Jocelyn Robert

by François Couture
Jocelyn Robert is first and foremost a sound artist and post-modern experimentalist. Since the mid-'80s, he has released a string of daring albums most people would describe as containing no music at all. His main themes have been silence, the trivial, miscommunication, and the recycling of pop culture. With Pierre-André Arcand and Christof Migone, he co-founded the collective Avatar in Quebec City in the early '90s, which became the province's flagship in sound art. Robert has created radio works and presented installations in North America and Europe.
Born in Quebec City, Robert studied pharmacology and completed a degree in architecture before escaping into music. His approach to the medium came from plastic arts, he would always seize sound like a raw material to sculpt and integrate to intermedia works rather than collections of notes and beats. He presented his first installation in 1987, the year a short track of his appeared on Ré Quarterly, Vol. 2 No. 2, a compilation curated by British drummer and ex-Henry Cow Chris Cutler. A year later, the latter's label, Recommended, released Stat Live Moniteur, followed in 1991 by Folie/Culture, two interesting first attempts that sadly had little impact.
In 1991, after studying at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), Robert came back to Quebec City and hooked up with a number of similarly minded artists. With Louis Ouellet, Gilles Arteau, Georges Azzaria, and Fabrice Montal he formed Bruit TTV, a Dadaist noise composition ensemble that released two CDs in the early '90s. In 1993, he co-founded Avatar, an "association for sound creation and diffusion," which included most of the aforementioned artists, plus Arcand and Migone. Housed in the arts building/co-op Meduse, Avatar became his main activity for the next eight years. He directed it, animated it, and gave it its personality. During that period, he multiplied installations, collective recording projects, and live performances, and acted as producer and designer for most of the releases on the association's affiliated imprint Ohm Editions. He released a string of solo CDs, including Le Piano Flou (1995) and Canned Gods (1999). In 1999, he formed the Avatar all-star electronic improv group GOD'AR, which performed at the 2000 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville.
Robert had artist residencies in Banff, Vancouver, Amsterdam (STEIM), and Sheffield. In 2002, his installation "L'Invention des Animaux" won him first prize at Transmediale in Berlin. Most of his radio works were created for Canadian state radio, but in 2002, Austrian radio station ORF Kunstradio commissioned "San Francisco in 3 Acts." In 2001, after ten years spent in Quebec City, Robert moved to California to study at Stanford University and take his art in new directions.