The overexploitation of resources, the rise of technology, speculative systems, and commodification are the dominant forces shaping our consumerist lifestyles. We work to produce, produce to consume, and consume to justify ever more invasive work, in an excessive cycle that absorbs our existence—even into the most intimate spheres of our lives. What can we do, in the immediate term, to slow down these persistent and invasive mechanisms? Refuse the obligatory awakening. Doze off. Override the day. Fall asleep. Survive the night. Extract the chimeras of surrealism. Become alchemical beings. Escape the emptiness of screen surfaces. Sleep. Dream. Forever.
The corpus La chambre virtuelle by artist Dominique Sirois considers metamorphosis as a power that is both evocative and emancipatory. The project draws on surrealist alchemy and posits that even the most base matter harbours inestimable potential: that of transmuting any material into a precious stone. The aim here is not to remove everything from reality, but to distill a residual transformative magic.
The installation takes the form of a creative gestation chamber, echoing the idea of a necessary workspace for women, resonating with Virginia Woolf’s Une chambre à soi (1929). Fragments of female bodies made of clay interact with sculptural furniture—reminiscent of both a laboratory and an office—and draw a parallel between the occult scientist and the archetype of the creator, confronted with the algorithmic formatting of artificial intelligence. […]
(original text by Jean-Michel Quirion)
