Astronomical Water 

Omnipresent on our planet, water also exists in different states in the universe, notably in the form of drops in microgravity. Astronomical Water invites us to rediscover the sublime nature of water, questioning our relationship with this element, the magic it conceals and its life-giving power.

Echoing his performance 1 drop 1000 years, Martin Messier imagines an installation made up of a hundred drippers arranged on three large panels. The public is invited to move inside and outside the structure, sometimes watching the panorama, sometimes immersed in the heart of the device. Playing on the rhythms of the drops and the stroboscopic lights, the artist manipulates persistence of vision to reverse or freeze the movement of the water. The paintings follow one another: first emphasizing the gravitational effect, then giving the illusion of levitating water. Sound is reduced to its essentials: the sound of valves opening and closing. An organic rhythm that accompanies the falling drops and finally reveals their materiality.

Astronomical Water offers an immersion without a digital screen, where time seems to stretch, a contemplative and singular work that allows us to invest the world once the experience is over. 

The Montréal-based artist Martin Messier (CA/QC) creates works blending sound art, light, robotics, and video. His performances and installations emphasize the body. Collaborating with various artists, his creations have been presented in 50 countries and have won numerous international awards. He has directed the company 14 lieux since 2010.

Martin Messier
Village Numérique
MUTEK Montréal

Innervision

Opening performance Transart Festival on 11 September 2025
at 20:30 & 21:30

A living sculpture takes shape with 62 dancers, each facing an amplified light table, and guided live by Martin Messier. At the heart of this human wave that passes through and encompasses the audience, each performer follows the artist's instructions, as if carried by an inner voice, oscillating between obedience and free will. Dressed in black, the performers merge into a pulsating collective body, swelling, shrinking, advancing or collapsing, embodying the power and malleability of the social body.

In this vast choreographic device, the dancers hold a stone, symbolizing raw material and original nature. Their simple, repetitive gestures - rubbing, throwing, catching - evoke both a return to our roots and a harbinger of humanity's future struggles. In a space saturated with technology, this visceral, prophetic performance returns us to the timeless power of nature and the weight of our collective heritage.

Martin Messier
Transart Festival

18 September 2025 from 21:45 until midnight
19 September 2025 from 9:00 until 15:00

With Elusive Matter, a minimalist sound and light performance, Martin Messier transforms simple wisps of smoke into a veritable projection screen. In a room plunged into darkness, armed only with a projector as a source of light, the artist creates tableaux in an intangible mist: a myriad of ghostly spaces, architectural forms and dreamlike images take shape in the mist, suspended just a few centimetres above the viewer's head. This proximity of matter creates the illusion of a moving space, blurring spatial reference points.

Exploring the boundary between the tangible and the intangible, Elusive Matter brings light and sound into tension to generate atmospheres that are both ethereal and soothing. Guided by the search for an immaterial device, Martin Messier creates a sensory universe where matter fades away to make way for an experience oscillating between presence and absence, intangible beauty and dream.

Martin Messier
Transart Festival