Je ne suis pas triste que vous partiez
It turns out that I’ve been oblivious to some strange goings-on just two blocks from my apartment. Since last summer, a group of artists have been producing some interesting and inventive videos in a loft they call the Moment Factory, at the corner of Hutchison and Van Horne. Most interesting of all is their new series, Minute Moments, which consists of minute-long videos produced by various Montreal artists.
Thien Vu Dang, alias VJ Pillow, and Yasuko Tadokoro, aka VJ Mademoiselle, have produced some of the best work for Minute Moments. I first encountered Pillow and Mademoiselle at a strangely fascinating improv session in which they jammed with a scratch DJ named Manna and the Toronto-based experimental musician Lee Pui Ming. Manna mixed sounds and Lee, through a realtime audio and video feed from Toronto, contributed what might best be described as piano noise and animalesque wails. Pillow and Mademoiselle, meanwhile, did a great job of mixing video footage from the streets of Hong Kong with live shots of Lee and Manna. It was downright hypnotic.
The Minute Moment clip I’ve shared above isn’t quite as trippy. Shot by Pillow and featuring Mademoiselle, it was filmed on a lonely industrial street on the edge of Mile End. It opens with a few lines in French, credited to Jean-Luc Godard, which can be translated as “I am not sad that you are leaving. I am not in love with you. I will not join you in Brazil. I do not kiss you tenderly.” As Mademoiselle wanders down the street, yellow balloon in hand, she passes by a piece of graffiti lurking in the background: “Love is a mystery,” it reads.
Tags: Montreal
yasuko tadokoro says:
Thank you for your kind comments on our videos!
We are very happy to read this article ;)
If you have time, please come to see us at MINUTE MOMENTS;
it’s tomorrow, 21 august, 20h at Moment Factory! We love to see you!!!
August 20th, 2007 at 8:45 am