Stéphane Gilot

Videogame

Co-presented with the Images Festival
April 8 - 30, 2005

Pursuing his work on observation devices, Stéphane Gilot's Videogame is an architectural installation derived from a space module and voyeuristic architecture. The experimental module's play on compartmentalization / decompartmentalization functions as a metaphor for the ordeal of living together within a confined territory: a political stake forever renewed by societies where managing human space and sensitivity is essential.

To this end, a pseudo videogame is produced. A probe, equipped with a small video camera, surveys the module's surfaces searching for alterations, intrusions or escape attempts. The project brings forth both architectural and mediatic processes developed to increase the autonomy and fluidity of one's observation. It also activates the ambiguous space existing between an event taking place in real time and the same event deferred. Visitors are invited to participate in this exploration process.

Stéphane Gilot is a Montreal-based artist who arrived in Canada from Belgium in 1996. He has exhibited extensively in Canada (Montréal, Toronto, Vancouver, Banff, Québec, Baie-St-Paul) and abroad (Belgium, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Serbia, Findland, Germany and Brazil). His exhibitions at Paul Petro Contemporary Art include Viewfinders (1999), Bull's Eye (1999), Stable (2001) and The Genetic Transformation Unit for the Colonisation of Mars (2003). He is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of Quebec (Montréal).