Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131

Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131
{"id":197485,"date":"2023-08-30T16:40:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/?post_type=compte-rendu&p=197485"},"modified":"2025-10-08T07:40:42","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T12:40:42","slug":"wendtdufauxectoplasmic-studies","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/wendtdufauxectoplasmic-studies\/","title":{"rendered":"Wendt+Dufaux
Ectoplasmic Studies<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
What happens when an excess of joy mixes with an excess of grief? We might get ectoplasm, itself an excessive substance wavering between fluid and material, death and life, traditionally secreted from the orifices of mediums during nineteenth-century spiritualism in North America and Europe. The artist duo Wendt+Dufaux (Sarah Wendt and Pascal Dufaux) has been exploring this ephemeral substance since 2021, most recently in the show Ectoplasmic Studies <\/em>at \u00c9cart in Rouyn-Noranda. The term ectoplasm <\/em>was coined in 1894, as medical science was exploring the uterus and the concept of \u201cgerms\u201d in relation to the female body, contagion, and death\u200a\u2014\u200afeared territories to be sure. Traditionally, it took myriad forms, such as clothing, larva, foam, goo, fully formed bodies, and collage-like emanations. Ectoplasmic Studies<\/em> offers a similarly diverse material universe: broken glass, fabric swatches, daguerreotypes, video, circles and rings, hair, drawings, seeds, beads, bulbous forms, and leaky shadows.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
An overarching theme of the exhibition is excess. This makes sense considering that Wendt+Dufaux\u2019s practice as a duo overflows from their practices as discrete artists (Sarah, performance and dance; Pascal, sculpture) and creates a surfeit in the interstice where they come together\u200a\u2014\u200adancing sculpture. The artists have been working together since 2016 and are symbiotic in the way that only both partners\u2011in-work and partners-in-life can be\u200a\u2014\u200aeach facet of their existence spills into the other. Similarly, ectoplasm is a substance that blurs the line between non-matter and matter\u200a\u2014\u200anot only blurs, but spills past it altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
$\"Wendt+Dufaux_Ecto\"$
Wendt+Dufaux<\/strong>
Ectoplasmic Studies<\/em>, exhibition view, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Spillage and excess are present in the joy that Ectoplasmic Studies<\/em> invokes, but also in the considerable grief, encapsulated in the way that Wendt+Dufaux work with grotesque synthetic substances that signal a Western neoliberal obsession with overproduction and the over-exploitation of the Earth. The exhibition, however, is not didactic in its critique but induces the contradiction of enjoyment, a pleasure bound up with the neutral pseudoscientific gaze that ectoplasm in general flouts and takes on\u200a\u2014\u200athis is a study<\/em>, after all, and Ectoplasmic Studies<\/em> frolics in classification and declassification, taking apart binaries such as fluid\/substance, organic\/inorganic, containment\/bloom, delight\/grief, here\/there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
$\"\"$
Wendt+Dufaux<\/strong>
Ectoplasmic Studies<\/em>, exhibition view, 2023.
Photo: courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
One of the freshest ways that Wendt+Dufaux reinvent ectoplasm is in their focus on the body as an extrasensory field. A hairy geodesic tapestry lies on the floor in the centre of the room, a creature that breathes and voices the work into the gallery space. In this direction, \u00c9cart invited visually impaired art-goers to experience the work; the show therefore not only summons viewers<\/em>, but also touchers<\/em>, sensers<\/em>. From its roots as the uncanny goo of the afterlife, extruded through the orifices of (mostly women) mediums, ectoplasm is the ultimate anti-ableist material; historically, it could be produced only in the dark, making it an ideal guide for those who long to explore the senses in unconventional ways and open into the flows of what it means to exist in contradiction, to spill into the pleasures of all that can and cannot be felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Writer, researcher, and educator Sandra Huber holds a PhD in interdisciplinary humanities and currently teaches at Concordia University. She is the author of Assembling the Morrow: A Poetics of Sleep<\/em> (Talonbooks, 2014).<\/p>\n
Pascal Dufaux, Sandra Huber, Sarah Wendt<\/div>
Pascal Dufaux, Sandra Huber, Sarah Wendt<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"L\u2019\u00c9cart,<\/strong> Rouyn-Noranda
<\/br>April 13\u200a\u2014\u200aMay 28, 2013<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":197400,"template":"","categories":[884],"numeros":[6594],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[6666],"artistes":[2100,2099],"thematiques":[],"type_compte-rendu":[],"class_list":["post-197485","compte-rendu","type-compte-rendu","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","numeros-109-water","auteurs-sandra-huber-en","artistes-pascal-dufaux-en","artistes-sarah-wendt-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu\/197485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/compte-rendu"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=197485"},{"taxonomy":"type_compte-rendu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_compte-rendu?post=197485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}