Displayed on the ground floor of apartment block 3680 Jean-Mance, Projet (Project) Projo is the type of artwork that is impossible to understand. Of course, we all go to such exhibitions thinking that if we do our best we will understand something, but inevitably we fail.
Take, for instance, the opening installations in the gallery: A man with a half-painted red face sits under a flower behind another man wearing an airtight suit and a surgical mask. At the next installation a projector shines into a sandbox and shows flitting and shadowy images of a man and a woman having sex. Meanwhile the frustrated voyeur is meant to tune into available headsets and listen to a D.H. Lawrence-like spiel about the role of man in lovemaking and the demon in women. There is also a lady stuck up a tree and a man swimming inside a crystal ball.
But this doesn't mean that the art is a failure. The theme—the body as perceived through the eye of the camera—is mercilessly explored in its performances. In the first, the red-faced man and two women (one of them blindfolded) struggle and writhe amongst each other before a huge white screen. And, throughout this and all the other improvisations, the man in the airtight suit holds a portable camera filming and displaying the action on the screen that is already over crowded with a medley of background images.
Perceptions about being live flesh and blood in increasing digitized times is what it says it's all about on the invite. It certainly sounds bizarre enough. Can we do no more than just fall back on a nothing like: 'Well, by shattering form and representation, it represents the turmoil of the outside world?"
Yes. Sitting in Centre du Parc and whiling away the minutes before the show, I was inspired as only a tabloid like the Mirror can inspire. My eyes had (accidentally) alighted on a new type of sex add: "FEMALES NEEDED. Make $700US/Month with a spy cam in your bedroom. Voyeur website is currently looking for young attractive females 18+. Computer not required." As you can see, the exhibition, with its subliminal eroticism and invasive camera work, hits the live-flesh-and-digitized-times nail on the head.
