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Lieven Meyer lives, travels, and works between Quebec and Germany. As part of an ongoing artistic investigation, he develops visual solutions capable of exposing, subverting and ultimately neutralizing the contemporary expressions of new and subtle structures of control and power in their diverse public forms and manifestations.
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Project history (selection)
Vieille école (2024)
In collaboration with the local community, demolition of an old schoolhouse from the 1930s in Rochebaucourt (Abitibi), QC, and its transformation into a sculpture of similar dimension mimicking the structural concept of a half-pipe.
Research and creation residency at artist run center ÉCART, between 2022 and 2024.
Vieille école, ÉCART, Rouyn-Noranda, QC (August - October 2024)
ca. 11,5' x 14' x 36', wood and metal
This proposition materializes historical and geopolitical reflections linked to the region's development by reinvesting the substance from a built heritage that bears witness to the transformation of the territory: an old schoolhouse. I had been looking for a very poor, minimal structure able to spatialize what this “founding” narrative of the reality of the time seemed to call for. In the search for archaeological traces, it was important to realize that the historic sites of such rural areas are quite recent and tend to be horizontal and abstract, made up of contextual fragments of numerous individual places, some of which no longer exist or are dissolving. My sculpture was therefore to become a structure of para-archaeological nature that brings these pieces together and attempts to reconstruct the place I seek but cannot find: a place that remains intangible. The construction of a steep u-shaped ramp seemed the most appropriate response to this problem. Not only because it would turn this structure inside out (so old school!) ; it would literally reverse its architectural principle, creating a strong imbalance between utility and use.
Very special credit to everyone who assisted the realization of this project as part of various local and interregional communities, from Rouyn-Noranda (ÉCART and the National Archives BAnQ), Rochebaucourt (5e-et-6e Rang Ouest), and Gatineau (AXENÉO7 and the Patio)!
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German Club (2024)
"Never again Germany!"
The German Club in the basement of the Cabaret de la dernière chance, 146 8e rue, active throughout the programme of the 11th Biennale d'art performatif de Rouyn-Noranda, ÉCART (octobre 2024)
In collaboration with Reni D. Jordan, Brumby, fr.JPLA, Hanna Niehouse.
Site-specific installation and reenactment with various material (furniture, DJ-sets, sound system, tube screens, slide projectors, costumes, multiple posters and a weather resistant banner, etc.)
After 70 years of absence, the German Club had returned to its last former and physically still existant location, in the basement of the old Princess Hotel (see photo above from the National Archives BAnQ), which is today the well known Cabaret de la dernière chance. In symbiosis with a collective from the Berlin Techno Club community ://about blank, and for the duration of the 11th Biennale of Performance Art, the site was turned into a vibrant space that took an experimental look at the many gaps that have marked the local community of German immigrants from the beginning. The reenactment is not only about questioning what was once a so-called German club between the 1920s and 1950s, but also about understanding the lasting impact such ethnocultural gatherings have on segments of the population that are not directly involved, and how that has shaped the DNA of a city like Rouyn-Noranda in today Northwest Québec.
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Anti Sculpture Angst Therapy (2021)
Anti Sculpture Angst Therapy, AXENÉO7 (Autorésidence), Gatineau, QC (June - September 2021)
Series of sculptures on various locations around the AXENÉO7 premises and inside.
Photo credit above: Pavel Pavlov
Anti Sculpture Angst Therapy operates with a floppy rubber mold made on a monument that was erected in 1936, during the German Third Reich period. The sculpture is still standing in the public space of the northernmost municipality of Germany, yet disconnected from its historical context, masked by anonymity. The kind of resilience that this sculptural appropriation embraces is reflected in the absence of a structure, which is essential in the mold making process to reproduce an exact copy.
By its structural reinterpretation, the act of transformation contributes to a displacement, taking the historical public sculpture through various stages and states: trauma, erasure, burying through anonymization, un-burying through reappropriation, misappropriation, exportation, unveiling and exposure. The question here is whether there is a partial form of reparation beyond an update and revelation.
