2007Abstracts


 

 

 

 

Program

How to register

Location

Abstracts

Biographies

Contact us

 

 

Résumés / Abstracts

 


 

Jeudi / Thursday 25 Octobre 2007
» que veut dire autochtone?
» what is indigenous?

 

WORKSHOPS

 

The Imaginary Border Academy (L'Académie de la frontière imaginaire)

No One is Illegal–Montreal,

Ralf Homann & Farida Heuck / Schleuser.net (Germany)

Nahed Mansour (Montreal),

Kayle Brandon / Duo.Irational (UK)

 

ZAP THE BORDER

workshop description: Farida Heuck / Ralf Homann

 

Every ABCD of travel is as a matter of course laden with connotations, whether these consist of yearning, denial, utopia, resentments, joie de vivre, poverty, sickness, gaining distinction, making sense, etc. Aside from their reality, such connotations exercise influence. We are interested by this symbolic charging if it generates outcomes which takes the form of force or administration and most especially, when they are pursed precisely in order to achieve such outcomes. The point of departure is the observation that political processes are shifting further and further into the realm of the symbolic approach. This becomes clearly apparent in the field of representation in the media, in constantly recurring patterns of thought and threat scenarios that have been uncoupled from reality in order to create a new reality

 

Not only the situation at the policed border is in focus, however also is the process of acceptance and ostracism set in train with the border regime, that may admittedly be implemented and indeed manifested at the national frontier, yet range far and have as their target the entire social sphere. Just as territorial mobility is confined to a physical space, the attempt is also made to construct social mobility within the field of society. With the organized passage across the border, not only is human dignity replaced by an administrative-style attribution of identity, but such concrete attributes as professional qualifications or also social links such as family connections come to be freshly determined by the state.

 

While on the one hand in national labor markets and also in referring to global glamour, mobility and temporary residencies were demanded by the public propaganda or while the intractable permanent population fakes their mobility by cell phones, outdoor cults, SUVs or other accessoires, on the other hand real mobile migrants were thwarted, dissed, or stripped of their asset and shelved in a passage of perpetual wait, geographically and socially.

 

Whoever finds his or her way to the EU, to the US or Canada is as a migrant mostly suspicious to have only the ability of unsaved navies and could lost all skills and education only by entering those new reality generated by the PR of the administrations of states. So this kind of passages is a third space, an "untouchable area" that arches above a border disseminated into a larger space. It is here that the power of defining people is lodged and that the real conflict takes place.

 

Borders and boundaries were used to imagine identities, rights, no-rights, victims, slaves, lords, friends and enemies etc. etc.: By the border regime, the state or public administrations work deeply in the professional field of artists in creating figures, characters and symbols.

 

That current situation gives artists also new potentials to deal with political issues and to take part in a global fight for human rights, freedom and peace.

 

In our workshop we will work on those options of activism. We go to discuss techniques of collaboration and will analyze forms of representation of political movement in the field of migration issues. The goal is to create new artistic and activistic strategies of communication

 

to zap invisible borders and go beyond.

 

We will show you some examples of "no one is illegal" from its starting point at documenta X and from "schleuser.net" and we'd like to request you to bring also some documents like leave-lets, websites, posters, media in general etc. from your back-ground to discuss the particular artistic strategy in representing migration issues.

 

We want to discuss some basic questions:

 

How are migrants represented and displayed? Who speaks for whom? Who is the player?

Whereto is the view guided? Where does the view of the player referred to? What does

that mean? Which context does the player use or need to make its view comprehensible? What does the view tell? Which alternatives in reading are offered? Is humor a necessary strategy? Which subversive figures are possible?

 

Finally, the workshop will create an action in public space!

 

Listen! Sound, Ecology and the City (Écoutez! L'écologie sonore et la ville)

Peter Cusack (UK), Chris DeLaurenti (US), Jean-Pierre Aubé (Montreal), Eric Powell, Will Hall & Alison Powell (UK/CA), Ryan Mitchell-Morrison (Mik'mag from Listuguj), DJ madeskimo (Inuit), esther b (Montreal), Kathy Kennedy (Montreal), CKUT 90.3 FM producers (Montreal), Marc-Antoine Lapierre / Critical World (Montréal)

 

