Der Kanadier Mathieu Léger arbeitet in vielen Kunstdisziplinen: Performancekunst, Fotographie, Bildhauerei, Installationen und Videos. Nach seinem Studium an der Universität von Moncton (Kanada), verbrachte er von 2000 - 2002 einige Zeit als artist-in-residence in Québec, Montreal, Irland, Schottland und an der École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Über sich selbst sagt er:

„I have 4x5 envy. I like photographing things, stuff and places; they interest me. I am also a "packrat." A "packrat" that believes in documentation. Having the things isn't enough; having the things and the documentation of the things is where it's at. A 4x5 envying "packrat" that gathers and documents. Things and their images fascinate me. I am interested in memory and its trace. Objects as memory. The memory of objects. Memory as trace. I find things, document them, and sometimes take them..."

In Graz arbeitet er an einem Projekt, das in seiner Heimat nach seiner Rückkehr gezeigt werden wird: Er fotografiert die Lieblingsobjekte von Menschen, die er trifft und macht kurze Interviews mit ihnen. Jeder, der daran teilnehmen will, kann sich bei ihm melden.

 http://zarbes.blogspot.com

 

Objects. What are they? Why are they important? How do I describe myself through them? How could you use them to describe yourself? If you were asked to choose one object as being the most important one in your life, what would it be? Through my work in sculpture, where I use objects as evidence of something that has passed such as an event or invention, I have come to inquire about the reasons for which I accumulate. Why have I filled my studio with both bought and found objects?

In 2006, I began documenting all the objects I had accumulated. I asked myself whether people could identify me through my collection. This led me to inquire about the reasons I had in photographing them. Which led me to ponder what I would be doing with the photographs of the objects. This brought my attention to the medium of video, which is a collection of still images that fool us into thinking there is movement. And so, the idea of time through objects came to me. I began thinking of digital photography as being just as finite as video because photographs are now often presented as a slideshow, therefore making them finite. I decided I would build a video project around the idea of these photographs of objects.

Subsequently, I began Incongruous Commodification: A Pathology. This is a video piece I have been working on since the summer of 2007 (in residence at Vidéographe, Montreal, QC, Canada). In this work, I question, through video, how we perceive still photographs. A video is 30 still images that are presented per second. Many people believe they see movement when this illusion of time and space occurs (action). A video is finite. I say this because there is a duration to video; photographs have no duration, or at least I thought they hadn't. Photography is infinite. One can observe a photograph for as long as they wish, as opposed to the limited duration of a video. Like photographs, I thought objects were infinite. I am interested in the relationship between the two, the juxtaposition: the object, and the image of the object.

This inquiry has brought me to the present project, Pathological Identification Clusters. This project is the second phase of the same questions I asked myself. Now, I am asking other people. I would like to invite people to bring me an object that is important to them (perhaps through an ad in the local paper and through emailing lists). I will study and photograph the object, as well as document its proprietor. I will interview the person; ask why the object is important; where it comes from; why they are keeping it, etc. These photographs of objects will become a catalogue, which ironically, could have been the starting point of many of these objects. The objects now have character and a story. The catalogues will be presented along with the video in an installation. The catalogues will look and feel like a telephone book, with thin paper, leaving the viewer to ponder the value of the information inside. Besides, telephone books include everyone and are familiar to the public.

"Persons are always the primary agents but artworks and other inanimate objects can be agents in a secondary or indirect sense, for although they themselves are not intentional beings they frequently act as the mediums through which people 'manifest and realize' their intentions (p.21). As such they are 'extensions' of the persons whose agency they express - part of their 'distributed' personhood (see especially Chapter 7). Agent and patient are relational concepts: for every agent there must be a patient, and vice versa (p.22)."
-Ross Bowden, A Critique of Alfred Gell on Art and Agency

The intent is for people to explore the idea that a collection of objects, in a catalogue form, could be considered as anthropological or cultural evidence and, as such, becomes a portrait of a community and the impact that capitalism and corporate marketing strategies have (i.e. we do not want, we need). These catalogues also play with the idea of false catalogues raisonnés (descriptive catalogues of works of art with explanations and scholarly comments). The absence of the actual objects is a metaphor for the manufacture of desire and desire itself.