in extremis (2019)

in extremis, by Dominique Sirois & Baron Lanteigne, is the result of a brand-new collaboration between the two artists. Both a sculptural and video installation - with passages from one to the other - the work raises questions about the liminal space between the virtual and the real, the materiality of the digital and obsolescence. Through a proliferating assemblage of screens - functional and dysfunctional - cabling and textile structures, the whole suggests a certain disorder where connection and disconnection dialogue in discontinuity. In a virtuality that eludes us, could the Internet survive its own death? This question, which of course remains unanswered, fuels a reflection on how the web's infrastructure extends beyond the screen. Between the hardware, the screen device and the indeterminate space of the digital, lies the gesture - that of activating this system. Different zones are revealed: first, the screen-portal of data reception and transmission; the touch screen and its activation by the hand, which extends into as many phalanxes of connectivity; then the other side of the screen - the beyond the screen? The network infrastructure, and more specifically the underground fiber-optic channels, a kind of nervous/bone system, reveal the fragility of the World Wide Web - or is this fragility only surface?

Text by Nathalie Bachand
Translated with DeepL.com

Collaborators

Dominique Sirois

Molior

Presentations

2020, The Dead Web: La Fin, curator: Nathalie Bachand, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, HU

2019, The Dead Web: La Fin, curator: Nathalie Bachand, Mapping Festival, Genève, CH

2019, The Dead Web: La Fin, curator: Nathalie Bachand, Mirage Festival, Lyon, FR