Simon PLOUFFE
Simon Plouffe, b.1980, Canada
Born in Laval, Quebec, Canada, Simon Plouffe lives in Montreal (aka. Tiohtiá:ke or Mooniyang to the indigenous people). He started out as a sound mixer for his artistic practice, which had an influence on his later works in terms of the design and experimentation with sounds. Plouffe’s previous documentary works focused on the lives of the people living in a small town changed by the external capital for gold mining (Others’ Gold, 2011), and on the indigenous and Inuit languages (Those Who Come, Will Hear, 2018).
Forests is Plouffe’s first short documentary for experimentation. The video begins with particles floating in the water. The Innu voices tell of the story of the territory that they used to live on is now submerged in water. According to them, the woods are not dead even if they are submerged in water. The trees can still communicate with each other, forming a universe where everything is connected. The names of different trees seen in the video indicate the intimate ties of the Innu living with them while obscurely implying the fact that the reservoir after submergence slowly became one of the facilities of modern infrastructure. (S.H)
