Luc Courchesne, Naked in Paradise (2013-)

Creating one’s own mid-career retrospective

A talk by Luc Courchesne

March 9, 2017 - 6 PM to 8 PM

A new inhabitable space has opened. It is virtual, infinitely expandable and malleable, accessible from everywhere at all times. Artists, whatever their creative medium, leave traces, artefacts and eventually artworks which are representative of the processes they are engaged in. With time, these traces, these artefacts and artworks form a body of work which itself becomes an artwork. A good strategy for the documenting and archiving creative processes will aid the construction and public retrospective presentation of an artists’ work. This conference presents Luc Courchesne’s approach to documentation, archiving and virtual layout of a body of work spanning about forty years.

Luc Courchesne is a pioneer of the digital arts. From interactive portraits to systems of immersive experiences, he creates innovative and engaging artworks, which have earned him prestigious rewards such as the Grand Prix from the ICC Biennale in Tokyo in 1997, several mentions and the Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in Linz, Austria in 1999. His artwork is part of important collections including ZKM|Karlsruhe and have been featured in a hundred exhibitions across the world, in particular at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, class of 1974, he then graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984, and he was a student of Toni Mann, Michael Snow and Otto Piene. He is currently co-director of research at the la Société des arts technologiques (SAT), honorary professor at Université de Montréal and member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. Courchesne is represented by the Galerie Pïerre-François Ouellette art contemporain.