project image
Mathieu-Philippe Perras
SUN.SYNC

first performed on March 17, 2017
Château Napoule Art Foundation, Côte d'Azur, France
performed five times in 2017

ALEX CÔTÉ

Montreal, Canada

alexcoteh.com

SUN.SYNC
ALEX CÔTÉ

Humanity is embarking on a new era as the focus of our society’s priorities keeps shifting. The new millennium propels the human being in a radical ontological evolution, revealing the digital era as the main road for evolving. We see technology quickly rising to the top of our concerns while other elements, such as spirituality and the environment, are pushed aside. We are in a critical ecological crisis where ethical and biological boundaries have been passed over. This urgent situation inspired me to create “Sun.Sync,” which magnifies the organic environment within an innovative interdisciplinary approach and brings forth the singularities of the Sun.

The performance questions animism through research and symbolic images in which bodies, plants, and plastics evoke the ontological mutations of our time. Therefore, “Sun.Sync” explores the transformation of the human being surrounded by materialism and overconsumption. The pollutants and the plastic materials that I interact with in the performance are metaphors of the large-scale planetary perturbations caused by unsustainable human desire. I investigate and manipulate the natural resources within the installation as a way to symbolize the sacred relationship between people and nature, evoking a quest for the sublime where infinite attention to the environment’s complexity is sought from the observer. “Sun.Sync” reveals an intricate network of sacred connections, where sunlight projections and digital installations enhance the feeling of nature’s presence.

The video integrates mapping technology to create a unique experience that immerses the audience in the disconcerting aesthetic reciprocity between natural and digital life. Among thunderous rivers, mesmerizing mountains, and sun cycle observations, a series of shots are linked and synchronized on different walls, while the audience traces my path both in the reconstituted nature imagery and in the performance. “Sun.Sync” highlights our primate qualities in the technological age and engages awareness through different shots of green lands, radiant sunlight, and shivering waves. Oscillating between lightness and gravity, meditation and suffocation, humanity and deity, “Sun.Sync” engages with resilience, memory, and action in order to protect what’s left of the landscape.