Julie C. Fortier

Since my early days in video and performance, my work has been recording the passage of time by highlighting processes involving erasing and emptying. The research which I undertake in reality has to do with the experience of loss (loss of time, loss of energy, unproductiveness, loops, erasure, etc.), and incomplete spaces in which this can show itself (white screen, empty space, loss of memory). I explore different ways of constructing images using simple forms, through performance, video, photography, sculpture and installation. Since 2012 I have added experimental research with smells and aromas to my repertory. Their mnesic and affective power modifies the ways of implementing memory in the representations and narratives which I compose. The evanescent and allusive character of smells which is linked with the work of loss and erasure which I have managed to conduct in my performances and also with the tenuous events which I film. By being obliged to breathe, the spectator is obliged to smell. This paradoxical aspect of an absence which is nevertheless present, and invisible but intimately penetrating, captivates me. What interests me is reconfiguring the perception that we may have of a given space and creating upheavals of perception in its representation, a break between the present experience and its past representation. For me, smells are the ideal material for further pursuing my work on the construction of images in relation with a memory and its narration.