Rooftop Structure, 12' x 12' x 8', dyed wax, urethane foam, metal, wood, spotlight
Super C Carrosse Structure, ca. 37' x 48' x 25', shopping cart, wax, concrete
Carrosse Stretch Structure, ca. 37' x 48' x 25', metal, concrete
Plane Structure, ca. 20' x 73', concrete
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Antemask (2020/21)
Making face masks can be read as an archaic custom: the production of portable sculptures to be worn in diverse cultural rituals, constituting the crucial transition in a state of crisis with the objective to exorcize, cure, or heal. Likewise, the Autoresidency program at artist run center Axenéo7 had been initiated within the most insecure times of the pandemic. At this point, the world wide major crisis triggered numerous further social micro-crises, hinging on the mask and its function as a political device.
While the unpredictable unfolded, Anti Sculpture Angst Therapy evolved as an intimate experience of a rite of passage. The prefix anti is probably misspelled and relates to ante (in front of, to confront, before), inviting the observer to a therapeutic interlude full of calamitous placebos and existential malaise: the global reappearance of German Angst in sculptural form.
Antemask, full-size aluminium and bronze (2021)
These objects manifest an inside and outside print (positive/negative) at the same time.
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Housing and Storing (2020)
Housing and Storing, Quarantäne13 @ minetest, (June 2020)
Tackled by the pandemic, Quarantäne Artist Collective (GER/RU) gathered more than 30 international artists online, in the virtual world of Minetest (the sandbox version of Minecraft), to have them build customized museums, galleries and pavilions for the 13th edition of the annual nomadic Quarantäne group show.
If art can only be art on public display, what would it represent while hidden in stores, collections, and archives, where it most likely spends the majority of its lifetime?
In the vast neighbourhood of extraordinary temples, experimental architecture, utopian gardens and flying spaceports, Housing and Storing blends together real and in-world textures to create an ancestral estate, yet on sale, and soon being replaced by a future luxury condo project, as billboarded on the roof top. If there is any art on display, it would be rather shown stored or in documented form, either in the attic or inside the unexpectedly deep basement.
One Home For All (05:08 min.)
To create this building, the mine pick has been replaced by the camera, digging for visual ressources in the physical world offline, collecting textures from various Montreal neighborhoods. Once applied on the blocks of the virtual in-game world, the environment popped up in a 3D-animated cyberspace, alienated but familiar.
While this project took place during the 2020 spring lockdown, the nexus between proximity and remoteness had already shifted into the immaterial as everybody was bound to their local area. The texture found and used has shaped a dystopian avatar in the form of a patrimonial home in post-industrial Montreal, sold recently and most likely to be torn down soon. The building advertises its expected disappearance on the rooftop: a new condo project for a more connected and better living.
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Utique Spring (2019)
Utique Spring, Sculpture Space, Utica, NY (2019)
4' x 8' x 1,5' concrete cast and approx. 70' copper pipe
Located offsite, inside the bushes of a former boiler factory, Utique Spring marks a transhistorical space connecting two places with a paradigmatic relationship: Utica in upstate New York and the city from which it allegedly inherited its name, Utica (Utique) in today's Tunisia.
Buried in the imperial past of an ancient colony in North Africa, the dystopian loop of Utique Spring encloses abandoned trees and branches in a para-archaeological form, but will sooner or later itself be enclosed and reshaped by them. Surrounded by 70' of popper pipe fragments, installed in various dimensions, the concrete pool shows negative imprints of ornamental design that stems from industrial architecture around Utica, NY.
The two separate historic layers of both cities are not only superimposed by the (re-)use of the same name, but also folded up in the repetition of greco-roman codes that can be found in the ruins of both cities. Each city derives from superior naval powers, driven by expansion and growth. Eventually hit by economic decline and political destruction, their respective architectural patrimony has partially been transformed into cultural sites of symbolic value: The old boiler factory has turned into a center for sculptural production with an international art residency programme, while the ruins of ancient Utica attract tourists and researchers world wide.
