EIM 2019 / JEAN-PIERRE AUBÉ / DU MONT MÉGANTIC AUX EXOPLANÈTES PERFORMANCE VERSION

Opening reception : Saturday, July 27, 2019 ‑ 21h

Du Mont-Mégantic aux exoplanètes (2019) – in performance version

The film proposed by Jean-Pierre Aubé is the result of a one-year residency (2018-2019) – as part of Sporobole’s “Interface” program – at the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic, the iREx and the ASTROlab of the Parc National du Mont-Mégantic. Du Mont-Mégantic aux exoplanètes is presented as a journey in three steps through all the seasons: we start as close as possible to nature, we follow the mountain path and then we are directed towards the telescope of the Observatory which already redirects us towards the sky and the stars, in the distance. From there, the tangible world shifts to that of data and algorithms. The film is a crossing and it carries within it an observation: by arranging passages from the micro to the macro, it brings to the forefront the space-time scales and their impact on our perception of the world.
The star to which the film goes back is called GU Psc. Scientists at iREx have discovered a planetary mass orbiting it: an exoplanet whose distance from its star is 2000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun, while the star itself is 1.45 million billion km from the Earth. From where we are, it is a tiny point in the universe, a star among many others. Yet this distance is what allows us to measure the extent of our vertigo.
On the borderline between documentary neutrality and scientific objectivity, Du Mont-Mégantic aux exoplanètes questions the mechanisms of the gaze as much as those, more obscure, of the increasingly complex instruments that allow us to collect masses of data. Monitored and analyzed, examined and processed, these data – with what they reveal and conceal at the same time – remind us that the universe constantly escapes us.