Dreamland /Territoire de rêve

Dreamland/Territoire de rêve is a kinetic installation inspired by the history of Coney Island, an American amusement park in Brooklyn that had its heyday in the early 20th century and has been in decline ever since. A large table, filled with a panoply of heterogeneous mechanized objects, is at once a model of an imagined city, a ruined amusement park and the laboratory of an abandoned social project. It encapsulates and interrogates the narrative of entertainment—a movement of the twentieth century that was both a creator and a destructor. It also evokes all the by-products of entertainment, making it a major influence on our relationship with the land, with life and with dreams. 

Originally created as a scenographic environment for a live arts performance, the work is reproduced here as a stand-alone installation. Visitors are invited to circulate like omniscient giants around a breathtaking fantasy island of a thousand miniature mechanical machines, freely exploring the unfolding of each of these little worlds and the whole moving fresco. Each machine in this mechanical orchestra makes its own contribution to the immersive soundtrack and to the epic of the constantly changing work: a marvellous, tortured, robotic funfair.

Video : Alexandre Berthier

Partenaires : Conseil des arts du Canada, gouvernement du Québec et Ville de Québec dans le cadre de l’Entente de développement culturel, LANTISS