{"id":17138,"date":"2024-04-18T11:03:20","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T16:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hexagram.ca\/demo45-benoit-brousseau\/"},"modified":"2024-04-30T10:57:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T15:57:52","slug":"demo45-benoit-brousseau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hexagram.ca\/en\/demo45-benoit-brousseau\/","title":{"rendered":"DEMO45 Beno\u00eet Brousseau \u2014 Stir the ashes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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April 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The exhibition Remuer les cendres<\/em> (Stir the ashes) is the result of Beno\u00eet Brousseau’s [student member, UQAM] final thesis. This installation combines visual, video and sound elements to explore a moving theme: the unclaimed bodies of the deceased in Montreal. The student seeks to elaborate a funerary narrative through texts and images, offering a memory to those who have been forgotten. Starting with a list of names found on the website of the Le Repos cemetery in Saint-Fran\u00e7ois d’Assise, he conducts an artistic investigation into their lives, studying coroner’s reports. This process allows him to create a bond of belonging with these anonymous people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This exhibition represents the conclusion of his research-creation thesis in visual and media arts, supervised by Gis\u00e8le Trudel [co-rinvestigator member, UQAM]. Beno\u00eet Brousseau presents himself as a socially engaged artist, seeking to shed light on the taboo subjects of contemporary society, including unclaimed bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Revealing anonymity \/ Paying tribute to the forgotten<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Most of the time, Beno\u00eet’s chosen research subjects come from his personal and autobiographical experiences. He tells his own story through the stories of others. He seeks to transcribe silence by giving voice to the forgotten. His works often deal with the passage of time and the formation of identity, death and physical and psychological suffering, the search for landmarks and the memory of places, people and things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of his MFA project, Benoit Brousseau embarked on creating stories based on the only tangible element at his disposal: the first name of deceased but unclaimed individuals found in coroner’s reports. However, through an artistic investigative approach, he strives to imagine the lives of these anonymous missing persons. In doing so, he seeks to push the boundaries of traditional burial rites by proposing new visual and textual narratives that honor these individuals and their often-unrecognized existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using an investigative method, he selected the names of the deceased whose bodies had not been claimed. This list of names can be found on the coroner’s website as well as at Le Repos de Saint-Fran\u00e7ois D’Assise cemetery in Montreal. It contains the following information: date of birth and death, as well as the address (last residence) where the coroner took note of the death. He then walked around Montreal to study the neighborhoods of the dwellings, taking photographs and recording urban sounds. The use of these media and the coroners’ reports would influence his method of composing stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, he was able to materialize this project with the help of sound software (Audition), image editing software (Photoshop), his computer, a tape recorder, his camera, various stories, and his 40-inch screen on which he projected the urban soundtrack with the aim of making a video of the audio tape frames. This step allowed him to work on the HD video using Premi\u00e8re Pro. By superimposing still images of blurred faces, he was able to complete the video. He then developed the project using sound samples in which he recites the names of the unclaimed persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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