{"id":16366,"date":"2024-01-12T19:23:50","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T00:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hexagram.ca\/demo41-albertine-thunier-itsameme_world\/"},"modified":"2025-02-18T11:47:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T16:47:52","slug":"demo41-albertine-thunier-itsameme_world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hexagram.ca\/en\/demo41-albertine-thunier-itsameme_world\/","title":{"rendered":"DEMO41 Albertine Thunier & Hubert Alain – @itsameme_world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

November 2023<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a residency in UQAM’s experimental room in November 2023, Albertine Thunier (student member, UdeM)<\/strong>, in collaboration with Hubert Alain (UdeM)<\/strong>, embarked on the memetic materialization of uchronic and fantastical utopias. @itsammemeworld<\/strong> is a multimedia scenography that interprets, imitates, actualizes and co-opts a graphic novel published in 1844.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Un autre monde<\/strong> : transformations, visions, incarnations, ascensions, locomotions, explorations, p\u00e9r\u00e9grinations, excursions, stations, cosmogonies, fantasmagories, r\u00eaveries, fac\u00e9ties, lubies, m\u00e9tamorphoses, zoomorphoses, lithomorphoses, m\u00e9tempsycoses, apoth\u00e9oses et autres choses<\/em> is a futuristic tale created and illustrated by Granville. It tells the story of three unemployed scientists who visit and study an imaginary world overturned by the sudden acceleration of industrial progress. Their stopovers set the scene for salient issues in 19th-century France, marked in particular by the rise of capitalist publishing, the emergence of a mass visual culture, the restoration of the monarchy and the appearance of the first universal exhibitions (Le Men, 2013). As these issues resonate with our respective doctoral research – meme cultures, queer ecologies, waves of industrialization and world’s fairs – we (re)explore Grandville’s Other World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Approach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By mimetically imitating, and memetically hijacking, a selection of original scenes, we’ve created a playful, imaginary micro-world-of-memes. Just as Grandville did in the 19th century, @itsamemeworld comments on, plays with and pokes fun at current socio-techno-politico-economic events through satires, graphic allegories, (an)archives and whimsical stagings. In our approach, various artificial intelligence programs, new contemporary technologies, replace the illustrated edition and large-scale printing, which were the new technologies during Grandville’s time. Although these tools seem technologically different, their use is the subject of similar practices. They both enable us to create, relatively quickly, images conceived through the logic of punctures and grafts: mechanized (or automated) reproduction favors text-image compositions, intermediary references or allusions, and the diverting of “second-hand” materials (Le men, 2013 ). These practices of recuperation and imitation, common in Un autre monde<\/strong><\/em>\u2019s illustrations and Internet memes, inspired us to create graphic paraphrases. The resulting narrative is generated by memetic remixes, transposing Grandvilles’ references into different thematic installations. By reinterpreting illustrations from Un autre monde<\/strong><\/em> in this way, we play with the iconographic codes of popular culture, advertising and kitsch to create visions of a carnivalesque, upside-down world. Each of these fragments acts as a prompt to participate in Grandville’s chain of d\u00e9tournements, recuperations, variations and imitations. Like internet memes, @itsamemeworld creations are collective, multimodal and resonant with other cultural fragments (Milner, 2016). They invite to be re-meditated and re-memed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Apotheosis of Dr Puff<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Entering @itsamemeworld presents a first memetic iteration of Un autre monde<\/strong><\/em>. It is a space of transition that allows access to the status of observer and neo-god.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Credit : Hubert Alain <\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The apotheosis of the erudites, also known as the “god trick” (Haraway, 1988), is necessary to claim the global vision of disembodied scientific objectivity. This metaphysical elevation enables us to simulate, virtualize, mediatize, remediatize, affirm, neomaterialize, hauntologize, hyperrealize, gamify, homonormalize, anarchize, derealize and dataify, among other things. Grandville’s Un autre monde<\/strong><\/em> and our world of memes both show landscapes and creatures, hybrids and cyborgs, transformed by the new industrial spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Credits : JJ Grandville, 1844 ; Hubert Alain and Albertine Thunier<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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The Battle of the Cards<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like the illustrator, we question the hierarchy between text and image. The rise of the mechanized press, illustrated publishing and, later, optical and digital media, has led to the mass distribution of visual writing that gives free rein to an hallucinatory, associative imagination, similar to that of sleepy dreamers (Baridon, 2022). Visual writing works like card-drawing: a narrative emerges from the consultant’s situated interpretation. The consequences of this other (typo)graphic world, made entirely of floating images and abstract values, are questioned by our various scenes. Through the remediatization of retro-futuristic and hyper-realistic images, our approach questions the cyclical nature of socio-technical imaginaries.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Credits : JJ Grandville, 1844 ; Hubert Alain and Albertine Thunier<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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The Love Story of a Puppet and a Star<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the same way that Internet memes circulate and are reproduced by Internet users, Grandville’s illustrations are regularly co-opted or imitated. The Love Story of a Puppet and a Sta<\/strong>r illustrates one of these movements. The scene presents the dissolution of an era when the arts captivated the eyes and desires of an audience gathered around a central figure, in this case, Venus. However, the technical reproducibility of images fragments and redistributes Venus’ mythical aura to the masses. This intensification in the dissemination of illustrated and animated images is accompanied by an unprecedented ability of the public to interact individually with the media and participate in works of art. As if by a game of communicating mirrors, the viewer becomes both the desiring gaze and the desired goddess.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Credits : JJ Grandville, 1844 ; Hubert Alain and Albertine Thunier<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
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The installation playfully reflects this changing relationship with the world, as expressed by the set design of the Family of Men exhibition, first shown at MoMA in 1955, then in Montreal in 1967. The scene exemplifies the neo-liberal utopia of the Self; it places the viewer between a dummy CAPTcha and an Edenic diorama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Credit : Hubert Alain<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Family of Men<\/strong> promotes global solidarity, fusing individual narratives into a photographic essay that bears witness to the universality of human experience. The aim is to materialize, through the interface of museum design, the techno-utopian renewal of Humanism, reformed by North American values. For 8 years, the exhibition toured the world. In 1967, it was shown at the Montreal World’s Fair (Anker, 2007).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To fulfill this mandate, we drew inspiration from Grandville, imagining an exhibition that reverses the hierarchy between text and image. In the design plans, we find a half-human, half-ocular creature imitating Grandville’s giant eyes. However, the optical creature is no longer to be found among the anonymous audience. It is alone and submerged in a diorama of images – the Extended Field of Vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This position, similar to that of the card player, embodies the neo-liberal ideal and manifests its ideology: that of a world where the individual, centralized and omnipotent, is pushed to make choices and create his own narratives by freely associating the mass of symbols available to him.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Standing in front of the simulated CAPTcha, we are placed in a memetic setting. The CAPTcha mimics the scenographic format of Family of Men<\/strong>, but the optical creature is fooled by the infographic machine. It thinks it’s interpreting, choosing and associating, yet it merely executes. The artificial intelligence programs’ desire for data collection both fools and takes advantage of the optical creature’s media-ocular desire. In the world of memes, she transforms from demi-goddess to artificial artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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