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A video installation by Theodore Ushev, presented by the Cinémathèque québécoise and the National Film Board of Canada.

Originally, three books: a practical guide, a reference work, a collection of seminal tales in Western culture. More simply described: a film festival catalogue, a dictionary, the Bible. Three works whose physical form has been made obsolete by the ephemeral nature of the digital world.

In a liberating gesture—is it a sacrilegious waste or a bold salvaging initiative?—artist and filmmaker Theodore Ushev covers the pages of these works with paint, concealing words and blurring symbols to create three films that, though based on this material, generate new meanings, rhythms, energy...

We are now in the heart of an act of creation through destruction, at the centre of a powerful artistic venting composed of three abstract animations that spill onto as many screens, thrown into relief and given structure by Ana Sokolovic’s original score. Between these three books, ceremoniously displayed, and a heap of smeared pages deposited in the centre of the room, there is the artist’s action. There is also the technical apparatus of the cinema, which breathes life into the material.

A commentary on the fragility of culture, Third Page from the Sun, the installation reimagines the concept of a palimpsest.

FREE ADMISSION - FROM NOVEMBER 27, 2013, TO FEBRUARY 2, 2014 

Cinémathèque québécoise 335,
De Maisonneuve Blvd East
Montréal, Québec, 
H2X 1K1

2014,

3e page après le soleil, l'installation/Third Page from the Sun: The Installation