bio Mitsiko Miller  

Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, of a Québecois father and a Japanese mother, Mitsiko Miller is a rebel child of the world who does not like to do things the way they are supposed to be done. What else would you expect from someone coming from a family of eccentrics? Since the early '90s, Mitsiko has been interested in the musicality of words (oral literature) as well as interdisciplinarity. For her, nothing is definite: her artistic process, though always inspired by oral traditions, constantly incorporates new elements. Her work is thus in continuous progress. She has read transgenic texts, coupling the two official languages (a sacrilege!), produced writing combining the literary with street jargon, as well as strange monologues and sound poems using movement... Her hybrid style and dynamic scenic approach, have earned her an uncontested reputation on the literary scene. She is known for her cynical ideas and black humor. She is published in ICI and Night Life and in other literary ventures. Her main passions are words, electronic music and people. According to her Montreal, her adopted city for over 25 years, is a bubbling laboratory of ideas where, in spite of her busy schedule, she manages to observe her subjects: old ladies, little girls, dogs, machos, nuts and even lepers... Why? because they ARE the source of her inspiration and of her humorous critique of interpersonal relationships and social values. Over the years, Mitsiko has been active in the oral literature milieu, organizing her own spoken word presentations, La Vache Enragée (1995-1999), producing books and CDs and covering the scene in the media (Mirror, ICI et CBC). But nowadays Mitsiko prefers to dedicate most of her time to creation. Having completed her first book (Le Coeur en Orbite, 1999) and a web project with photographer Eva Quintas (Carnages, 1999) she is currently preparing a multidisciplinary performance with musician DJ RAM incorporating spoken word, visual elements and sound (summer 2000).

Carnages is elaborated around the multiple connotations and imageries of anthropophagy and cannibalism. With a resolute parodic tone, the authors designed various short stories approaching the negritude, the war, the body, the food as symbolic spaces of resistance and assimilation.

Wednesday, February 2, 7:30pm, Salle Fernand-Séguin, Cinémathèque québécoise.
In French.

The Carnages project juxtaposes, through its multiple hyperlinks, fiction and documentary in a sinister universe where the longing for the other becomes consumption, ingestion, digestion and annihilation. The site's itinerary reveals the symbolism of cannibalism in various forms.

The figure of the cannibal haunts Western history through a vast body of work spawning classical mythology, popular and oral literature, art and theory, evolving according to the philosophical and political contexts of various eras. The Cannibal, a distinctly "European Ghost", is a construct of colonization. Whether abject model or emblem of revival, the Cannibal is a product of the ideology of justification and disagreement of conquest. The opposite counterpart of this figure is the cultural Anthropophagite who practices symbolic and ritual devouration. From a circular perspective of history, the Anthropophagite revisits the past and projects it into the future. In the present environment where identity and hybridity have become common concepts for postmodernism, globalization, DJs and the web, the figures of the cannibal and the anthropophagite are re-emerging as the symbols, metaphors and practices of our hungry, edible and voracious societies.

Carnages alludes to the voracious and often mischievous nature of the web and to the tremendous appropriation potential of digital technology. Thus, an important theme of the talk will be the consumption of culture taking place on the web: bookmarking, saving pages or images from a site, have become unconscious anthropophagic actions that we regularly perform for our "cultural" development.