André Éric Létourneau

Infobox musical artist


Name = André Éric Létourneau
Alias = algojo)(algojo
Benjamin Muon| Origin = Québec, Canada | Genre = Experimental | Label = What Next? Recordings (USA) Inter/Le Lieu Avatar (Québec)| PPT (Paris)
Years_active = 1986 – Present

Background = group_or_band |mineminemine

André Éric Létourneau (born September 25, 1967) 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. [Prévost, Hélène, Le Navire Night, Text from the radio broadcasting of Benjamin Muon's 1999 concert, CBC radio, April 1999] His work has been associated with the development of action art, radio drama, performance art, process art, photography, sound poetry and experimental music. [Pelletier, Sonia, Bioskop codexcinétique, un champ cinétique exotique, in. Inter, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1996] 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. [Catalogue de la XVème Biennale de Paris, Editions Biennale de Paris, Paris, France, 2007]

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 commissioned by the CBC to create an 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, [Gauthier, Mario, Standard III (ou un silence en cache-t-il un autre?), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Web site and Radio Program), Montreal, Canada, 2002 (http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/texte-pdf/standard3.gauthier.pdf)] . 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.

Experimental music and radio-art

As a music composer and radio artist, Létourneau's works are influenced by the principle of indeterminacy in music, 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) and by the use of different systems of tuning involving the use of microtones. 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). [Lander, Dan, A Selected survey or Radio Art in Canada 1967-1992, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Center for the Arts, 1992] . 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, Juan Hidalgo, 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 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.

Art (manoeuvers, site-specific actions, contextual art and transmedia works)

André Éric Létourneau's cultural 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.

Interested by the idea that art can be used to question the effects of social conditioning, Létourneau adapts his materials and methods of production according to the environmental requirements of each project. [Pelletier, Sonia, Ondes fluides et points de forces, in. Inter #55, Québec, Canada, 1993] 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," [Martel, Richard, L'art en actes, Éditions Interventions, Québec, 1998] ; 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". [Spencer, Karen, Deflecting the Standard, in. Esse #47, Montreal, Canada, 2002, http://www.esse.ca/fr/article.php?no=47&article=7] 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 Fluxus group), John Berndt, Christof Migone [Gingras, Nicole and Migone, Christof, Trou, Galerie de l'Uqam, Montréal, Canada, 2006 (ISBN 2-920325-38-8) ] , Jocelyn Robert, Benoît Fauteux, Arahmaiani, the Chinese performance artist Zhu Yu and the Estonian group Non Grata.

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, Alexander McSween, Michel Smith (Orchestre Vélo Karel), Helena Espvall-Santoleri, Jackie Blake, Dan Breen, Neil Wiernik (a.k.a. NAW), Réjean Beaucage, Johanne Chagnon, Marina Surbanovic, Suzanne Joly and Jocelyne Gingras.

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 Yang 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. [ Alors, la Chine ?, exhibition catalog, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003 ]

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 radiodocumentaries 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. [CBC radio, Le Navire Night, rencontres, www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres.html , 1999]

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 Internationalesd'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. [Muller, Peter Baan, P/ACT : The work of André Éric Létourneau and Sandra Johnston, AKI, Enschede, The Netherlands, 1997] 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.") [Amicale de la Biennale de Paris, Economie laborieuse et action imperceptible, Conference at Biennale de Paris, 2007] In 2008, Létourneau's work is presented at La Biennale de Rennes in France.

Residencies

*2008 - Les ateliers convertibles, Saint-Jean-de-Matha, Québec, Canada
*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.5556, 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

* 2008 lys lys lys tigrés tigrés tigrés, (with mineminemine), CD Canada, (to be published in July 2008)
* 2008 Standard III, diffusion système minuit, Canada, 2CD, 2008
* 2008 Gingles et génériques (compilation with Les frères senseurs), CD, PPT, 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

References

Books
* 2008 L'artiste enterprise, Éditions de la Sorbonne, Université de Paris, France
* 2008 Meyer, Helge, Schmerz als Bild, Leiden und Selbstverletzung in der Performance Art, 372 S., Transcript verlag, Germany
* 2007 Biennale de Paris, XV, Éditions de la Biennale de Paris, Paris, France
* 2003 Joly, Suzanne (Ed.), Le petit Joliette illustré, Les ateliers convertibles, Joliette (Québec), Canada
* 1997 P/Act, catalogue de l'exposition d'Éric Létourneau et de Sandra Johnston. M17, Academy of Fine Arts AKI, Enschede, The Netherlands, 60 pages.
* 1993 Lander, Dan, A Selected survey or Radio Art in Canada 1967-1992, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Center for the Arts. (répertoire des oeuvres radiophoniques de 1986 à 1992), Canada.

