User:Va2beq/sandbox

Isabelle Choinière
Isabelle Choiniere
Born	Montreal, Quebec
Nationality	Canadian
Education	Planetary Collegium PhD Université du Québec à Montréal post-doctorate
Known for	transdisciplinarity

The transdisciplinary choreographer and dancer in Communion (1994-1999)

The transdisciplinary choreographer and dancer in The Dementia of Angels (1999-2005)

Front page of The IATC Journal / Revue de I'AICT, Critical Stages, no 16 / US, Europe - December 2017

Front page of Repertório no 28 / University of Bahia (Brazil) - Jan. 2017

Front page of Inter Art Actuel - Mutagenesis: from material bodies to techno-humans / Quebec - Fall 1993

Isabelle Choinière is an international specialist in research-creation and new hybrid contemporary scenes integrating technology, as well as a transdisciplinary artist. She is also a professor-researcher regularly invited to participate in research projects on the impact of media on the body in Europe, Canada and Latin America for her expertise as an artist and researcher.

Recognised by the local and international press (Le Monde (France), Digimag (Italy), Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten (Germany), Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies (Brazil), Inter Art actuel (Quebec), Vie des arts and Archée (Montreal), etc.) as a designer-performer-visionary and pioneer of cyber-modernity, as well as, according to French researcher Bernard Andrieu, or her fundamental work, both practical and theoretical, on "emersiology and the question of the perception of internal sensations," Isabelle Choinière has been proposing strong and original works that combine dance, performance, somatics and media arts since 1994. Since 2005, and more intensely since 2015, she has been recognized for her theoretical research (books and essays) and research-creation (Intellect Books (UK), PUQ (Quebec), cover pages of The IATC Journal/Revue de I'AICT, Critical Stages, Revista Repertório (Brazil), Inter Art actuel (Quebec) and Ballet Tanz Aktuell International (Germany)) which "convincingly demonstrates the power of the collective - or if you prefer - a distributed scholarship and research that is still sorely lacking in the academy today". Her research-creations have been studied by academic case study research groups around the world since 1994.

She is the principal author and initiator of the book Par le prisme des sens : médiation et nouvelles réalités du corps dans les arts performatifs - Technologies, cognition et méthodologies émergentes de recherche-création, a pedagogical tool published in French by PUQ ('Presses de l'Université du Québec') in 2019. This book is also published in English by Intellect Books and The University of Chicago Press Books (2020) under the title Through the Prism of the Senses: Mediation and New Realities of the Body in Contemporary Performance - Technology, Cognition and Emergent Research-Creation Methodologies. Artistic, research and general director of the dance and digital arts company Le Corps Indice (1994-2008), Isabelle Choinière explores, from the perspective of the sensate and somatic body, the physical and psychic limits of the body in relation to digital medias, highlighting the ways in which new technologies affect this mutating body and reveal the new contemporary status of the body in the technological context. Her work on the relationship of the effects of meditation with the performative body questions the conventions - and connections - of corporality, corporeality, embodiment, cognition, and perception of spectators and performers. Her work integrates a reflection on ontology, ontogenesis, space and time from which emerges an expanded and hitherto unseen conception of the body.

Based in Montreal, she was first identified as a choregrapher, performer and dancer. According to Andrea Davidson, a theorist and former professor of Dance and New Media at the University of Chichester in the United Kingdom, former dancer, and co-founder of one of the first French groups dealing with the relationship between dance, technology (Anomos and Laboratory Mediadanse associated to Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis): "Isabelle Choinière is one of the few choreographers who has integrated technology into the centre of her practice from the very start."

Background

Born in Montreal (Quebec), she first went through the rigorous school of classical dance. She was then introduced to the concept of "new dance" by Deborah Hay. After college studies in science (pure and health) at Collège de Maisonneuve, she obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts (interdisciplinary and multicultural programme, with a minor in anthropology) at Concordia University in Montreal in 1989.

In 2015, she obtained her doctorate under the direction of Roy Ascott, founding director of the Planetary Collegium, as part of the Transdisciplinary Space Research / Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Integrative Arts (CAiiA) affiliated with the University of Plymouth, as well as under the co-direction of Enrico Pitozzi, researcher-professor at the University of Bologna in Italy. Awarded a fellowship from the prestigious Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC) 2017-2019, she completed a postdoctoral research internship at the Faculty of Arts of the Université du Québec à Montréal under the supervision of Joanne Lalonde, Dean of the Faculty of Arts (2019-). This internship was done in collaboration with the research centre (Figura) (axis 3: contemporary imaginary) affiliated to (OIC) (Observatory of the Contemporary Imaginary) and Laboratory NT2.

