Délire Atta is the result of a collaboration between musician Roger Tellier-Craig and video artist Michaella Grill. This collaboration took the form, first, of a performance that took place on April 24, 2025, at La lumière collective, as part of the study day „The Art of Scientific Cinema.“ Prior to their performance, the artists received ten films from the Université de Montréal’s scientific film collection, five of which were chosen primarily for their image; five for their sound. From The Biology of Atta (Madeleine Bazire, 1960) to The Formation of the L.E. Cell (present in this program), from Acoustic Experimentation on Crows (RG Busnel, 1962) to The Big Ear (Pierre Guilbert, 1962) and Jekyllum (Claude Schnéegans, 1974), Grill and Tellier-Craig extracted, manipulated, slowed down, textured, filtered, stacked, and looped fragments of these films, to offer a hypnotic, flashing, and wriggling dive, all in saturated colors, into these thrilling materials. (André Habib)
Délire atta uses found footage and sounds from six archival films and transforms them through a process of abstraction and recontextualization. Michaela Grill’s approach aims to free the images from their historical patina, stripping them of their nostalgia to reveal their raw visual potential. By emphasizing textures, shapes, and movement, she lets the material itself dictate the composition. The red hue of the original print of The Biology of Atta, for example, became a key visual element—embraced rather than corrected—reinforcing the film’s physical presence and expressive power. Roger Tellier-Craig worked exclusively with the sound from four of these films, selecting materials rich in timbre and texture. This material was then stretched, granulated, and reshaped into new sonic fragments that still echo their original source—not as direct references, but as an expansion of the infinite possibilities within media often considered limited. Together, image and sound engage in a dialogue of texture and transformation, revealing unexpected resonances in the archive and generating new possibilities from what might otherwise be considered fixed or obsolete. (Roger Tellier-Craig, Michaella Grill)
https://zoom-out.ca/view/delire-atta-michaella-grill-roger-tellier-craig-2025
performance history:
La Lumière collective/ Montreal