Following this year’s questions (what is indigenous? what is natural? what is (there) to occupy?), Artivistic aims to further its mandate of developing new methodologies of knowledge production and collaborative activist art practices by organising an interdisciplinary research project that will bring together local and international sound artists, musicologists, ecologists and anyone interested in exploring the sonic aspect of the current ecological crisis and the role of sound in raising awareness about our environment. The project is two-fold. It includes a collaborative hands-on workshop into the city on October 25th-26th. Participants will be invited to choose specific sites in Montreal that are relevant to the current ecological crisis in order to conduct sonic research in the form of field and environmental recordings (phonography) facilitated by London phonographer Peter Cusack, Montreal sound artist Jean-Pierre Aubé, and others. In turn, the workshop participants will be invited to take part in a collective sound performance at the SAT (Society for Arts and Technology) in the evening of October 26th as part of the Artivistic 2007 gathering in collaboration with UpgradeMTL. The open performance and deep listening session, entitled Montreal Phonographers Union, will be facilitated by Seattle sound artist Christopher DeLaurenti and will be the occasion where non-musicians, musicians, and sound artists convene to practice collective listening. The "union" is an ad hoc meeting open to anyone with an interest in communal listening. The performance will be followed by a group discussion.

 

Precarious spaces / Spaces of precarity

Roberta Buiani, Alessandra Renzi (Toronto)

 

The concept of precarity has far more to offer than simply being a keyword to attract attention on the uncertain and extremely fragile position of flex-workers. In fact, its territorial sphere is not limited to instances of precarious, underpaid or short-term contract work––and its attendant struggles. Precarity characterises the current conditions of migrant families and illegal immigrants, the ambiguous situation of aboriginals and their often-ignored land claims, the marginalized existence of the disabled or the mentally ill, as well as the conveniently ignored presence of sex workers.

 

Of course, given the diversity of claims and requests that these different categories of people stand for, using “precarity” as a term to collect and summarize all the above struggles looks almost impossible––and also dangerous. However, precarity is still “something” that all the above groups share to various degrees.

 

What does “precarity” mean given the different people and different situations? Where do we find precarity? What space or territory does it occupy and what does it look like? How can it be used in the context of Canadian struggles for social justice?

 

Our workshop invites participants to stroll around the city of Montreal asking specific questions about precarity to gather a wide range of reactions and narratives with the recording media we provide (camcorders, cameras, ipod+mic or just plain notebooks).

 

Results will then be collected and used during the Saturday roundtable to “reflect on” or “question” current assumptions, well-established ideas and geopolitical takes on precarity. Moreover, they will help us address issues and problems regarding coalition building, and the advantages and difficulties of mobilization and organization around precarity in Canada.

 

You are not here dot org

Mushon Zer-Aviv and Dan Phiffer (Israel/US)

You Are Not Here (.org) is a platform for urban tourism mash-ups. It invites participants to become meta-tourists on simultaneous excursions through multiple cities. Passers-by stumble across the curious You Are Not Here signs in the street. TheYANH street-signs provide the telephone number for the Tourist Hotline, a portal for audio-guided tours of one place on the streets of another. Through investigation of these points and with or without the aid of a downloadable map, local pedestrians are transformed into tourists of foreign places. Current walking tours include Baghdad through the streets of New York City and Gaza City through the streets of Tel-Aviv.

 

Zone de réserve

Melissa Mollen Dupuis (Montréal)

Par le biais de la performance et de l’humour, on lance un regard sur la projection de l’identité amérindienne en rapport avec le milieu économique et touristique. Est-ce que la commercialisation de l’image de « l’indien » permettra de sauver les traditions ancestrales ou freine t’elle l’évolution naturelle des cultures autochtones dans l’histoire. On fait aussi le lien entre la dénomination « indien urbain » et « indien de réserve ». La réserve comme espace culturel ou comme enclos identitaire ?

 

Totem & Taboos

Emilie Monnet (Montreal), Anik Sioui (Huron-Wendat):

Weaving stories into stories and contested of identities

 

A walk around the block

Hilary Ramsden (UK)

We are all indigenous somewhere in that we are originate from some locality. But many of us have lost the way of occupying it. I notice this when I walk down my street and see the same people every day – I recognise some and say hello, or perhaps just nod. But rarely do we stop any longer than is necessary and occupy the space, looking at each other and the surroundings. I am interested in re-finding this ability to occupy our indigenous locality. I work with interruptions, with breaking patterns and habits in order to create transformation or change. A change in the way we perceive ourselves, others, a relationship, an idea, an object, our surroundings…and I walk. I propose creating collaborative walks in Montreal neighborhoods with community participants.

 

The Insurmountable Dilemma of a Rooted Practice

The Think Tank that has yet to be named (US)

For the official program, the Directors of the Think Tank that has yet to be named would like to make a presentation about our work in order to problematize the perhaps insurmountable dilemma inherent in exporting to another locale a deeply contextualized art and activist practice. Specifically, we will focus on our Publicly Held Private Meetings (PHPM). These are performative and collaborative interventions, and a format that we have used frequently in our investigations of contemporary urban issues in Philadelphia. As a critical spatial practice (to borrow a term currently much in fashion), PHPMs are held in the places directly related to the focus of the given investigation, even while considering and comparing its situations to other cities. Living, working, and organizing in Philadelphia, we rely on an intimate knowledge of the city in order to initiate and faciliate these dialogical projects. This knowledge is often gained over time through research, observation, and by virtue of simply sharing and negotiating space with others. Traveling to another place to "make work" generally falls outside of the practice of the Think Tank that has yet to be named. This raises a number of questions for us that are relevant to the conference thematic: Can a practice rooted in a rich, nuanced interrogation of an intimately known place be relocated effectively to another, unfamiliar place? To what extent does such a localized art / activist practice rely on internalized assumptions about the valorization of indigenousness and the privileging of "authentic" spatial occupation? And what is "authentic" spatial occupation anyway? Can we even precisely locate indigenous? Circumventing this apparent impasse, we intend the presentation of our practice in this setting to act as a literal form of exportation whereby audience members may realize or acknowledge their own Directorships within the Think Tank that has yet to be named. We encourage those potential Directors then to go forth, establishing their Departments and initiating their own critical investigations in their own localities, be they PHPMs or otherwise.

 

Que veut dire autochtone? What is indigenous? Roundtable discussion table-ronde

The very use of the term “indigenous” presupposes a claim to the existence of rights. The right to traditional uses of territory. The right to live on the land from which one has been displaced. The right to status. The right to self-determination. The right to a life with dignity. In what context does indigenous mean something and how is it represented today? What is the relationship between identity based on place, the land and/or territories and the right to resources? What is indigenous in the context of globalisation, migrations and mobility?

 

Kary-Ann Deer (Mohawk)

Hyacinthe Combary (Montreal/Burkina Faso), cinéaste

Kevin Lee Burton (Swampy Cree from God Lake’s Narrow’s, Manitoba), filmmaker

Leila Pourtavaf (Montreal), No One Is Illegal-Montreal

Ralf Homann & Farida Heuck / Schleuser.net (Germany)

 

What types of indigenous occupation explode natural space?

Francesca Manning, Baruch de Spinoza, Annie Dillard & Adam Bobbette (Montreal)

Beginning with a “terminology and ontology” introduction, in which we attack and clarify our definitions (with help from our "audience" aka "co-participants") Adam and Francesca are gently joined by Spinoza and Dillard, who agree and disagree on the definition of god, on the meaning of humanity, on the pervasive space of nature. We want to create an occasion for the emergence of an anti-essentialist dialogue amongst people, spaces, light, shadow and things – paper thin things. Dillard and Spinoza are our interlocutors, they begin far away from us and get closer and closer by the minute. Eventually they take us over and they talk too much, little chatty bats. There will also be wind, clouds and light. They talk a lot too. We hope to create a laboratory. To put into suspension (perhaps with puppet strings) for an instant the ways in which we occupy space. Our conversations with Baruch and Annie will hopefully break open just a little bit the distinctions we hold about occupation, indigenous identity, and the natural. Annie will most certainly tell us about the way the senses get all mixed up in synesthesia, about the body ‘floating like a cork on the sea of becoming’. She will probably also speak about the words we rely on when language fails in the face of a world that is too full, that is beyond capture. Spinoza will scoff at our separation of nature from culture, but, cordially, explain why its very understandable that it is made. This separation, he tells us, is of the same origin as our inclination to declare sin and righteousness, and some of our attempts to claim or deny indigenous-ness. Adam and Francesca might yell at Baruch and Dillard if and when they become enraged. There is also an insect in a large jar.

 

Wapikoni Mobile

Une projection de 30-40min de courts-métrage sur les questions de territoire, rapports autochtones-blancs, et identité.

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

Vendredi / Friday 26 Octobre 2007
» naturel comment?
» what is natural space?

 

 

In the Fall We Plant Bulbs

Gina Badger (Montréal)

In the Fall We Plant Bulbs explores notions of patience, time, and care through the unique biology and evocative qualities of the bulb. The action of planting garlic is taken as a starting point for a dirt-under-the-fingernails intimacy with the city we occupy. Bulbs sees unique opportunities in the quiet spaces left in the wake of industry, and in the planted soil of the city. These are part of the rich boundary zone between built and wild spaces, and Bulbs is an invitation to muck around in them.

 

Military Natures

Nicholas Brown, Ryan Griffis, Sarah Kanouse, Shiloh Krupar, & Laurie Palmer (US)

The United States military loves nature. From supplying the raw materials for weaponry to providing cover for munitions production, to offering scenic vistas disguising decades of contamination, nature contributes materially to the American war effort. But nature is no 'natural' thing, and the military's occupation of 'nature' is as discursive and ideological as it is material. We propose a performative roundtable discussion that investigates "military natures" through specific examples from North America. We're particularly interested in the ways nature operates metaphorically and materially to reinforce a racialized military order; how ideas about nature allow militarization to be "hidden in plain sight;" and how nature as an ideological apparatus mediates in the production of public space and public memory. More philosophically, we want to also turn the question "what is (there) to occupy" to the question of forms of knowledge about nature and the landscape itself, asking how do we occupy epistemes concerning militarized violence and pacified landscapes and how to we access, evaluate, inflect, and produce knowledge about these subjects. We plan to structure our session around performative presentations on the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge (Illinois), the mining of phosphate in Florida and Israel, the Rocky Flats Wildlife Preserve (Colorado), and the Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve (Florida). The talks will use varied strategies, including reflective and poetic language and satiric characterization. Presentations will be interwoven with questions posed directly to the audience asking them to share their experiences exploring similarquestions in their own geographical and historical contexts.

 

Remote Sensing/Ground Truth

Katerie Gladdys (US)

The seemingly minute ways in which statistical data impacts upon and seeps into our everyday lived experience of place fascinate me. Recently, I have been assisting a colleague in geography with her fieldwork and am learning about the methodology of ground truthing as a means of verifying the abstractions of the pixels in satellite imagery through direct experience with the land. As a recent arrival to Florida from the Midwest, I am actively searching for ways in which I can connect with and make sense of this exotic habitat where climate-influenced, accelerated cycles of decay and growth compete with the pervasive control and destruction of vegetation, insects, reptiles and animals that facilitates the development of golf courses, resorts, condos, and amusement parks from swamp and wetlands. My current art practice reflects upon how our understanding of these processes and their accompanying landscapes are organized by data, specifically, visual imagery collected through remote sensing. I see ground truthing as a potential methodology for creating art where both the artist and/or those who live in/on the grids of pixels represented by satellite and aerial imagery not only verify through their everyday activities and interactions, but enriching and contesting already existing data forming potential collaborations—artist/residents/stakeholders/land—that could result in alternative and poetic cartographies cultivating a deeper understanding of ordinary and overlooked places.

 

SOUND.GARDEN.SCAPE

TERRAIN.JARDIN.SONORIQUE

Eric Powell, Will Hall, and Alison Powell

City dwellers pass on sidewalks, each talking on a mobile phone. They put in their iPod headphones and shut out the world, separating themselves from the spaces they occupy, and limiting their sonic experience to pre-chosen conversations and sounds. We propose to use personal mobile technologies to break down this alienation and re-occupy space in a sound gardenscape. The sound gardenscape is an area of the city furnished with low-powered Wi-Fi devices coupled with short-range FM transmitters to broadcast dynamic content to mobile phones and other portable receivers. The overlapping transmissions of sounds create a sound gardenscape that changes as participants move through it, enabling them to enter into and explore a meta/techno-space. The sounds transmitted are collected, produced, or repurposed to relate to the specific space of the gardenscape site. In the gardenscape, several layers of virtual space overlap. The virtual space of the recorded sounds used as sources is modulated by the virtuality of the radio signals that overlap and interfere with one another. These layers of virtuality influence, untidily, the authentic information that composes the experienced gardenscape. Our project is a reoccupation of collective city soundspace, using mobile technologies along with found/environmental sounds to reclaim the noise of the world but also to open the ears for a new understanding of the musicality within the din of the city. With this project, we ask: what is natural sound? What is natural space? Where does technology connect natural and virtual?