Publications

She wrote and directed a pedagogical tool dedicated to the teaching of arts and research-creation, namely the collective work "Par le prisme des sens : médiation et nouvelles réalités du corps dans les arts performatifs - Technologies, cognition et méthodologies émergentes de recherche-création", published in French by the Presses de l'Université du Québec, collection Esthétique (October 2019), directed by Louise Poissant, the current scientific director of the FRQSC. This book was co-authored with Enrico Pitozzi and Andrea Davidson , and Derrick de Kerckhove wrote the afterword. The French version is enriched by the contributions of the following international researchers: Erin Manning (theorist) , David Howes , Joanne Lalonde , Louis-Claude Paquin , Luc Vanier , Elizabeth Johnson , Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès and Anaïs Guilet. It is also published in English by Intellect Books and The University of Chicago Press Books (January 2020) under the title "Through the Prism of the Senses: Mediation and New Realities of the Body in Contemporary Performance. Technology, Cognition and Emergent Research-Creation Methodologies".

This book examines the changes that took place over the last decade, where new technologies influenced the fundamental epistemological rupture that transformed notions of performativity and representation in the arts. Mediation has challenged the conventions of corporeality, embodiment, cognition and perception of spectators and performers. Focusing on contemporary synesthetic and multimodal works, 'Through the Prism of the Senses' examines new theories and practices in contemporary body and performance art. Three main chapters present distinct parts of the methodological research, each weaving a transdisciplinary link with the other chapters, creating a work that resonates with artistic and philosophical research. The book is considered by scholars David Howes"", Geoffrey Edwards, Jocelyne Kiss , Louis Jacob, Henry Daniel, Bernard Andrieu and Roy Ascott to be an essential contribution to discussions around research-creation and the body in relation to digital media, highlighting the ways in which technologies - as an environment - affect the sensate and somatic (related to somatics) body and reveal the body's new contemporary status.

Other academic work and career paths

In 2014, invited by Derrick de Kerckhove and Cristina Miranda de Almeida, she authored a chapter on the question of the interval in the context of performing arts in The Point of Being. The chapter is entitled "The interval as a new approach to interfaces: toward a cognitive and aesthetic paradigm of communication in the performing arts". Her research is widely published and translated into French, English and Portuguese. In English, in Intellect Press, UK (2006, 2013, 2015, 2019), "The IATC Journal-Critical Stages #16", USA/Europe (2017), ISEA2017 Manizales, Colombia (2017), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK (2009, 2014), "The Journal of Transdisciplinary Knowledge Design", Korea (2009); in French, in Chiasmi International #22", France (2021), in "CRNS Éditions/LINK-series 5&6", France (2021), (criv. online/eunoïa), Canada (2020), Revista Repertório, Brazil (2017), "Revue Art&Fact 36", France (2017), Archée, Canada (2016, 2017); as well as in Portuguese in "Revista VIS #17 :1" (2018) and "CENA #17", Brazil (2015).

In 2015, invited by Roy Ascott, she was Lead Guest Editor for Technoetic Arts, Intellect Journals, UK, a double issue that examines the consequences and impact of 'moist media' in the emergence of new artistic practices.

In 2018, she initiated and co-organised with Joanne Lalonde, Anaïs Guïlet and Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès the bilingual international colloquium Cybercorporealities: nomadic subjectivities in a digital context which took place at the Université du Québec à Montréal from 27 to 29 September 2018.

In 2020-2021, she is hired as a transdisciplinary researcher and developer of an international publishing project by the professor in ethics and management Marie-France Lebouc at Laval University. She was an associate professor (2016-2019) at the Faculty of Communication, Media School, Université du Québec à Montréal . She was a visiting professor at the University of Chile (Chile) in 2017 for the design of a transdisciplinary programme and seminars. She has taught at UQAM (Canada), Laval University (Canada), University of Toronto (Canada), Universidade de Caldas (Colombia), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Cégep du Vieux Montréal (Canada).

Since 2021 she is a professor integrated in a transdisciplinary and intersectoral co-teaching team at the FESP-Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies of Laval University in Quebec. She was also integrated as an academic member by the same faculty (FESP) in the programme committee of the tailor made Master of Arts and Technology. The mission of this programme committee is to design a relevant curriculum and to mentor graduate students in this field. She also (co)-supervises students in the Doctorate program in Art Studies and Practices at the Faculty of Arts of Université du Québec à Montréal .

Research-creation projects

Her transdisciplinary research-creation approach explores and re-evaluates the relationship between the moving body and technology. More specifically, she examines recent perspectives in the performative arts that reveal manifestations and dynamics of inter-pollination between somatics - a type of body education - and technologies that are rooted in conceptions of the body other than that of Western thought: those inspired primarily by the ancient philosophical contributions of Asia, the Far East, Africa, Brazil and Haiti.

Anchored in a process of fusion of arts and disciplines, her work is based on a strategy of renewal - by the destabilisation - of the sensory experience and the perception; the technology of the XXIst century opening the way to emergent forms of creations. Her process of composition convokes/requires a synesthetic gaze and mode of listening, an active and contemporary relationship of the senses 3 which leads the spectator towards a radical remaking/rethinking of its own sensory organisation, this one passing - according to Pitozzi - by a kind of "gestural cannibalism" operated by the spectator.

