I recorded this conversation with Francesca in the context of our ongoing video art and music collaboration. Francesca has worked on videos for my collaborations with my brother Jordan Christoff through the Anarchist Mountains project and also with sound artist Joseph Sannicandro.
I first met Francesca at a community art event in Montreal, I got a pack of postcards of collage work that Francesca had worked on. Over time, after a series of additional encounters in Montreal we began to talk about collaborations and today we regularly work on exchanges that mix some of my more ambient music projects with Francesca’s beautiful visuals.
I invited Francesca to work on a video for the piece Cloud Formation, which is on the album A Turbulent Sky, which is a duet project alongside sound artist, musician and Indigenous broadcaster Jarrett Martineau. The project was released on cassette last year by Pyramid Blood Records.
This conversation with Francesca is a way to explore and share some of the ideas that drive our respective work and also our collaborative work together. It also celebrates our official online launch of our latest video art collaboration today on Foxy Digitalis, thank you for reading our conversation and also for viewing the video.
Francesca Tallone’s website is HERE. Stefan Christoff’s website is HERE.
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Stefan: In a way I can see video and film experimentation as almost like an instrument, particularly in the ways that you work with it. I can see an improvisational quality. Also generally in your work, Francesca, I can see that you are also really in the moment, in the sense that the work reflects an awareness of being alive, mindfulness in a way. That comes through in your filming that documents encountering a landscape, or a detail of a place.
These details are very simple in a way, but they can also be something way beyond that, because in the microdetails you can sense that basic point, which is that no matter what happens online we are still on Earth, physically, our feet are on the ground. This point also revolves around seeing the humanity of others as coexisting on Earth, it is linked to the idea of the critical importance of sustaining collective exchanges, of meaning making, as rooted in real life, in making sure that we remain focused on the beautiful details of place, of having experiences that are not mediated by technology or online culture in a way.
Francesca: I think that’s a good observation, I really do try to be present in places where I am and feel nature around me, to try to find moments, instances and places in that environment that I feel connected to. Also in the process of putting these filmed moments together, there is an improvisation. I am trying to see how these different moments can be shared together, how they can be in dialogue. Water, sky, clouds and trees for example, I like to find ways to layer them, so the representation is an interpretation of the recorded experiences, not exactly how they happened in nature. At the same time all the imagery does speak to real and also normal experiences of these things, these places, although because it is layered there is also an air of something unusual as well.
Stefan: It is interesting because this project, with Indigenous musician and sound artist Jarrett Martineau, I have talked with Jarrett about this in relation to music and how that can speak to being grounded in place. To think about the ways that this can speak to holding space for the sounds of place in music, even if it is warped into a layer of a sound piece, Jarrett spoke in this conversation shared through CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal here, about this as being meaningful in relation to their practice, or place coming through in the sound.
I think that this also brings up the key issue of climate, a point that is not in the headlines like it was say 5-6 years ago, but it is something that remains as urgent as ever, if not more urgent. These are topics that came to mind when we were speaking just now.
Francesca: These are things that clearly will come into play when making art. As observant people who are pulling from life, from across the spectrum of experience, it is hard not to consciously, unconsciously and also subconsciously, to put them together into the artistic medium that you are working on. This is something that I think about when I am outside, when I am observing nature, it is constant. This is obvious sometimes in my work, although sometimes not obvious.
Stefan: I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about the process of making art, making video works. I am thinking about this in the context of the fact that now a lot of people are filming all the time on their phones and also beyond. Most of that doesn’t end up in a creative space, in terms of something to be shared and presented. Maybe sometimes people do have ideas about bringing that filmed material into an artistic or creative context, but not a lot of people make that jump between the ideas world and then sharing that material creatively, in an artistic way. It is just interesting to think about the fact that you have made that jump from ideas, into articulation, it is not simple.
Francesca: This is something that I do think about, that I have reflected on and I don’t have a lot of chances to talk about this with people. I think this is a really good topic. It is a point that I wanted to underline, well, I have always been a collector of things, physical objects, as well as video and photos on my phone.
Now we have these technologies that allow us to collect experiences in a way, while in the past that type of thing was less accessible and this process really became a way to place those collections of moments, recorded on video, into a place that could be abstracted, but is also real. The videos incorporate a lot of different things, images of the clouds, details that I have filmed on the ground, so when I am doing it is looking at the collection of things that I have observed and I am placing them together into a collective context, where all the points are exchanging with each other and then can hopefully be understood on a more collective level, obviously, or even metaphorically.
