held by her brother, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, she is informally referred...
, 2006) and at the Pointe-à-Callière Museum
Pointe-à-Callière Museum
Pointe-à-Callière Museum is the Montreal museum of archaeology and history located in Old Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was founded in 1992 as part of celebrations to mark Montreal's 350th birthday...
(as part of Les Escales Improbables in Montréal, 2007). In 2006, he was one of the artists selected to represent Canada at the XVth Biennale de Paris
Biennale de Paris
-History:The 'Biennale de Paris' was launched by Raymond Cogniat in 1959 and set up by André Malraux as he was Minister of Culture to present an overview of young creativity worldwide and to create a place of experiences and meetings.-Presentation:...
under a pseudonym.
Létourneau produced several radio art projects and music compositions for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
(CBC, Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster). In 1999, he was the producer for the CBC of the special Hörspiel broadcasted from 10 to 12 PM on the night of December 31 for the passage to the new millennium. Another Hörspeil, "Standard III" (2002), was commissionned by the CBC and broadcast on the night of Easter Sunday in 2003 under a program developed and curated by Mario Gauthier and Hélène Prévost,. He received several grants and awards including grants from the Artists and Community Collaboration Program (ACCP) and the Inter-Arts Program of the Canada Council for the Arts and from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec is a public agency founded in 1994 by the government of Quebec .- Mission :The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec offers support and funding for art projects that exhibit artistic excellence...
for his artistic and curatorial work.
Experimental music and radio-art
As a music composer and radio artist, Létourneau's works are influenced by the principle of indeterminacy in musicIndeterminacy in music
Indeterminacy in music, which began early in the twentieth century in the music of Charles Ives, and was continued in the 1930s by Henry Cowell and carried on by his student, the experimental music composer John Cage beginning in 1951 , came to refer to the movement which grew up around Cage...
, chance music, intuitive music
Intuitive music
Intuitive music is a form of musical improvisation based on instant creation in which fixed principles or rules may or may not have been given. It is a type of process music where instead of a traditional music score, verbal or graphic instructions and ideas are provided to the performers...
, noise music
Noise music
Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
, sound poetry
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
, text-sound composition, spectral music
Spectral music
Spectral music is a musical composition practice where compositional decisions are often informed by the analysis of sound spectra. Computer-based sound spectrum analysis using tools like DFT, FFT, and spectrograms...
, non-standard use of musical instruments, traditional music from different cultures (especially Balinese gamelan), by the use of different systems of tuning involving the use of microtones which incorporate electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
and extended techniques. He also regularly constructs his own instruments and custom-built electronics.
He qualifies most of his works as site-specific
Site-specific
Site-specific is used in a range of contexts:In art Site-specific artIn molecular biology Site-specific recombination...
(pieces to be performed or installed in a precise place) but also "time-specific" (pieces to be performed at specific time of the day or of the year). Since 1999, Létourneau has also involved himself with music composition and interpretation and as the creator of custom-made instruments which are used in his work with the sound performance trio mineminemine
Mineminemine
Mineminemine are an eclectic Canadian experimental music and performance art group, working since the late 1990s in conceptual-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1999 by the three interdisciplinary artists Magali Babin, André Éric Létourneau and Alexandre Saint-Onge with the support of...
along with intermedia artists Magali Babin
Magali Babin
Magali Babin is a musician, composer and sound artist based primarily in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Active since the mid-1980s, she received several commissions from many prestigious new music festivals and organisations....
and Alexandre Saint-Onge. The group regularly presents mineminemine's work in America and Europe.
Since the mid-eighties, Létourneau's also performed works from other experimental music composers such as Alvin Lucier
Alvin Lucier
Alvin Lucier is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and I Wayan Suweca
I Wayan Suweca
Wayan Suweca is one of the most highly respected performers of Balinese gamelan. Since the 1970s, he taught and performed extensively around Asia, Europe and America. In the early 1980s, along with his student Michael Tenzer, he founded and led the famous Sekar Jaya gamelan ensemble in Berkeley,...