Her research is therefore based on the hypothesis that technology, used in these experiments as a physicality, becomes the activator of a sensory and perceptual reconfiguration process. This provokes the evolution of corporality (anthrophomorphic body) which will generate the emergence of new forms of corporealities and embodiments resulting from the physical and phenomenological modification of the effect of technology on the preformative body in movement. These emergences become possible through an ontological shift of the body when it is acted upon, and activated, by technology. This proposal reflects an experiential approach to technology, which involves the lived body in its dimension of corporality, transformation and evolution. Her research and reflection on the integration of media arts into dance-performance has been widely recognised and has led to numerous prestigious invitations.

Her research-creations to date include Communion (1994-1999); The Dementia of Angels (La démence des anges) (1999-2005); Meat Paradox (2005-2010); Flesh Waves (2010-2013) and Phase #5 (2016-), productions that have toured in international festivals (including the official opening of Cynetart04_Areale/Germany, Les rencontres internationales danse et arts numériques, Centre des arts d'Enghien-les-bains,France, Crash,Denmark, Future Moves,Rotterdam, E-Phos,Athens) biennales (2do Festival Internacional de Video y Artes Electronicas of Buenos Aires (FIV),Teatro San Martin/Buenos Aires, Tercera Bienal de Video y artes Electronicas,Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago) and artistic institutions (including the 40th anniversary of the Quebec Delegation in Paris, Museum de Arte Moderna Da Bahia,Teatro Castro Alves,Salvador,Brazil, UNAM,Mexico) in Europe, Latin America and Quebec.

Works

• Communion (1994-1999), the final version of Le Partage des peaux , develops the idea of the ritualised passage from the real body to the synthetic body. This passage took place in a process of ritualisation from the real skin to the electronic skin (electronic scarification). Thus, Communion is presented as a kind of prayer, a mantra, an invocation. It is an adage of the fusion of real and electronic flesh. Thus it is a transdisciplinary performance where contemporary dance, video, animated computer graphics, electroacoustic and mixed music and interactive systems meet.

• The Demencia of the Angels (La Démence des anges) (1999-2005) , is concerned with the alteration, the mutation of the body when it is projected into computer networks. This research-creation is a telematic duo that encompasses two spaces that can be thousands of kilometres apart. The notion of the sacred in this work develops the concept of telematics, which links up with Isabelle Choinière's ideas of opening up bodily limits and opening up space-time. Telematics also brings in the idea of the demiurge, as well as that of omnipresence and ubiquity.

• Meat Paradox (phase #1-2-3, 2005-2010), Flesh Waves (2010-2013), Phase #4 (2010-2013) and Phase #5 (2016-2017), are three phases of an augmented reality performance exploring the relationships arising from interaction involving the moving body and real-time sound spatialisation technologies. Under a dim light, a three-dimensional human sculpture appears in motion: five women, their bodies intertwined, form a 'collective body'. Acting as a sixth performer, the sound also envelops the spectators, integrating them into a living sound form - the 'collective sound body'.

Collective works

• 2002-2009 Exuvie - Digitized body sculptures / Series of 3D moving images using Inspeck 3D technology. The result of a collaboration between artists Isabelle Choinière and Stéphan Ballard, this installation project of digitized body sculptures invites the public to contemplation, meditation... to the encounter with another reality; that of the revelation of other layers of perception. A true reflection on the modern processes of mummification, this installation is an invitation to a poetic journey through time. Pushing the limits of the camera's resolution, we want to penetrate the body's matter, thus allowing us to scrutinize the revealing potential of the body's envelope in an optimal way, in order to discover a synthetic motif to which the original intention of the expression of the total body would be anchored.

• 2007-2010, the result of a collaboration initiated by curator Frédéric Loury of Galerie SAS for the project Mouvement Focalisé II, Isabelle Choinière, choreographer/media artist, and Jean-François Gratton, photographer, began a work based on "shared obsessions, that is, the revelation of the real". Investing in a hybrid and mutant artistic process, they have worked on the dancing body through photography as a physical mass, a "collective body"; a hyper-reality that reveals the experiential of corporality, and the virtual through the high definition made possible, among other things, by an architectural camera.

• Corps cachés - Photographic installation is a reflection on the hidden image, an invitation to the imagination, to curiosity. In a simple way, this series of photos of two bodies intertwined in each other offers the spectator his/her own vision or interpretation of the photo. The frame and the off-frame are side by side. This play of framing allows a very small part of the image to be seen, thus offering a much more active gaze. This series of photos was created for the SMALL IS BEAUTIFULL exhibition in the context of a joint research project between Isabelle Choinière, choreographer and media artist, and Jean-François Gratton, photographer.