The Next Community, 2010

Jocelyn Robert - Quebec City, Canada

Live Video

We are bombarded by reports about the supposedly growing individualism in our societies, at the same time newspapers are filled with complaints about the loss of individual freedoms. This work addresses these issues by subtly blending individuals into a collective moving image. Technically, the work functions as follows: there is a photo booth in which visitors are invited to enter one by one to have their picture taken. In the photo booth, there is an operator with a video camera. The video camera doesn't record, it feeds its signal to a computer. When the portrait framing is ok, the operator saves the picture on the hard drive. It is then processed by a custom-made blender software and becomes part of an "averaged" portrait: an all-in-one picture of the crowd. So when people walk out of the photo booth, they can see their own portrait appear and then slowly melt into the average identity. The bank of pictures is constantly updated as portraits are added, so the more portraits there are, the more diverse the mix. The composite portrait slowly changes over time producing a movie made from many. The work is an extended feature-length movie of everyone becoming an individual fading into the next community.

Jocelyn Robert lives in Quebec. He works in audio art, performance art, installation, video and writing. He published about fifteen solo cds, and participed in over twenty others. He was awarded First Prize, Image category, at the Berlin Transmediale in 2002. His work has been shown in Canada, United-States, Mexico, Chile, Australia, and in Europe. In 1993, he founded the art centre Avatar, in Quebec City. He currently teaches at l'École des arts visuels et médiatiques de l'Université Laval.

Suitable for all ages

Thank you to:
Patrick Treguer, Le Cabinet de Furiosité, Avatar and Productions Recto-Verso