Articles in contemporary arts magazines (selection)
* 2006 Gagnon, Dominic, Au Travail/At Work, in. Parachute No. 122, "Work", Montréal Canada.
* 2006 Caron, Jean-François, Son : seul souvenir in. Voir (Ed. Saguenay), Juin 2006
* 2004 Bouchard, Gilbert, A., An artistic challenge, Edmonton journal, mai 2004, Canada.
* 2003 Durand, Guy Sioui, 2003 : Tranches radicales d'art au Québec, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada.
* 2002 Grégoire, Paul, Exit, Esse 44, Montréal.
* 1997 Kuiper, Willem, Nederlands as kunstproject (Les Pays-Bas comme projet artistique), Twente Courant, The Netherlands.
* 1996 Pelletier, Sonia, Bioskop codexcinétique : un champ cinétique exotique in. Inter#64, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada.
* 1996 Hong-O-Bong, International Performance Art in. Art World, Korea.
* 1993 Pelletier, Sonia, Ondes fluides et points de forces, Inter #55, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada.
* 1993 Pelletier, Sonia, Une fête de zonard à Québec in. Inter #56, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada.
* 1993 Chassagne, Boris, Quand l'art-radio bousille la colle in. Musicworks # 53, 1993.
* 1992 Cron, Marie-Michèle, Cris et chuchotements in. Le Devoir, 7 novembre 1992.
* 1993 Durand, Guy Sioui, Les denses interzones de Québec, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada, 1993.
* 1991 Pelletier, Sonia, Considérations à partir d'un festival d'art radiophonique pétant : Radio-Contorsions, Inter #51, Éditions Interventions, Québec, Canada.

Documentaries (radio and TV)
* 2005 Bande à part, Déjà ailleurs, "André Éric Létourneau", Radio de Radio-Canada, CBC, first broadcasted nationwide on the March 6th 2005 at La Chaîne Culturelle de Radio-Canada
* 2004 Standard III, Le Navire Night, Chaîne culturelle de Radio-Canada, 2004, produced by Hélène Prévost
* 2004 Nouveaux territoires de la musique électronique, documentaire, Radio-Canada
* 2004 Standard II, Radioneta, Valparaiso, Chile
* 2003 Outfront, series Ultrasonique (#9), Producer: Steve Wadhams, CBC Radio One, Canada
* 2003 Le choix de Sophie, "Standard II", Télé-Québec, 2003
* 2001 Open Arts Festival, TV, China, 2001

Notes

External links

* [http://www.performanceart.ca/5holes/listen/home.html Five holes, Fado]
* [http://www.folieculture.org/micro/dispensaire/details/art/?page=4 Standard II at FolieCulture, 2007]
* [http://www.satt.org/kunst/02_01_exit_1.html Works created for the Exit Festival, Helsinki in 2001, text (in French) by Paul Grégoire]
*
* [http://www.targetautonopop.org/index.php?module=News&id=cntnt01&cntnt01action=detail&cntnt01articleid=15&cntnt01returnid=35 La Chèvre Phénomène project]
* [http://www.liberation.fr/culture/musique/303137.FR.php Review of the Cd "Jingle et génériques" (a collaboration with Les frères senseurs) in Libération, France]
* [http://lelobe.com/letourneau.html Constat réalisé au Lobe, Chicoutimi, 2006]
* [http://www.ccca.ca/performance_artists/f/fado/traduction/traduction_perf1 Pas de traduction, a project curated by André Éric Létourneau (Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art)]
* [http://www.performanceart.ca/traduction/home.html Pas de traduction Fado]
* [http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/psycho_geo.html psychogéographie/écosystèmes, an event curated by André Éric Létourneau for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (in French)]
* [http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/texte-pdf/standard3.l%E9tourneau.pdf Conference by André Éric Létourneau given in Chile during the Coalition International Performance Art Festival in November 2003]
* [http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres_hawtin.html André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Richie Hawtin (In English)]
* [http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres_palestineang.html André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Charlemagne Palestine (In English)]
* [http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres_ashley.html André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Robert Ashley (In French)]
* [http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres_blaine.html André Éric Létourneau in conversation with Julien Blaine (In French)]
* [http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/navire/rencontres_castillejo.html André Éric Létourneau in conversation with José Luis Castillejo (In French)]
* [http://www.sirp.ee/index2.php?option=content&task=view&id=5862 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)]
* [http://www.myspace.com/lystigres mineminemine's profile on myspace.com]
* [http://www.ravewave.com/?s=profiles_info&i=3426&flyerspostaudio Létourneau's profile at ravewave.com]