Phony Monuments (2019)
Phony Monuments, DARE-DARE, Montréal, QC (2019)
Audiowalk (76.38 min.) ---> video sample
The magic eye:
"Now, you are inside! Inside of a bubble view! Your destination is not physical. Your destination is only visual [...] Feel your body. Feel the concrete wall. Your destination is in between. A bubble. A floating bubble. You are floating. Inside of a bubble view."
Temporary installation at the HALTE at DARE-DARE
6' x 12' Durock sheets, magic eye, wood, LED, concrete, spray paint
The audio-guided tour at the core of this project marks a trajectory punctuated by different stages between the Saint-Henri and Griffintown districts of Montreal, along the Lachine Canal. The HALTE at DARE-DARE served as a starting point and pivot to initiate the walk, as follows:
1. Open the Audioguide on your charged cell phone by clicking HERE.
2. Go to DARE-DARE, Intersection of Avenue Atwater, Greene, and Rue Doré, Montréal, QC, H4C 2H9.
3. Use earbuds.
4. Listen to the instructions.
Inspired by the promotional language praising the monumental transformation of post-industrial areas into new "avant-garde, creative and post-modern" residential neighbourhoods, this carefully planned tour guides the visitor to construction sites and sales offices to meet their agents and pretend to buy a luxury condo. Like a calibrated ritual for the next perfect citizen, sometimes working as a an augmented GPS, sometimes as a tutorial with ethical instructions, this new model is activated through the body of the spectator-hearer himself. The idea of the monument is therefore built horizontally, spread out by the dimension of the vast sites of residential non-places under construction, at the origin of a new working class model, the depoliticized young professional with ideals of hedonist narcissism.
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Boxes Seen As (2018)
Boxes Seen As, Arprim, Montréal, QC (2018)
Found supermarket cardboard, speaker, audio track
(mono band, 31.21 min.) ---> Sound File at http://pub-doc-file.org/PDF_No7_2019.pdf
Boxes Seen As is a sculptural installation of transitory form, dealing primarily with industrial prints on packaging from the food industry. Besides its sculptural approach the work also includes sound as a medium.
In the context of the Super-Market, the exhibition reflects on the political and historical signification of western's society's industrialized global markets, in which, via boxes, print and sculpture play a subordinate and compliant role, similar to propaganda art. Their ideological reference is the human body and its industrially engineered shape and environment inside a perfectly functioning system. The exhibition changed weekly, (re-)using the same material every time, and thus invited the spectator to experience the technocratic aspect of printed matter on corrugated paperboard boxes within their permanent cycle of transformation and the perpetually changing forms and shapes they go through.
Over about a half hour, the soundtrack plays a technical voice announcing 86 passages on how to see a box, accompanied by binaural activation frequencies buzzing through a bare speaker at the ceiling. Not only referring to the dehumanized voices of public announcements but also to the technical process of printing and diy cutting by machines, the sound mix of voice and drone attempts to perform the mind hacking messages of the commercial prints to be seen on the laid out paperboard.
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Stealing From Athens (2017)
Stealing From Athens, Polytechnio, Athens ---> Karlsplatz, Kassel (2017)
49 poster copies, 29,7 x 42 cm
The originals had initially been posted at the campus of the Polytechnio in Athens by Greek activists, with the objective to attack the Documenta 14 venue that simultaneously took place in Kassel and Athens that year. Written in Greek language, they laid out a variety of political and economical reasons, why the Documenta art business was exploiting the citizens of Athens under hypocritical cultural pretexts. Copied and transferred to Kassel, which is the historical origin of the venue, the posters were illegible for the majority of the visitors and turned into plausible documents of the exhibition context, without being removed for the remaining duration of the show.
