Patrick Beaulieu\u2019s work offers a grounded point of reference for reflecting on this notion of fragility. Whether taking the form of \u00adinstallations of natural elements\u2014branches, feathers, or butterfly wings, set in motion by luminous, mechanical, or electronic devices\u2014, of a road trip down the long migratory path of the Monarchs,2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Vector Monarca<\/em>, a mobile multimedia project by Patrick Beaulieu, spanned over several months. Driving a small truck that could be transformed first into a video screen, then into an exhibition space, Beaulieu and writer Daniel Canty followed the migration of the Monarch butterflies from Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, to Morelia, Mexico, where these mythic butterflies reproduce (www.vectormonarca.com).<\/span> or of the creation of a package delivery company, his pieces, stemming from the brouhaha and uncertainty of trial and error and imbued with the poetry and subtlety of complex thought, are defined, again and again, by the very fragility of their materials. An artist whose tentacular creative projects branch out, extend and respond to one another through time and space, going from one venue to the next and proceeding by discrete occurrence, Beaulieu is \u00adparticularly interested in the movement of animals, people, and goods, and in \u00advarious tangential themes: borders, economics, politics, \u00adcommunications, \u00addeterioration, integrity, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Transfriable<\/em> is the artist\u2019s neologistic designation for the \u00adspringboard from which he and partner-workers have shipped and \u00addelivered fragile goods since 2003. Opening \u201cbranches\u201d in exhibition halls, this \u201ccompany\u201d mimics and distorts package delivery companies\u2019 discourse \u00adguaranteeing safe \u00adshipping and quick services: \u201cThanks to technical innovations in \u00adproduct resilience (which are \u00adredefining messenger standards), our \u00ademployees focus on the composition of goods to determine the most \u00adappropriate effect. . . . The longer the delivery process, the better the package\u2019s quality at delivery.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dominiq Vincent, author of and partner in the company\u2019s website: www. <\/span> Transfriable<\/em> was first presented at the Observatorio Centro Experimental in Morelia, Mexico. In the exhibit space, we see a floor \u00adcovered with bubble wrap, a desk, the company\u2019s logo and its \u00adwebsite on a computer screen, clocks showing the time in a few big \u00adcities, \u00adpacking products, and two dozen cardboard boxes from Canada, containing bolts and broken crystal ware. The inclusion of bolts, not following packing procedures (neglecting to bubble wrap the objects or to use other shock-absorbent packing materials), and over-packing the boxes are sure ways to increase the risks of damage. By increasing the \u201cfactors of difficulty,\u201d the system for protecting the object actually becomes the means for its destruction, thus overturning functional parameters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In tandem with the corporate staging in the exhibition hall, there were interactions with groups of people and actions undertaken by participating accomplices. The artist called on the skills of women potters from the village of Capula, asking them to make clay cups, plates and glasses, which were left unfired to increase their fragility. Videos on the company website show how it stumps expectations for shipping goods and the importance of safe handling: we see students standing in a circle around a fountain throwing boxes to one another, dropping them nonchalantly and laughing as if they were balloons; we also see a delivery person, arms loaded with packages, stumbling through a square, dropping his apparently fragile load, the din attracting the attention of a few passersby who kindly offer their help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though such man\u0153uvres seem to target two audiences\u2014witnesses unaware of the deception and the forewarned who will see the work\u2019s various mediations\u2014, this twofold target is not exclusive. Everything depends on the artist\u2019s desire to reveal his trickery and the different audiences\u2019 interpretation of the events\u2019 reality. Video-watchers who think they see honest passersby hurrying to help a clumsy person are perhaps dupes to the accomplices\u2019 game. Beaulieu blurs the line between true and false from within the very system he has established.