A Distant tête-à-tête
La Femme dans la chambre (The Woman in the Room) is an interactive video featuring, on a wide screen, a woman sitting on a bed. The visitor enters a dark gallery where s/he is invited to take a seat in a comfortable armchair placed in front of the screen. The armchair is equipped with motion detectors that turn on the video once the visitor is seated. The woman appears on the screen engaging the viewer in a tête-à-tête. The screen, however, acting as a virtual wall, prevents all communication.
By setting up a situation resembling an intimate conversation between two strangers – one inhabiting a virtual world and the other shrouded in the darkness of a screening room – this contemplative filmic work provides an unsettling experience that evokes the spatial and emotional distance between two people.
Curator: Marie-Claude Landry
Artist’s Approach
Andrée-Anne Roussel’s work is based on a filmic experience that is not limited to sight, but which engages all the senses. Her practice is devoted primarily to film and video installation. By combining these mediums, she creates hybrid works such as “sensorial shorts” and filmic video installations.
Biography
Andrée-Anne Roussel
Andrée-Anne Roussel is a multimedia artist with a bachelor’s degree in cinematography and a master’s degree in experimental media research and creativity from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her work has been featured at the Sapporo International Short Film Festival (Japan), at the London Analogue Festival (UK) and at the Analogica Festival held in the Southern Tyrolean Mountains (Italy). This year she will be joining the residency programme at La Plata in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and at LABoral – Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijon (Spain).
Andrée-Anne Roussel’s work is presented on the occasion of the opening of the new temporary exhibitions’ galleries. It will inaugurate The Project Gallery, which is adjacent to the permanent exhibition’s gallery, and is devoted to “spontaneous” programming.