For complete documentation, refer to:
http://www.pub-doc-file.org/PDF_No5_2018.pdf (p. 28 - 43)
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Broadcast (2017)
Broadcast, ECC, Montreal, QC (2017)
http://www.pub-doc-file.org/PDF_No4_2017.pdf (p. 156 - 175)
Champs de Mars, Performance (Nuit Blanche 67), ECC, Montreal, QC (March 2017)
Photo credit: Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier
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Away From Keyboard, Galerie de l'UQAM, Montréal, QC (2016)
Clay model of a Second Life avatar, cast in bronze: 4 channel video projection and retro-projection, displaying its production process
ca. 4,4'' x 7,5'' x 13,1'', Full-HD, 445 min.
In Western cultural heritage, classical sculpture represents an ideal of beauty and serves as an emblem of political and military power. In Away from Keyboard (AFK), LM tries to detect the emergence of Neoclassicism 2.0 in the aesthetics of social networks like Second Life. The expression AFK indicates the user's absence from the keyboard while still present in the virtual world through the intermediary of an avatar. The exhibition attempts to explore this bipolar phenomenon, between presence and absence, tangible and intangible. By creating a bronze sculpture based on the digital body of the avatar, and documenting this process through four video projections, the artist contemplates new configurations of beauty and power in a globalized, neoliberal and technocratic civilization.
Video animation on Second Life, 12.25 min (snippet: Crépuscule des Dieux / Twilight of the Gods, 2017)
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Workers have left the Packard Motor Plant in Detroit (2015)
Workers have left the Packard Motor Plant in Detroit
Hot Right Now, Projections night, Galerie Galerie Web.com, Montréal, QC (January 2018)
Full-HD Video, 0.46 min. (2015)
In 1895, Louis Lumière shot the first movie in history, a 46 seconds long documentary about workers leaving the Lumière factory in Lyon, FR. The above footage of same length shows a worker's entrance at the Packard Motor Plant in Detroit, MI. Now a factory ruin with dystopian aesthetics, it has turned into an emblematic site of 21st century film making in the North American movie industry.
Zapruder's Plinth (2015)
Zapruder's Plinth, Full-HD Video, 5.30 min. (2015)
This quick video draft was shot from the same plinth Abraham Zapruder stood on in November 1963, while filming JFK's motorcade in Dallas, TX, that ended with a fatal shot in the president's head. Given that Zapruder's iconic film had been investigated in and out and frame by frame, deconstructed, quoted and eventually exploited to boost various conspiracy theories, this digital observation from 2015 rather attempts to reflect on the spatiotemporel connection between the two spots and shots involved in the passage from a live moment (i) to death (x).
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Heads (2015)
Heads (installation view), Parisian Laundry (Bunker), Montréal, QC (2015)
4-channel video installation (Full-HD, 89 min.) with seven sculptural objects, various dimensions, metal, wood, plaster, unfired clay
Photo credit above: Guy L'Heureux
The creation of such a Head took about two hours respectively and was repeated several times. Although the multichannel footage at this point, appears to be a random byproduct of a sculptural process, it is in fact an indispensable asset to the whole modus operandi: the four cameras and screens help to see what's going on around the object while the material accumulated and shaped on the head continually decreases vision and accessibility from the inside. Eventually projected on four transparent screens set up to a quadrilateral form, the footage turns into a sculptural medium itself, whereas the initial sculpture becomes the byproduct.
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Moja Boschestwinaja Dostoprimetschatelnost (2012)
Moja Boschestwinaja Dostoprimetschatelnost, Muthesius University of Art and Design (Klasse Wagner), Kiel, DE (2012)
Live performance via webcam (ca. 100 min.), full-HD webcam, projector, microphone, unfired clay, wood, metal, foil (82" x 59" x 39" and 35" x 18" x 12")
The sculpture stood in the project space of the art academy where I had invited the public for the show. To make this piece work, I had to leave and go home on time, before everyone arrived, and switch on my webcam on Skype. The superposition of the two remote spots - me at home and my sculpture at school - passed right through my head, occurring simultaneously on my self-portrait in clay, visible for everyone but myself. To me this was as disappointing as it was baffling to the others.
Video credit: Andreas Wietjes --> excerpt
Photo credit above: Samuel Seger
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Contact
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Photo credits in slideshow: Geneviève Massé, Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier, Ute Werner