Tongue Rug : Tapis à langues

Producer: Julie Lapalme [ 2002 - Work in progress]

Website / Installation Project

Funding: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Fonds Bell

The Tongue Rug project is an interface with interactive components: a Tongue Rug and a Path Map. These are both fluid, mutable structures: navigation devices and archives that are prone to change through time and interaction.

The tongue rug has often been made out of felt in the past in Quebec and Sweden — it is like a patchwork quilt in the shape of overlapping tongues, often embroidered with symbolic icons. The 'Sladdakavring' will grow organically. I will not be able to predict its final shape. It will grow piecemeal. Texts — written and oral— about each waypoint will be stored in the 'tongues' of the Tongue Rug.

This is the very beginning of an archive. 'Armed’ with a GPS, I can imagine an archive documenting my state of 'being lost'. Will the newest technologies necessarily make my path more certain? Already the few paths I have drawn reflect the 're-routes', the 'circling-back' and the 'dead-end'. Loosened from the map, they become drawings, embroidery, threads loosened by time.

More about the project: MATHIEU, Marie-Christiane (2003). « Œuvre en processus pour public en développement, Stéphanie Lagueux et Julie Lapalme », Espace Magazine, Montreal, Spring 2003.

Orphan Train - Trained Tales

Artist: Julie Lapalme [ 2004 ]

Solo Show: Mixed Media Installation, January 2004
Maison de la Culture: Rosemont/Petite-Patrie, Montreal, QC

This exhibition consisted of 6 Stop-Overs made up of assemblages — the three-dimensional sculptures which provided the basis for the digital animations in the Orphan Train - Trained Tales website.

Orphan Train : Trained Tales

Producer: Julie Lapalme [ 1998 - 2001 ]

Co-Producer: The Banff Centre For the Arts, Banff, Alberta

Website / Installation Project:
• Sound and Text Narratives
• Flash and Director Animations
• Quicktime VR Panoramas

Funding: Canada Council - Media Arts Section
Nova Scotia Arts Council
Studio XX: Media Arts Centre for Women

The Orphan Train travels on a Figure 8 Traintrack, with intersecting double loops making reference to the orphan/adoptee’s dual history. The train makes six Stop-Overs on the Tour: The Orphan Train Station, The Bed Box Theatre, The Bingo Staircase, The Home for Little Wanderers, The Dresser & the Closet, and The Bad Blood & Ghost Limbs Graveyard. The project delves into the history of the closed adoption system, the growing adoption law reform movement in North America and the Orphan Train Movement and its ties to adoption today in Canada.

Monument du Vide

Le Monument du Vide is a network Web art piece by Marie Christiane Mathieu with the collaboration of invited artists. Artists in various locations collaborated in real time on the Web creature's:

• SKIN: Nouvelles Images 01 en México: Voilà Québec En México! - FCMM : december 2003
  FCMM: Festival International Nouveau Cinéma Nouveaux Médias: October 2003
• MEMORY: New Media/No Memory: Centre for Art Tapes: June 2003
• VOICE: 3e Impérial: Centre d'essai en arts visuels: October 2002
• CIRCULATION: Studio XX: Maid in Cyberspace Festival: February 2002
• HEART: ALICA Manoeuvre 8: November 3rd - 4th, 2001

L'Enfermement du regard : Le regard de l'enfermement

From the 11th to the 15th of November, 2001 Folie Culture invited four artists from various disciplines, Charles Guilbert, Guylaine Coderre, Martin Dufrasne and Julie Lapalme, to create a project under the theme of L'Enfermement du regard : Le regard de l'enfermement

A website was created which recaps the series of interventions and small creations which punctuated the week: texts, songs, photos, animations and videos.

Embedded

Producer: Julie Lapalme [ 1997:1999 ]

Format: Computer Animation/Video, Beta SP, Colour/Stereo
Length: 12:00 minutes Language : English

Produced at: The Centre For Art Tapes, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Distributed by: VTape

Embedded in the Bed Box Theatre are inter-linked stories. The Story of the Bed Box Theatre tells of the emergence of a young girl's voice as she finds a theatre nestled in the spiral skeleton under her bed. The animation, The Cuckoo in the Staircase: Gabriel Said, is a tale of Maria's creativity when faced with a difficult choice, in a parallel scenario of a saintly happening — with an alternate twist.

An excerpt from Virginia Woolf's essay, “Professions for Women” is re-told, as a Winding Staircase, Cuckoo Birds, Books, Bingo, and Polka Shoes surface through the dreams in the Bed Box Theatre. The computer becomes a tool for navigating through a miniaturized architecture in a landscape of memory and the imaginary.

bird, box and spindle

Artist: Julie Lapalme [ 1995 ]

Solo Show: Painting, Drawing & Assemblage, October 1995
Anna Leonowens Gallery, Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Halifax, NS

Drawings, paintings and assemblages — inspired by Nova-Scotian domestic architecture — recalls families, the home, memory and identity.