I have always worked in various ways with collage, so the videos became another way to take images, moving, or still, but then collaging them onto, or into, a surface, a plane, a context. I started doing these video works right before COVID I started doing the visuals for live performances in Montreal. Then during the pandemic we started collaborating more consistently on videos, around your music projects, so in a way the live video layering at shows morphed into video works. The video works are more conscious in a way because I am working then less in a live context, at shows where I was doing live video, the material had just been flowing in the moment, now with the video pieces I choose very specific recordings to accompany specific parts of musical pieces, as part of a musical experience.
Stefan: I remember now buying from you some collage postcards at Expozine I think, I had totally forgotten that until now, but after you mentioned the collages, I recalled that. In the collages, you had cut up images to make composite work in a way.
Francesca: Totally, yes old magazines specifically.
Stefan: Awesome. There is one quote from a friend that came to mind, which is from Josh MacPhee, who is a founder of the Justseeds artists’ cooperative, who was launching a book in Montreal, called Strike While the Needle Is Hot, out through Common Notions, the book is really about archiving the sounds of songs created by labour union members in the contexts of strikes. Josh in that book really focuses on how labour unions in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, who were doing work that in many ways is very different from the type of work that many major unions do today, which is more institutional management. The work that this book focuses on is when, at the time, a lot of local unions would record the sounds, the chants, the songs that were developed at picket lines and in protests, those recordings would then be released on limited edition vinyls. The key point that I wanted to highlight is the fact that that cultural production was also about recording those moments, often also the vinyls were produced in collaboration with printshops, or local record presses that the unions had relationships with. This book was released by Common Notions, in the conversation around the book Josh was also speaking about how this work by unions speaks to a contemporary problem that we have, which is a built-in cultural assumption that the Internet is a great archive, while in real terms the Internet really isn’t a good archive at all. So I think that decoding things around this is very important.
Today, as a millennial artist, cultural worker, I look back to stuff that maybe had a strong net presence like 10 or even 15 years ago and a lot of that stuff is simply gone, it is not on the Internet anymore, websites, or blogs, or online publishing platforms, it is just not there and I imagine that a lot of it isn’t archived. Also I think about the fact that a lot of people, including myself of course, will discard video and photos from their phone which in the moment were important things that you wanted to capture, but then it is just trashed.
I want to think about, to critique, how we are patterned, or pushed culturally, to think about the Internet as this incredible archival tool, but if we actually look at the results of this online archive, as we once understood it, like a decade ago, most of that is now gone, the same goes for social media stuff also. I think about the process of trying to really honour the things that we document that we record. I am thinking about this also as a sound artist, I love recording protests, the audio, the sounds of chants, or even city sounds, an interesting sound environment. I often find that all that effort that I made to document those things, if I don’t find a way to share them through a project, like my sound artist collaborations with Joseph Sannicandro for example, here is one about the Québec student strike, if I don’t find a platform, or a context, then all those documentation efforts often just disappear. I can see that maybe your videos are a way to platform and honour all of those experiences, those moments, that you have documented. What do you think? Does this speak to you at all?
Francesca: It is funny that you bring it up like this, because on the point of what I mentioned earlier, about having vast collections of things, sometimes the reality is that they all just sit in piles, or in boxes, or digitally in piles on Dropbox or something. I think that one of the things that makes having an archive interesting is having those collections and having them in a place, making sure that they are accessible, organized in a way, so that you can figure out whatever place, or context within which you share them in.
For example, your sound recordings of protests, you never know when you might need to look back on that, to review it, to reassert it in a way within a newer context that could fit it. I do think that having an archive as part of the compendium of your experience is also valuable, even if you don’t have a specific idea of how you can use it right away, or how it could benefit someone. In a way you can imagine speaking with someone who brings up an event or something that happened and if you have a recording from that, it can be very meaningful to share that, the recordings in your case, or video, etc. with them, to reuse them, they remain. I don’t think that the material needs to have a specific function, just having it is fine, but at least knowing where it is allows you to access it when you need it at a later time.
Stefan: That’s cool, thanks for sharing that. I also think about how the power of collectivity is striking, something is activated when we work on something together, mixing your video and music projects that I am involved in, for example. Something is activated when you go into that collaborative space, given we have both lived in Montreal, there is also that connection to place, we have both lived here, we met here, there is a city based connection.
