A THEME : Cité Invisible/Invisible City

The city of the XXIst Century continuously undergoes major transformations of aesthetic, of its social structure, and of propensity in vain of declaring or denouncing its position as a metropolis of the world. This constant evolution of the city fascinates us by means of the wealth of the potential landscapes it presents. These landscapes, for Champ Libre, are places of philosophical and artistic inspiration.

The project Cité Invisible/Invisible City will reveal to the visitor, through the suggested scenography and moments of art presentation, hidden aspects of buildings’ architecture and urbanity which are given to us to see. Architectural installations and national and international multimedia artworks will be scattered throughout the Grande Bibliothèque of the Quebec national library and archives (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec – BAnQ) as multiple micro interventions within its internal and external spaces.

The site of the Grande Bibliothèque presents questions of culture and of a new economy of information. This site assumes at once the form of a place of leisure, of a meeting space for the community a location of knowledge and of over consumption. An interrogation of the role of the evolution of the library under a technological era will be addressed along with other topics, the site becoming less and less a space for « stocking » knowledge as it develops a more dynamic and determining social role in the transmission of knowledge. The definitive question appears as more than one regarding the sustenance of information (book vs digital), although important; the interrogation of how an individual orients his quest of knowledge or information in the overabundance of data that offers itself to him, in a world in which knowledge appears fragmented to infinity appears to take the forefront. What meaning will this site and this new building in the surrounding social fabric take for individuals who have not mastered the first support to the text: the alphabet, for example? How can an artistic event of this type be imagined by blind persons in a quiet environment with rules of public use within a site opened day and night, and invaded by light?

Champ Libre proposes an event open to theoretical influences and those influences from both the architectural variations of the site and its urbanity. The project aims to propagate, in the form of a poetic suggestion of a swaying artistic program in which the chosen theme will become a sensitive vector and prism by which contemporary artists working in the domain of arts, architecture and new technologies can express themselves.