Friendly Floatees

Shanghai (CN) to Prince Rupert (CA) Trans-Pacific freighter residency from April 14 to April 28, 2015 Production residency from August 7 to August 24, 2015

Boarding a Trans-Pacific containership leaving Shanghai for Prince Rupert (BC) Laurent Lévesque undertakes the third part of this project Friendly Floatees. It also constitutes the first part of his site-specific work at LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE. In the container that will bring him to British Columbia, Laurent Lévesque will proceed to anchor the last point of his project in a real space. Somehow echoing the complete lost of all bearings of this virtual space, the structure will open on this isolated container ship. Friendly Floatees, is a digital installation created with the use of virtual reality photography technology such as used in Google street view. This space is a construction of some kind of skies without horizons, without stars and planets spreading over 360 degrees, within witch the spectator moves with the help of interaction devices. The space is essentially made of blue expanses. Thousands of plastic bags are floating in it, all photographed in different moments of their interaction with the environment. They are frozen in each sky, creating the impression of space, of landscape. However the spaces thus created defy notions of distance, time and perspective, basic notions of the landscape. After all this time at sea and his anchoring work, Laurent Lévesque, will continue his residency at LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE’s lab. In August, he will then resume and complete the structure and work on fine-tuning the workings while testing the installation.