March 31 at 5:30PM
April 1, 2, 3, 4 at 5:30PM
April 7, 8, 9 at 5:30PM
April 14 at 5:30PM and 7PM
April 17, 18 at 5:30PM and 7PM
April 21 at 9PM
April 22, 23, 25 at 8:30PM
April 28, 29 avril at 8:30PM
Duration: 45 minutes
As We Polish This Rock, It Loses Its Memory by Axel Helios is a real-time interactive work situated between installation and immersive cinema. The piece examines the entanglement of technology, collective memory, and the perpetual reconfiguration of narratives in the contemporary era.
Here, the audience is not simply positioned as spectator, but becomes an active agent within the work through the manipulation of analog devices installed at the center of the dome. These interventions generate real-time shifts in the visual and sonic environment, drawing on forms of control historically exerted by humans over nature. The work retains an underlying narrative structure, while the synchronicity between that narrative and the visual field is continuously modulated through public interaction.
By placing so-called obsolete technologies in dialogue with contemporary digital tools, the work stages a tension between obsolescence and innovation. Its live transformations foreground both the generative potential and the pitfalls of perpetual technological renewal, while opening a reflection on its ecological implications.
The gestures performed by participants operate as a metaphor for human intervention within mediated, social, and ecological environments. In this sense, the work proposes collective memory not as a stable archive, but as a malleable construct, vulnerable to alteration through the actions of a few.
The piece also engages the polarization embedded in contemporary technological systems.Through interaction, the piece creates conditions in which perspectives are displaced, refracted, and amplified, at times echoing the closed circuits of an echo chamber. In doing so, it invites participants to confront the unstable, negotiated nature of collective narrative production.
As the experience unfolds, a reflection emerges: what becomes of memory when it is endlessly manipulated, reinterpreted, and polished until it loses its texture, its relief, its very substance, and begins to slip into obsolescence?
This project was created as part of the SAT Residency program.
Schedule
May 6, 2026 - June 3, 2026 > Performance: May 6, 7, 8 and 9 at 7:30pm
> Film: multiples dates from May 12 to June 3 at 8:30pm
Musician, visual artist, label owner, and software developer, Montreal-based Axel Helios is involved in various aspects of audiovisual creation. He explores the concept of interactivity, either through installations or by allowing the audience to take control of certain aspects of his performances. His work primarily revolves around the idea of atmospheres and sound design rather than strict rules of musical genres, all while understanding and subverting them.