Bringing together visual artist Pascal Dufaux and performance artist and musician Belinda Campbell, The Kaleidoscopic Room is the second part of a collaboration begun in 2012 for the 24 Gauche events (organized by Magali Babin and Patrice Coulombe).
Presented at part of the Phénomena Festival, this performance is a live sound and visual exploration between Pascal Dufaux’s three “seeing machines” and Belinda Campbell’s performative and musical presence. The kinetic video machines create an immersive visual environment in real time, in which the musician moves and drifts between the images, shadows, and reflections. Inspired by how Dufaux’s kinetic machines look, Campbell’s musical aesthetic contrasts a futuristic technological universe with traditional instruments such as the bandoneon (used in folk music and tango) and the karimba (an instrument used by griots and African storytellers). The asynchronous juxtaposition between image and music gives a fictional and almost dreamlike aspect to the strange documentary film that is automatically produced by the kinetic video.
Watching this improbable and open encounter between the objects of a futuristic science and the traditional instruments of the past, viewers take part in the strange production of a film in real time, whose subject is the kaleidoscopic mirroring of the live performance of its own soundtrack.
This project is made possible through the Support for Emerging Practices (SPE) program, spearheaded by the Conseil des arts de Montréal in partnership with the Conférence régionale des élus de Montréal (CRÉ) and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ).