Mapping a Modern Diegesis: Terre des Hommes and Robert Altman's Quintet

This project maps the locations in the old Expo 67 site in Montréal used in the film Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979). It reflects upon how the representation of the international, modern architecture and design of the Expo pavilions could shift from signifying promise and potential for social betterment to becoming indexes of technological catastrophe and social decay. It also looks at how the architecture of Expo 67, both as a site of technological spectacle and as an impromptu film set, has disappeared. The interface for the project reflects the process of looking for something that has been forgotten. Like the characters of the film Quintet, lost in a nuclear winter landscape, the reader wanders through expanses of white space to find remnants of the expo site and of the film's set, to find artefacts and fragments of meaning.