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two years after this first presentation of Transfriable<\/em>, a second branch opened at the Hatch Art Center in Mexico City. Again, we see a desk, the company\u2019s logo, the clocks, a computer, and packages of \u00adbroken crystal from Canada. But this time, there are also boxes shipped from Morelia \u00adcontaining unfired clay pottery that has been shattered by bolts and nearly reduced to dust. While up to this point the content of the boxes had been destroyed by just one thing (the metal breaking the glass), now the clay\u2019s humidity had also accelerated the oxidation of the hard matter, causing an unexpected effect and a reciprocal destruction of the materials. These packages of fragilized contents were then sent to Gand, Belgium, for the inauguration of a third branch at the Experimental Intermedia v.z.w., where they were put in a bay window looking out over the street. To the \u00adpresentation of the company and the display of \u00adpackages of \u00adbroken Canadian and Mexican objects, the artist now added a shipping pallet loaded with 120 Belgian beer glasses and a video projection of package handling in Gand, where we see a tramway blocked by packages that have been dropped by a freight handler. The scope of this act extends beyond the individual to group infrastructures, as the accident it provokes \u00addisrupts the daily life of a well-ordered, efficiency-conscious community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company\u2019s last exhibit, called Transfriable \u2013 Lost Docks<\/em>, was held in 2006 at Plastic Kinetic Worms in Singapore. Along with packages shipped from Canada, Mexico, and Belgium, the installation also displayed an aquarium of goldfish held down by black bungee cords on a loading pallet. Projected on the wall, a video played the different stages of the acquisition and shipping of this aquarium, which had been placed without protection in the middle of a shipping container. The container is therefore no longer a box thwarted from its basic function\u2014protection\u2014and containing other containers (pots, glasses, crystal ware); rather, it becomes the necessary condition for the fishes\u2019 captivity. The container-aquarium offers up living contents, little beings at the mercy of human handlers and, to believe the video, their death appears imminent.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - The results of this live expedition from Singapore will be shown at Clark\u2019s, in Montreal, from May 7 to June 13, 2009.<\/span> An ethical dimension\u2014that of using animals in art\u2014is thus added to the artist\u2019s exploration of true and false, and the movement of people and goods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By imitating companies\u2019 solicitous strategies and discourse, Transfriable<\/em> invites us to question their intentions and the nature of the needs they pretend to meet. Absurd and voluntarily \u201c\u00adunproductive,\u201d Beaulieu\u2019s work turns the notion of profitability and efficiency on end and encourages us to rethink the values underlying our consumer \u00adsociety: the commercialized products\u2019 lack of resistance, and the exploitation of \u00adworkers. While Beaulieu\u2019s company attempts to control factors in the \u00addeterioration of the fragile matter being shipped, the absurdity of the \u00adproject\u2019s aims and its content-container interplay are nonetheless reminiscent of Dadaism, questioning the idea of functionality and of our \u00adrelationship to matter: \u201cInexhaustible, vertiginous, and bulimic, boxes can contain anything. It\u2019s what one might call the \u2018body without end,\u2019 or the \u2018infinite of the box,\u2019 which refers back to a kind of dizzying \u00adquality in \u00admatter, of an \u00adunmastered and probably unmasterable diversity.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Florence de M\u00e8redieu, Histoire mat\u00e9rielle et immat\u00e9rielle de l\u2019art moderne<\/em> (Paris: Larousse\/Sejer, 2004) [first edition Bordas, 1994], 244.<\/span> Indeed, this work becomes a \u00adcelebration of the inefficient, of the \u00adunreasonable, and of the irrational. By taking part in the shipping services for fragile goods, the project also \u00adjustifies a reflection on the considerable efforts deployed in safely shipping and conserving works of art, precious goods par \u00adexcellence. As such, if we consider the instances of Transfriable<\/em> as \u00adexhibited finalities, the boxed fragile goods come to represent real \u00adfragilities, crumbling out of doors in \u201creal life,\u201d where they are neither \u00adrepresentations nor represented, their insignificant existence \u00adunnoticed. The artist creates a kind of paradoxical system that brings back to the world of art the absurdity of its phenomenological and conceptual \u00adisolation. But since the Transfriable<\/em> exhibitions show the state of the objects after real travel, they are like passageways between past and future events, becoming signs of the \u00adcompany\u2019s activity in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [Translated from the French by Ron Ross]<\/p>\n
transfriable.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/65_DO04_Dorais_Beaulieu_12colis-scaled.jpg\")
photos\u202f: permission de l\u2019artiste | courtesy of the artist <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/65_DO04_Dorais_Beulieu_Chute-scaled.jpg\")
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photos\u202f: permission de l\u2019artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/65_DO04_Dorais_Beulieu_Chute-4-scaled.jpg\")
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