To know the origins and future – of the universe, our species and ourselves – is a tall order, perhaps an impossible one, but will that ever stop us from trying? Montreal artist Julie Tremble, in her new exhibition at Dazibao, an artist-run centre in Montreal, applies herself to these tasks using digital media. The resulting show, Abiogenèse: des étoiles aux momies (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Mummies), on view until Jan. 21, consists of a four-channel video installation and a separate single-channel video, undertaken in a spirit at once geeky and blithe, aptly matched to the illimitability of the endeavour.
Julie Tremble, “Abiogenèse: des étoiles aux fossils” (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Fossils), 2022
installation view of the exhibition “Abiogenèse: des étoiles aux momies” (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Mummies) at Dazibao, Montreal (© Julie Tremble, photo by Document original, courtesy Dazibao)
The idea of abiogenesis – that life emerged out of non-life billions of years ago – forms, for Tremble, the centrepiece of a conceptual playground. Visitors encounter the concept in the first video of the installation, Abiogenèse: des étoiles aux fossiles (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Fossils), which presents various digitally generated paleontological forms against a dark background: several seashell-like specimens that rotate slowly, revealing cavities to interior spaces; the skeleton of a scrawny bird with a big beak and a prominent sternum; an animal skull with long, sharp teeth; and various arrays of what seem to be ribs, vertebrae and other bones, set in formation by an unknown but suspiciously curatorial hand. As the implied, simulated evidence of a primeval but fictive world, these items appear almost suitable for museological display.
Three nearby videos enfold the visitor in a kind of digital antediluvian blanket. On a screen to the right, formations redolent of organic tissues gently surge and abate in hues of red, blue, violet and yellow. Though more sophisticated, the effect is like watching a lava lamp: beautiful, humble, endlessly compelling. There’s a sense of drama being played out under a microscope, among the building blocks of organic life, a Fantastic Voyage of the primordial past.
Julie Tremble, “Abiogenèse: des étoiles aux fossils” (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Fossils), 2022
video still (© Julie Tremble)
On the screen to the left, a glowing planetary sphere passes through various shades of yellowy-gold, blue and white. Occasionally it surges and expands, taking up most of the screen. Between this planet and the organic tissues, the third screen shows a sunrise – or sunset – over a primordial sea. At length, the presumptive “camera” makes a nosedive into the water, revealing a sea floor covered by lichen-like digital textures. We are shown a swollen, burgeoning object seemingly formed of grey stone festooned by similar lichens in yellows and oranges. Eventually, a wider view reveals an entire forest of such formations, illuminated by golden rays of light.
Julie Tremble, “Abiogenèse: des étoiles aux fossils” (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Fossils), 2022
installation view of the exhibition “Abiogenèse: des étoiles aux momies” (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Mummies) at Dazibao, Montreal (© Julie Tremble, photo by Document original, courtesy Dazibao)
Sometimes the planet at the left shakes violently, sending tissue-like forms on the opposite screen into a freak-out: flickering and shaking, they fade to white. At these times, eerie blooms of rusty-red fog arise from the sea on the middle screen. As equilibrium is restored in the other frames, the red fog yields to wispy white clouds astride a blue sky.
Julie Tremble, “Luce RTX3090,” 2022
video still (© Julie Tremble)
Across from these developments, in a large alcove, we encounter Luce RTX3090, which shows an elderly woman standing on a shore, looking out over a gently lapping digital sea punctuated by rocks and sculpted marble pillars – perhaps the same primordial sea as in the installation. A sun sits low on the horizon. The woman introduces herself as Luce Guilbeault, the iconic Quebec actor and feminist who died prematurely from cancer in 1991. Here, however, Guilbeault tells an alternative tale (narrated by another actor, Sylvie Moreau) wherein an experimental cure for cancer was discovered, together with a solution for aging, permitting her to attain her current age of 127. These advances led, in turn, to longer lifespans, unanticipated overpopulation and drastic solutions, such as setting society’s legal age for death at 65.
Julie Tremble, “Luce RTX3090,” 2022
video still (© Julie Tremble)
In her monologue, Guilbeault – half real, half fictional – reflects on her life in film, which, here, in 2062, is yet to end: “It’s strange to grow old in cinema,” she says in French. “You get older over the years, sometimes quite suddenly, but you can always go back. You take a stroll past your different faces. You are both young and old forever.”
Perhaps our relationship with the future is not so different than with the past. We unearth an old scroll there, an entombed queen here, a bucket of new fossils – but telling their stories falls uniquely to us. In anticipation of a future, we make plans and predictions, but those are only stories too. Rarely does reality land anywhere near what was planned, and never exactly on the mark. We exist neither in the past nor in the future, but in an immediate, tumultuous present, the narrowest slice of reality, bookended on both sides by ever-vaster reams of science fiction. ■
Julie Tremble, Abiogenèse: Des étoiles aux momies (Abiogenesis: From Stars to Mummies) at Dazibao in Montreal from Nov. 17, 2022, to Jan. 21, 2023. An online viewing room with more information about the artist is available here.
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