Session 11
The Troubled Pastoral
Mark Lanctôt and Jonathan Middleton with Douglas Moffat
On November 5, 2015 at 7 pm
Mark Lanctôt and Jonathan Middleton, in collaboration with Douglas Moffat, offer a multimedia presentation of their research and curatorial project The Troubled Pastoral.
Part-way between masterly presentation and performance, this session takes up the concept of the “troubled pastoral”, through which it is possible to revisit dystopian science fiction and pessimism it invokes; psychedelic culture, drugs and the altered states associated with them; and visual and aural interference and the irradiation of electromagnetic waves.
The curators offer this presentation not as a summary of their research but rather as an active and autonomous element which will take up, in its own manner, the obscure – even troubled – relation between seeing and the landscape. The presentation will include film clips and sound accompaniment improvised by the Montreal artist Douglas Moffat.
Mark Lanctôt holds a master’s degree in art history from the Université de Montréal and has published in numerous specialised magazines. Before arriving at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal as a curator, he was an independent curator and director of the Association des galeries d’art contemporain in Montreal.
Jonathan Middleton is an artist and curator. Since 2007, he has been the director of the Or Gallery in Vancouver. As a curator, he has presented projects in Montreal, Seattle, Hong Kong, Berlin, Melbourne and Cultus Lake, British Columbia. He is also co-founder of the Projectile Publishing Society and the specialised magazine Fillip.
Douglas Moffat blends recordings, electro-acoustic composition and landscape architecture to conceive and construct new listening spaces. His work has been presented in spaces including at the Reford Gardens during the International Garden Festival and at Send + Receive Festival in Winnipeg. In 2009 the OKTA project, a sound installation created in collaboration with Steve Bates within the collective Field Sound, was selected in the context of a public art work competition organised by the city of Toronto; the permanent work was officially launched in autumn 2015. Douglas Moffat lives and works in Montreal.
Dazibao receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications and the Ville de Montréal.