amilton de azevedo writes about Sundogs, by Flavie Lemée, presented in the 2026 OFFTA – Live Art Festival (Tiohtià:ké/Montreal). the critic traveled to Canada at the invitation of the FTA and integrates their Playgrounds program with Critical Harvests.

A small pond, a swamp-like installation. Green moss, green lightning, projectors, fans, tiny lightbulbs and how it all works together in the direction of a contemplation on meteorological phenomena recreated within a room. From giant storms to shimmering fireflies, Sundogs create not illusion but immersion, as technologies and techniques are visibly put into use in its moving atmosphere.

Flavie Lemée is in front of the audience, on one side of the stage, and N NAO is on the other side. They are the human presences, demiurges to be seen as that metonymical nature comes to life through their hands. Sundogs’ materiality lies in thin air, its waves and particles being coloured, moved, suspended. Ephemeral sculptures of light and smoke, accompanied by ethereal yet grounded soundscapes.

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Projectors are aimed towards the audience – which may annoy some people, but isn’t nature also beautifully brutal and we should never look straight to the sun? – and one can try to look at the back wall to try to catch what are the images being beamed. As the installation looks back at its audience, it might be a beautiful view. Sundogs is not happening in the projector nor the projected, as we are invited to realize what is built in-between. Immersive, the installation goes for a oneness with the set-nature and all places become within.

The fans are turned on and off, shimmering images flicker amidst the space and the smoke coming from the projectors, many suns are shining. Then, fireflies wander around for a while and as everything is shifting the same tiny lights, now faster, can become will-o’-the-wisps. Sundogs mystically creates its namesake, and also goes towards crepuscular rays, storms turning into tornadoes full of lightning, an eclipse and a direct light beam from the outside – also apparently human-built.

Perhaps human arts and crafts will never supplant nature, hopefully it won’t as (hopefully) we will still have nature. And arts. Sundogs, the performative installation, the thing itself, is a joyful and magical homage towards the beauty of light effects on air – and, mostly, on us. The work structures itself as a meditation; its immersiveness allows one open to it to delve into a sort of trance state. Contemplation, beauty, nature, technologies. It is light in the air. Lemée builds indoor clouds so she can paint on them.