During this research residency, Anne-F Jacques wants to pay attention to the constant activity that operates in materials: growth, wear and transformation, generation and transformation of energy, propagation of movement, acoustic waves and electricity, cracks and resistance. She experiments with oblique and tinkered techniques of sound amplification and movement generation in order to put different materials in a state of interaction, tension, reciprocal action, blurring the boundaries between the animate and the inanimate, organic and synthetic. At once an open workshop, a barely perceptible performance and an installation in perpetual transformation, the workspace is intended to be a kind of ecosystem oscillating between disturbances and attempts at self-regulation, in which our physical presence is one of several forces at work.
To her, this sound and kinetic work represents a way to think about materials, their different states, potentialities and boundaries. By bringing together, in collaboration or in tension, cardboard and seaweed, rubber bands, wasp nests and corroded metal, bark strips and plastic strips within a single assembly, each material’s limits between organic, mineral and synthetic—with their resilience and weaknesses—fade away. The artist believes that in this type of context, it becomes easier to remember that plastic depends on the decomposition and fossilization of living organisms. She is interested in the fact that the transformations and transmutations of matter come to disrupt the work in progress, having started before and continuing after her work sessions in the studio.