3 April 2024

13:30 – 14:15

Amphi 1

Jocelyn Fiset

Since the 90s, Jocelyn Fiset has been invited to create his nomadic and ephemeral works in many countries. For over twenty years, he has put his organizational skills to good use in setting up a number of international events, both in Quebec and abroad. He acts as a facilitator for numerous Quebec artists to ensure their presence at various international symposia and festivals. For seven years, Jocelyn Fiset was the general and artistic director of the GRAVE artist-run center in Victoriaville (now Atoll), where he received several creation and travel grants from the Conseil des arts du Québec and Canada. He has also been involved with several boards of directors (RAAV, Culture Centre-du-Québec, Centre d’artistes Action Art Actuel, Centre d’essai 3e impérial, Galerie Émergence and AADRAV). His opinion pieces have appeared in a number of newspapers, including Le Devoir, the visual arts magazine Esse and L’oeil Régional.

What eco-energy to rethink and redirect the art system?

This talk summarizes Jocelyn Fiset’s career: thirty years of artistic resistance, breaking with productivism in art and with the leitmotiv of “Limiting the production of objects in art to increase the production of meaning in society”. This path has led him to create various nomadic, ephemeral and relational artistic actions in public squares around the world, using little energy and few materials, even reusing them, over several years of creation. The result is a scathing critique of the attitude of a majority of creators who find it easier to justify their existence by calling themselves entrepreneurs rather than artists. Without really realizing it, such an attitude of creating according to the standards of prevailing productivism leads artists to grapple, to waste as much of the world’s energy as their own vital energy. Based on an essay written with the help of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Jocelyn Fiset shares some of the breakthrough proposals needed for the visual arts milieu to resonate with the new eco-energetic challenges of the climate emergency. The ultimate goal, as an artist, is to get as close as possible, as pure as possible, to the human imagination through the dematerialization of art.