Mystic-Métallic

Mystic-Métallic articulates the sadness of a territory marked by the race for precious metals. Combustion dance and guttural chants open up a path to the secret life of the mineral world. We don't sleep. We are obsessed with vibrations: those of the metallic minerals that populate the subsoil, those of the engines that stubbornly dig for them, those imprinted on the nerves of our working hands. Our bodies, the earth, and the machines, placed on a common frequency, to the point where we can no longer distinguish between what shatters and what is shattered, what runs on fuel and what serves as fuel—everything looks the same in those underground galleries or in the open pit of the "energy transition." If our bodies can't withstand thirty seconds of the furious extraction of a precious material, how can the earth accommodate such relentless extraction? How many tons of residue must we swallow to see a gold nugget glitter on a parallel speculative market? Three gargoyles are sent to decontaminate the earth. Kneeling in the chemical soup of abandoned mining sites, they come to defy the darkness. Their abyssal songs connect with the vibrant depths of the earth. Under the healing effect of their flutes and whispers, the great lie of progress collapses, engines suffocate, holes close. Metals are returned to their original slow state. Like our previous work, Mystic-Informatic, which drew upon the restorative power of mushrooms, our creative process this time focuses on tapping into the hidden power of metals. Our dance sparks a conversation between metal music and mining, two important cultural phenomena in Abitibi, co-creator of the work Audrée Juteau’s home region. Built on the basis of an open-ended investigation, Mystic-Métallic is a project nourished by extraordinary encounters with people from different communities in Abitibi (metal scene, environmental activists, mining workers, artists, citizens) and by documentary works such as Normétal by Gilles Groulx (1959) and Noranda by Robert Monderie (1984), whose images have left their mark on us. Mystic-Métallic is a necromancy: the frenetic rhythm of metal music and its growl chants magnetically, bringing out of the earth the souls of humans, animals, and plants that have disappeared. Our dances are vessels for their suffering and their desire for healing. A few haptic activations and energetic encounters with different metals gave fodder to the creation of this piece.