Claire Bardainne
THE STAGE DESIGNER AT THE INTERSECTION OF DIGITAL AND PERFORMING ARTS
In 2011, Claire Bardainne, a visual artist and stage designer, joined forces with Adrien Mondot, multidisciplinary artist, computer engineer and juggler, to form Adrien M & Claire B. The joint venture fuses art and technology, dissolving the boundaries between digital and handmade art, animate and inanimate objects, and the material and immaterial worlds to create immersive exhibitions and performances. In the 12 years since it was founded, their collective has grown to 30 collaborators, including an interdisciplinary set of musicians, dancers, technologists, composers and producers. They have presented a wide body of experiential work, making the rounds in museums and at festivals all over Europe, and partnering on their first installation in North America after meeting Montreal’s PHI Centre team at Art Basel Miami Beach. In an interview with PHI, Claire said “Technology can’t solve everything, but it can help in the context of symbolic experiences to create a collective moment imbued with a certain poetry.”
Projects
Adrien M & Claire B’s first show in North America, Mirages & miracles, installed at Montreal’s PHI Centre in early 2020, was a three-part experience featuring augmented reality, interactive video projection and optical illusion in combination with physical illustrations and formations. In a continuation of their partnership with PHI, they presented Last Minute, an experience that traveled to Canada from France and Finland. The 30-minute work brings music together with interactive projections of fire, waves, air and other elements into a self guided space and was conceived of as “a symbolic experience of the body on the verge of passing to the other side, between a ‘before’ and an ‘after’.” The duo’s first project together, XYZT, originally conceived of in 2011, and on exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum from 2017-2018, was an interactive experience with 10 different virtual environments that respond to movement. The duo describe it as “a journey through nature revisited.”