. In 2000, he conducted a radio performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the Korean composer Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
for the CBC radio.
As a musician, he collaborated with other composers such as Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect), Roger Tellier Craig (Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Godspeed You! Black Emperor is a Canadian post-rock band which originated from Montreal, Quebec in 1994...
, Et Sans), Joëlle Léandre
Joëlle Léandre
Joëlle Léandre is a double bassist, vocalist, and composer active in new music and free improvisation....
, Jac Berrocal
Jac Berrocal
Jacques "Jac" Berrocal is a French trumpeter, singer and composer. He has been active since the 1970s in the independent and avant-garde music scene, and has released many albums. He also founded and performed in the group Catalogue, and has collaborated with Ron Anderson...
, John Berndt
John Berndt
John Berndt is a musician and organizer based in Baltimore, Maryland who is best known as an extended-technique experimental saxophonist and electronic musician. He participated in the second wave of the neoism cultural movement, the first wave having consisted of Monty Cantsin, Istvan Kantor, and...
, Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock
Phill Niblock is a composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium.-Biography:...
, Alexander MacSween, Michel Smith (Orchestre Vélo Karel), Helena Espvall-Santoleri, Jackie Blake, Dan Breen, Neil Wiernik (a.k.a. NAW), Réjean Beaucage, Marina Surbanovic and Jocelyne Gingras.
As an executive producer for the CBC radio, Létourneau also produced concert recordings of musicians and sound-performance artists such as Richard H. Kirk
Richard H. Kirk
Richard H. Kirk is an English musician specialising in electronic music since the 1970s.-Background:Richard H. Kirk first came to prominence in the 1970s as a member of the seminal industrial band Cabaret Voltaire...
, Jean Dupuy, Thomas Buckner
Thomas Buckner
Thomas Buckner is an American baritone vocalist specializing in the performance of contemporary classical music and improvised music...
, Johanne Hétu, Brandon Labelle, Christof Migone
Christof Migone
Christof Migone is an experimental sound artist and writer, formerly based in Montreal, now living in Toronto.He is the Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery and is a lecturer at the Centre for Visual and Media Culture at The University of Toronto's Mississauga campus.Migone's solo recordings...
, Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña was born in Mexico City and moved to the US in 1978, where he established himself as a performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. He has pioneered multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, performance photography and installation art...
, Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...
, Chris Cutler
Chris Cutler
Chris Cutler is an English percussionist, composer, lyricist and music theorist. Best known for his work with English avant-rock group Henry Cow, Cutler was also a member and drummer of a number of other bands, including Art Bears, News from Babel, Pere Ubu and Gong/Mothergong...
, Serge Pey, Sam Shalabi, Alexandre Saint-Onge, Roger Tellier-Craig and Joachim Montessuis.
Art (manoeuvers, site-specific actions, contextual art and transmedia works)
André Éric Létourneau's art manoeuvers work involves many media that are used simultaneously along with practices from other fields (such as science, sociology, psychology, community works, etc.). It may be difficult to categorize his work as much as of the practice by this artist involves operating directly within the social fabric while involving different social and ontological phenomena. Létourneau works primarily with the creation of situations based on cultural and physical environmental processes. His actions are often structured so as to avoid the creation of objects or material products. These traces in reality are primarily works where the confusion between art and life emerges as the salient feature. While operating within different institutions, the works of André Éric Létourneau often raise the concepts of power and consensus within the community.Létourneau adapts his materials and methods of production according to the environmental requirements of each project. For example, the use of correspondences, legal agreements, CD publishing and radio broadcasts in his 2005 piece "Standard III". Létourneau also used other media such as integration of sign language and lip readings in various popular productions for television and Hollywood Cinema in "Biblical Consequences of the Representations" (2007–2010); photography, pyschogeographic factors and individual conversations in "Standard II" (2001–present); radioactive material process in a particle accelerator at the Université Laval, aircraft and video in 1997's "3 9 30,"; anagrams and floating custom built sound modules in "Sonata for the Wolf" from 2001. "Létourneau is calling upon the structures that have and do produce us, our notions of nationality and belonging, and he is using the self same tools that gave rise to our present day status". Some Létourneau works are also raising issues about sex and human trafficking. These works were presented in collaboration with different NGO's, community groups and human rights associations in Canada.
