Nuit Européenne des Musées
Programmation Spéciale

“E.V.E Absolute Matrix”, video installation from Gunilla Josephson

“E.V.E Absolute Matrix” is a high definition video installation comprising 86,400 video frames carefully chosen and manipulated by Gunilla Josephson. They are from the studio recording of a five-hour performance by Toronto musician Eve Egoyan playing Inner Cities, a contemporary piece for solo piano by composer Alvin Curran.

The video explores the expressiveness of Egoyan, whose face is framed in close-up, rendering impossible any attempt at detachment or of escaping the inner emotional reality expressed. Her body language helps us imagine the movement of her fingers on the keys of a piano that we will never see and whose melody we will not recognize as the sound, like the image, changes over time and takes us to an inner reality that is both strange and sublime. Over time, Josephson’s manipulations and distortions of the images become more and more noticeable, making the pianist’s face a medium. The rest of the video, even more unsettling, blurs all boundaries; the face, which undergoes multiple transformations, clouds over and gradually assumes the appearance of an idyllic and unsettling wild animal.

Gunilla Josephson

Swedish-born artist Gunilla Josephson lives and works in Toronto, Canada. For the last fourteen years, she has mainly worked in video and video installation. Her art also features stage design, the projection of Super-8 films onto drawings, large-format painting, and sculpture in wax, felt and latex. Her video installations range from experimental “historical” narratives to personal mythologies to portraits in motion.

Free entrance