Menu
From April 22 to June 13, 2022
Planétarium Rio Tinto Alcan de Montréal
4801 Pierre-De Coubertin Avenue
Guillaume Pascale and the research group led by Alice Jarry (Concordia University): Brice Ammar-Khodja, Jacqueline Beaumont, Asa Perlman and Philippe Vandal, in collaboration with Ariane Plante. With the participation of Jean Dubois (UQAM).
A speculative work that crosses the disappearance of the Earth in the eye of the Voyager probes with the atmospheric and ecological situation in the east of Montreal.
1977. The two Voyager probes are launched into space to study the planets in our Solar System. Symbolically, each one carries a gold-plated copper disk bearing a message intended to represent humanity. It contains images, music and drawings meant for a hypothetical intelligent extra-terrestrial life form.
Inertia revisits this approach on Earth using artifacts created to reflect today’s environmental challenges — they’re made of biomaterials, that is, renewable organic plant or animal matter. The work centres around a bioplastic disk that displays a binary representation of a daytime air quality status near petrochemical plants east of Montreal. This becomes the score for the first piece of music in a sequence of four composed using these data as well as the calculated distance of the Voyager probes from our planet. A series of laser-engraved biomaterial membranes and a film bear witness to this process, which suggests that in the same way that Earth is disappearing from the eye of the Voyager probes, the living conditions of the planet’s inhabitants are becoming increasingly precarious.
April 22, 2022, from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Debris, space, and meaning around the exhibition ‘Inertia: Speculative Fossils’ — The waste cycle of planetary vision infrastructures
Demos + Round Table
As Voyager’s scientific instruments are gradually being shut down due to a lack of available electrical energy, this public activity organized within the context of Earth Day 2022 proposes, from a vertical perspective, to compare the issues related to space debris with those generated by our ways of life on Earth. Drawing on engagement in their practice with residual, geo-inspired, reactive, intelligent or sustainable materials, the invited artists, designers, media theorists and scientists will take an interdisciplinary look at how these artifacts allow us to envision new scenarios and relationships for the waste – material and technological – produced on Earth, but also left adrift in space.
The event is free and will be hosted in both French and English.
Demos 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
Round Table 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM
For participants, please consult the Planétarium’s website here.
April 28, 2022, 6 PM
Inertia Exhibition Vernissage + Performance
Guillaume Pascale will offer a sound performance, improvising in real-time with the distance between the Voyager probes and the Earth.