Since October 2001, the artistic work of Éric Létourneau has been centered around a series of meeting-manoeuvers with citizens around the world. These manoeuvres take place in the United States, Canada, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Italy, Germany and France.
Collaborations
André Éric Létourneau collaborated frequently with worked with many performance artists to create performances, video and installations, among them Jean Dupuy (a French artist associated with the FluxusFluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
group), John Berndt
John Berndt
John Berndt is a musician and organizer based in Baltimore, Maryland who is best known as an extended-technique experimental saxophonist and electronic musician. He participated in the second wave of the neoism cultural movement, the first wave having consisted of Monty Cantsin, Istvan Kantor, and...
, Christof Migone
Christof Migone
Christof Migone is an experimental sound artist and writer, formerly based in Montreal, now living in Toronto.He is the Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery and is a lecturer at the Centre for Visual and Media Culture at The University of Toronto's Mississauga campus.Migone's solo recordings...
, Jocelyn Robert, Benoît Fauteux, Arahmaiani, the Chinese performance artist Zhu Yu and the Estonian group Non Grata.
Other activities
Between 1997 and 2001, André Éric Létourneau was a collaborator, executive producer and radio announcer for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). He has also served as a professor of Theory of Multimedia, Communication Phenomena Analysis, Art History and Conception of Transmedia Events at various colleges and universities. In 2001, along with the Chinese artists and curators Shu YangShu Yang
Shu Yang, born 1969, China, A Chinese painter, performance artist, photographer and curator. After studying at Xian Academy of Fine Art, he moved to Beijing where, in collaboration with Chinese artist Zhu Ming and Chen Jin, he set up the first performance art festival in China known as the Open Art...
and Chen Jin
Chen Jin
Chen Jin is a male badminton player from China. He is currently rank 6 in world singles men, after defeating Taufik Hidayat in the final of the 2010 BWF World Championships in Paris.-2004–2008:...
, he took part of the Open Arts Festival, the first series of Performance Art Festivals officially organised in the Republic of China.
Since the end of the 1980s, Létourneau has also been involved in cultural and political journalism
Political journalism
Political journalism is a broad branch of journalism that includes coverage of all aspects of politics and political science, although the term usually refers specifically to coverage of civil governments and political power....
in the written press and for various public and community media. He continues to produce radio documentaries about artists, including Zhu Yu
Zhu Yu
Zhu Yu is a performance artist living in Beijing, China. His work deals with subjects of contemporary art.Yu's most famous piece of conceptual art, titled "Eating People," was performed at a Shanghai arts festival in 2000. It consisted of a series of photographs of him cooking and eating what is...
, The Residents
The Residents
The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
, Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is an English singer-songwriter, musician, writer and artist. P-Orridge's early confrontational performance work in COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, which dealt with subjects such as prostitution,...
, Willem de Ridder, Jose Luis Castillejo, Juan Hidalgo
Juan Hidalgo Codorniu
Juan Hidalgo is a Spanish contemporary composer born in Las Palmas, Canary Islands in 1927. After studying piano and composition in Barcelona and Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Bruno Maderna, in 1957 participates in the XII Internationale Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik festival in Darmstadt with his...
, Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley , is a contemporary American composer, best known for his operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. Along with Gordon Mumma, Ashley was also a major pioneer of audio synthesis.Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan...
, Christian Vanderborgh, Stelarc
Stelarc
Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete...
, Cosey Fanni Tutti
Cosey Fanni Tutti
Cosey Fanni Tutti is best known as a performance artist and for her time in Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey....