I find that there is a depth that can really be sparked in a collaborative process, that I think emerges from that. I can also see that in our work together. There is a power there which is special.
I also think about conversations with different artists, like Jarrett, a musician and Indigenous broadcaster, so you made this wonderful video work to accompany our piece Cloud Formation, from our album A Turbulent Sky, which is out on Pyramid Blood records, digitally and on cassette. I think about this idea of locating sound, of locating a place on Earth, a shared reference and experience that can come through in collective work.
If we try to think about the basis of our collaboration clearly, the connection is Montreal, a city with a lot of folks who have fought for there to be a place for non-commercial art, for collective spaces that aren’t only driven by cash. I think that our connection and work together emerges from that context for sure. This city, Montreal, given the political history of this place, the very strong social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, historian Sean Mills writes a lot on this in The Empire Within, that created a context I think for a lot of respect for non-commercial art, created a context for our encounters and now our collaboration. There is a broader point here about creative encounters being shaped by the places that we inhabit and also informed by the cultural landscape.
Francesca: There is certainly something to be said for a place, a city where you live, like Montreal, that doesn’t only put artistic value only on specific types of work. There are usual trends and things that get focused on in the arts, but when the place that you live is actively able to value the work that you are doing wherever it fits on the spectrum, it means that there is space, that non-commercial work, or activist cultural work isn’t diminished then. All the different types of work can then be looked at, discussed and critiqued from different view points. The work exists then in a larger social, political and artistic spectrum, Montreal, a place that has so many different artistic voices, which is a good thing, so then the different work is less likely to lack observation, interest, critique or discussion.
Stefan: I also think about the more recent political history of Montreal in the 1990s, when the city went through the independence referendum on Québec separation from Canada. This referendum created political uncertainty and drove the real estate market to tumble, then a lot of artists and activists moved to the city, the economic dynamics were that your whole life wouldn’t only be driven by finding cash to pay some crazy high rent. This created a really interesting dynamic in the city that is changing as we speak, with the real estate monster closing in. However I bring this all up because for a long time this city allowed there to be a lot of creative connections, the pollination of ideas between the arts and social movements, which really drove many projects and creative connections. A city landscape for a long time that wasn’t simply driven by real estate capital.
I thought that maybe I would just end by doing what I usually do in my weekly community radio show, Free City Radio (archives here), at the start, which is to ask you to describe yourself and your work a bit for people who are hearing or reading this interview on Foxy Digitalis. Maybe you could locate yourself a bit more, your work, you have mentioned video, collage, just to locate you a bit more.
Francesca: I mostly work in image based practices, I have a background as a photographer. Mostly I grew up learning on analog film cameras, which today has morphed into different practices, including video and also paper collage practices. All of these things certainly work with images. A lot of the video work is based on a collection of imagery, visuals that I have been documenting for years and years, so the video work was really a way to find a path to share some of that imagery that I had been making for a long time. The abstract video collages have been a really good way to re-see and rework what I had originally seen when I was collecting that video work originally.
I have been really interested in how we relate to our environment as people who work more in front of computers, my day job is really a computer based job, but I really try to have another outlet for reconnecting with things that are not only about being on the computer all the time, so I am really trying to see that and to explore that in my life.
I really like working with things that are available to me, the environment, nature, being around people, also thinking about these things from other perspectives, from abstract ones and trying to find ways to put that all together in something that feels like a cohesive whole, like in a video work. I love collecting and working with different things, objects, or images and then work to pull them together in a creative way.
Stefan: It is cool to get a sense of things and the ideas that inform your work as an artist. Going full circle, back to this point of being aware of the earth, there is a profound importance there, in relation to questions around climate justice and beyond. I like the fact that in your work you share that reflection of the environment in a way that isn’t just individual, but that is collective. It brings up questions around how our reflections and experiences are collective in so many ways, through that, when we think about the arts, it brings up questions around how we can find pathways to express the arts in collective contexts, going beyond individualistic narratives.
Also your website address is awesome, Francesca, I just wanted to share it: /www.ambientmoss.com
Thank you for the conversation today!
Francesca: Thanks Stefan, it was really nice to see you!
Foxy Digitalis depends on our awesome readers to keep things rolling. Pledge your support today via our Patreon or subscribe to The Jewel Garden. You can also make a one-time donation via Ko-fi.
