Conceptualized during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, unFAQ is a production and dissemination art project initiated by Projet EVA. Envisioned as an exchange platform where artists located all over Canadian and First Nations territories could share immersive audiovisual recordings, unFAQ is structured as a question and answer format reminiscent of the well-known FAQs frequently found on the web.
These short lists regrouping most frequent questions asked by users are usually compiled in order to simplify administrative processes. If a FAQ represents an efficient way to handle user queries and interactions, what underlying meanings can one derive from such documents? unFAQ addresses this meaning-making problem by critically confronting the utilitarian nature of these repositories to the often unsatisfactory nature of the cheap, ready-made answers that are thrown at those who try to explore fundamental issues that have a profound effect on their life and their environment. Single-cause answers are great when dealing with simple artificial models. However, when confronted with the complicated nature of real-life situations, these simple answers can allow a large part of a user’s experience to completely elude them, and therefore root them in false consciousness. The resulting simplicity might be a facade beneath which a very complicated network of meanings, spread across different layers of reality, can hide.
In order to investigate burning topics and pierce the thin veil of simplicity, twelve artists selected by two curators were asked to create immersive works inspired by the traditions of field recording, letter exchange and meditative contemplation. Tasked with recording a single-take directly from their environment in order to explore the existential aspect of crucial questions co-elaborated with the curators, the artists produced audiovisual answers that avoid the usual pitfalls of elusiveness and superficiality. The sum of these works show how contemplation, observation and the passage of time help produce valuable answers in our current speedy and supposedly optimized technological context.