, Angéline Neveu, Charlemagne Palestine
Charlemagne Palestine
Charlemagne Palestine is an American minimalist composer, performer, and visual artist...
, Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac is an American contemporary artist internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio-art. Kac was born in 1962, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He lives and works in Chicago....
, Michel Chevalier
Michel Chevalier
Michel Chevalier was a French engineer, statesman, economist and free market liberal.-Biography:Born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, Chevalier studied at the École Polytechnique, obtaining an engineering degree at the Paris École des mines in 1829.In 1830, after the July Revolution, he became a...
, Esther Ferrer
Esther Ferrer
Esther Ferrer is a Spanish interdisciplinary artist and performance art teacher. She is regarded as one of the major Spanish artists of her generation...
, Denys Tremblay, Julien Blaine, Jac Berrocal
Jac Berrocal
Jacques "Jac" Berrocal is a French trumpeter, singer and composer. He has been active since the 1970s in the independent and avant-garde music scene, and has released many albums. He also founded and performed in the group Catalogue, and has collaborated with Ron Anderson...
, Richie Hawtin
Richie Hawtin
Richard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...
, I Nyoman Rembang
I Nyoman Rembang
I Nyoman Renbang was an Indonesian musician, composer, teacher and instrument maker. He is considered by many ethnomusicologists as one of the most influential Balinese musicians and composers of the twentieth century .-Early life:I Nyoman Rembang started his musical...
, and I Wayan Suweca
I Wayan Suweca
Wayan Suweca is one of the most highly respected performers of Balinese gamelan. Since the 1970s, he taught and performed extensively around Asia, Europe and America. In the early 1980s, along with his student Michael Tenzer, he founded and led the famous Sekar Jaya gamelan ensemble in Berkeley,...
.
Letourneau published articles in many art magazines such as Inter, Parallélogramme, Esse, and The Thing, and essays in many performance-art festival catalogs (such as Rencontres Internationales
d'art performance de Québec, Diverse Universe IV / Non Grata and on the CBC Web site).
Awards and biennales
In 1997, André Éric Létourneau received the Media Art Award from the Pépinières Européennes. A book about his work P/ACT, was published by the Academy of Fine Arts in Enschede, the Netherlands. Since 1999, he received several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and from several private foundations. At the opening of the XVe Biennale de Paris in 2008, it appointed director Mr Alexandre Gurita, declared about Letourneau's work : "La démarche d'André Eric Letourneau s'inscrit dans le spectre de l'invisibilité opérante, qui constitue l'axe de l'économie de l'immatériel et de la connaisance vers lesquelles nos sociétés évoluent. Dans sa pratique, le temps de l'art se fait avoir par le temps réel." (The work of André Éric Létourneau is created within the spectrum/ghost of the principle of operative invisibility, which is the axis of the dematerialized world we are now living in - because of its ways of storing knowledge and memory. In his art, the time of art is snatched by the time of reality.") In 2010, Létourneau's work is presented at the biennale "Madrid abierto" in Spain.Residencies
- 2008 - La Générale, Sèvres, Ile-de-France
- 2007 - Agence TOPO, Montréal, Québec, Canada
- 2006 - Le Lobe, Chicoutimi, Québec Canada, Canada
- 2002 - Les ateliers convertibles, Joliette, Québec, Canada
- 1997 - AKI, ArtEZ academie voor beeldende kunsten Enschede, The Netherlands
Writings
- 2007 - Non Grata : The Pleasure of Intimacy, (introduction for the Non Grata Anthology) in Non Grata II, Non Grata Academy, Tallinn, Estonia (in English and Estonian)
- 2007 - Non Grata in The Sirp, Tallinn, Estonia (in Estonian)
- 2002 - Mon truc à poil de Josée Fafard, Exhibition documentation, B312 Gallery, Montreal (in French)
- 2001 - Une beauté suspecte quant à sa nature légale?, in ESSE#43,Montréal, (in French)
- 2000 - L’accident comme thésaurisation, in Inter Magazine, "L’accident”. Ed. Interventions (in French)
- 2000 - Réflexions shématiques, essay, in ESSE, "Dossier performance"
- 1999 - Robert Ashley, oralité - auralité, entrevue et essai, web site of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, www.radio-Canada.ca/radio/navire (in French)
- 1995 - La voix désincarnée et la «cybercarnation» (…), essay, in Inter Magazine #64 "Art et électronique". Ed. Interventions
- 1995 - Première rencontre d'art performance de Québec, catalog of the event, Ed. Interventions, Québec
- 1995 - Joseph Ng ou les fins de la censure à postériori / The Necessary Stage : pour une restructuration d’une éthique de la parole, articles sur la pratique de l’art performance à Singapour In. Inter Magazine #62, Ed. Interventions
- 1994 - «Kreasi baru » outil séculaire des idéologies. (essai sur la situation de l’art contemporain dans la société indonésienne) In. Inter magazine #59. Ed. Interventions, Québec, No. 59
- 1993 - Actions radiophoniques, In. Inter Magazine, No.55\56, Edition Interventions, Québec.
