Biography(ies)

Mathieu Arsenault is an electronic musician and sound artist from Montreal. He is interested in the transformation and incorporation of the voice and the body in digital art practices. More recently, he focuses on the relationship between sound and image, which he develops through his collaborations with filmmaker Charles-André Coderre and video artist Véro Marengère. “Fractures Chimiques”, his collaboration with Charles-André Coderre, was presented in various festivals, including Mutek Montréal, Les Percéïdes in Percé and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. He is also performs under the pseudonym SEULEMENT, his most recent project with which he has played in various festivals, including the experimental music festival OK LÀ in Verdun, Wavelength in Toronto, Sled Island in Calgary, FME in Rouyn-Noranda and Suoni per il Popolo in Montreal. SEULEMENT’s first album entitled EX PO was released in late 2021 with the Montreal-based label Mothland.

Véro Marengère is an audiovisual artist that lives and works in Montreal, Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang. Evolving between 3D video art, live audiovisual performances and sound design, her practice reflects on hybrid forms of life and the relation we have with the virtual aspect of life. Inspired by animism and botany, her colorful and sensitive style recalls contemplation, hybridity, fragmentation and vitality. She has presented her work notably at PHI Center, MUTEK, OFF Festival Jazz, AKOUSMA, MAPP Montréal, POP Montréal, Lumifest, La Cinémathèque Québécoise, Cafe OTO and many more. She’s a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CRIMMT). She has a graduate degree in digital music from Université de Montréal and is a recipient of the JTTP and Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux awards.

MATHIEU ARSENAULT & VÉRO MARENGÈRE | LABORATORY

MATHIEU ARSENAULT & VERO MARENGERE

From June 22 to July 28, 2023, Sporobole welcomes artists Mathieu Arsenault and Véro Marengère in laboratory mode.

Limen is an audiovisual performance that combines 3D animation and modular synthesis. The project explores the transformation of matter and its potential for poetic and symbolic meaning. Through audio and video reactivity, the performance re-imagines the world of plants by putting them in improbable environments. By doing so, Limen suggests a botanist fiction in which its plant subjects are in constant transformation. Its sounds and images become entangled in a dance that is both intimate and visceral. The performance inhabits a liminal space of mutation where objects are never completely defined. Together, they form a perpetual motion that occupies many states of being and proposes an identity that is relational and uncertain.

In this performance, the music and video are both played in real time on stage by the artists. The sounds are made of loops of voices and flutes that are transformed using a modular synth and the images are created by animating 3D scans of plants and minerals. Both the sounds and images are produced using natural sources that are processed and rendered through digital technology. This creates an uncanny universe that oscillates between natural and synthetic.