'Mechanical Rodeo' and 'Blizzard Blizzard', together with a third short video-work, 'Shift', form the short, witty triptych 'Julie in the Box'. The short videos are self-portraits of Julie-Christine Fortier playing a light-hearted game with her face. Imprisoned in the frame of the monitor, the face is subjected to minor interventions. In 'Mechanical Rodeo' the ocular circumventions of a performer with a static face race at the rhythm of small mechanics. In 'Blizzard Blizzard' the face is exposed to frost, with hair, eyelashes, nose and cheeks becoming more and more encrusted. The flush of the cheeks deepens, the pale-blue tinted clouds of frost drift past, the greenish shadows round the eyes; an almost charming, Arcadian light play of pastel tints runs through the video, to be brutally dispersed at the end. In 'Mechanical Rodeo' as well, the face is veiled in white, blue and pink tints, but here it is to direct focus on the eyes. The play of pastels gives these videos a kind of impressionistic air and calls to mind portraits by the painter Renoir. But the videos are not exercises in the lively reflection of light, although that could be a lovely paradox in a video work. Rather, the triptych in its different forms is a playful commentary on different contexts.
'Julie in the Box' is not just a video triptych, it can also be shown as a performance or an installation. For the performance, filming is live and mixed with music, creating live post-synchronization. There is a paradox here also true of the live performance in which the spectator can watch only on one monitor (and in mixed version). Thus creating a game with self-presentation when it is mediatized.
As installation, the three videos can be viewed in cardboard boxes. When set up in a department store in Montreal, 'Julie in the Box' was an artistic 'rarity' that was supposed to briefly confuse the shopping-mad public. Is this for sale? Maybe it's even on offer? And what's in all the other boxes? As videos in a festival they are perhaps mainly anachronistic commentaries on the inclination of many artists to highlight themselves.
– Claudine Hellweg
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