- 1991 - L’empire des ondes (médias et nouvelle radiophonie), A World of Waves (translated by Jean-Luc Svoboda) in Parallélogramme, Vol.16, No. 4, ANNPAC, Toronto, Canada
Discography
- 2010 Standard III, PPT \ Strembogen, Paris, 2CD, 2009
- 2008 Gingles et génériques (compilation with Les frères senseurs), CD, PPT \ Strembogen, Paris, 2008
- 2006 Montréal, capitale mondiale de la slush Vol I, II et III, Slush Kapital, online project Post Audio NetLab, Produced by Agence Topo, Montréal, Canada
- 1997 Compost, CD, Ohm/Avatar, Québec, Canada (w. Pierre-André Arcand, Jocelyn Robert et Christof Migone)
- 1996 Rappel/L'art téléphonique (compilation), CD, Ohm/Avtar no 006, Québec, Canada, 1996
- 1996 Radius 4 (compilation), What next?Recordings, CD, USA 1996
- 1996 1,000,033e anniversaire de l'art sur CD, par Inter/Le Lieu, Québec, Canada, 1996 (split with Alain Gilbertie, Robert Fillliou, Richard Martel, etc.)
- 1995 "Oui, il parle de façon très rationnelle, mais ça n'a rien à voir avec la vraie vie", cassette BIOSKOP (split with NAW), Galerie Articule, Art Métropole, Toronto
- 1995 Ding dong Deluxe (compilation), CD, Ohm/Avtar, Québec, Canada, 1994
External links
- Five holes, Fado
- Standard II at Folie\Culture, 2007
- Works created for the Exit Festival, Helsinki in 2001, text (in French) by Paul Grégoire
- La Chèvre Phénomène project
- Review of the Cd "Jingle et génériques" (a collaboration with Les frères senseurs) in Libération, France
- Constat réalisé au Lobe, Chicoutimi, 2006
- Pas de traduction, a project curated by André Éric Létourneau (Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art)
- Pas de traduction Fado
- http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/psycho_geo.htmlpsychogéographie/écosystèmes, an event curated by André Éric Létourneau for the Canadian Broadcasting CorporationCanadian Broadcasting CorporationThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
(in French)] - Conference by André Éric Létourneau given in Chile during the Coalition International Performance Art Festival in November 2003
- André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Richie Hawtin (In English)
- André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Charlemagne Palestine (In English)
- André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Robert Ashley (In French)
- André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Julien Blaine (In French)
- André Éric Létourneau in conversation with José Luis Castillejo (In French)
- André Éric Létourneau : Ühe atraktiivsuse lähedus (või vastupidi), article about the performance art group Non Grata published in The Sirp (Tallinn, Estonia) August 2007 (In Estonian)
- mineminemine's profile on myspace.com
- Létourneau's profile at ravewave.com