 

A Message from Below

Christopher Lee Kennedy & Caroline Woolard (US)

The goal of the participatory action is to “re-enchant” participants of our project with their immediate surroundings and then translate that to an ongoing dialogue of space, public interaction and ecological awareness. To do this, we will initiate a Cloud Parade and Tree Hugger event along a major thoroughfare inviting bystanders, onlookers and pre-determined participants to march down a sidewalk in unison with costumes and clouds attached to long poles. To initiate the action, we will first conduct a discussion about public space and ecology; asking anyone and everyone: “If you could pull down an object from the sky, what would it be?” & “What do you want to tell the person working on the top floor when he looks out of his window?” Based on the input from participants, we will stage “A Message from Below,” a cloud parade where a group of people walk along the sidewalks of buildings with floating objects (clouds, bird houses, etc.) attached to strings long enough to reach the highest windows of office buildings. We will draw attention to the trees by creating tree warmers (from recycled yarn and scraps) with pockets and name tags. Names will be given out in a workshop where we assign each child to a tree. Any objects found in the pockets will be collected and shown in our magazine. The parade will culminate with al actions being initiated in unison and ultimately a final pull down of sensual things from the sky, from the earth and al around the immediate space. A collective discussion about people’s experience with the cloud parade will follow.

 

What is a Natural Space? Qu'est-ce qu'un espace naturel? Roundtable discussion Table-ronde

The environment is in a pretty bad shape. Yet, does not typical environmentalism often propose “solutions” which alienate the very people that could make a difference by using a false dichotomy (natural/artificial, nature/culture) and by perpetuating the myth of a pristine nature? Current strategies often make use of fear and guilt to provoke action, yet will we not be helping our environment in a more efficient way once we let go of our arrogance as humans and start living with and in the world rather than of, and alienated from, the world?

 

Titan and beyond the infinite

Jean-Pierre Aubé (Montréal)

On January 14,2005, after a 7 years and 3.2 billion kilometer trip, Huygens an automated spacecraft hit the surface of Titan, a moon orbiting around Saturn. After its descent, the drone sent a 2 minutes 30 seconds radio message. The sound file contained the data collected by the various scientific instruments. In fact these data are a log book, the history of a fall from a never visited before place.

 

Nowadays these data are available as computer files from the European Space Agency. Titan, and Beyond the Infinite uses these data, and scientific tools.

 

To produce the video I started by programming a software which organises the data and arranges them in charts. The title is a direct reference to a 2001 : Space Odysey scene, Jupiter, and Beyond the Infinite, also known as the Stargate Sequence. The scene was created by Douglas Trumbull. At the time, Trumbull was a graphic artist for the NASA. He adapted for cinema a technique named slit-scan and used before by photographers. Using long exposure time along with camera mouvement , the technique creates the illusion of movement. In my video, the Huygens data are parsed in a database and then organized into graphics. The data like the altitude and the speed of Huygens or the density of the atmosphere of Titan are analysed by my software creating images using the slit-scan technique.

 

Astral Projections

Susan Coolen (Montréal)

One of the themes in my art practice revolves around the topic of the cosmos. Using found nature materials and detritus, I create planetary and galactic images and compile specimens that seem to be ‘other worldly’ … alien sperm and ovum, alien pods, alien progeny. Can we really define what is natural .. what is not? I play with these ideas in my work, but I think that perhaps the world of “Nature’ capital ‘n’ and the realm of ‘outer space’ [out there ... empty] are both just constructs of our human process of thinking the paradigms we use to think about and then discuss something. We have different experiences for describing them … ‘Nature’ seems to be something we pick up and examine. We relate to it with our physical faculties and then organize it according to a sense of ‘rational thought’. ‘Outer Space’ is described by conjecture, or ‘scientific deduction radio waves, mathematical formulae, ‘enhanced’ digital photography. But we also have older ways of thinking about nature and the cosmos myth and astrology for example. Humans were as passionately engaged then, as we are now, in making meaning out of human experience yet the older are often seen as an ‘un-natural’, or illogical way of making meaning. In the end ‘what is natural’ and ‘un-occupied spaces’ are concepts that are likely to be discussed relative to our place in time.

 

A-MACHINES : AUTOPSIER LA NATURE

Andrew Chartier (Sherbrooke)

Andrew Chartier challenges our assumptions about the public sphere by interacting - with his A-machines and interventions - in a way that is direct, and evokes a sense of the social necessity of art and culture in helping to develop a paradigm, a worldview. His art production explore visual and information arts in order to provoke questioning on the state of the environment. Consequently, some aspects of this interest are invested in creating collaborations with local environmental organisms and conceiving kinetic and sound sculptures that interact with nature and the urban milieu. One area of his research consist of sampling the climate and pollution. This body of work include three mobile prototypes : The Dioxygraphe, a drawing machine sensitive to carbon monoxide emitted by cars, the Anémographe, a drawing machine reacting to wind intensity and the Pluviophone, a sound sculpture sensitive to acid rain.

 

Sounds From Dangerous Places

Peter Cusack (UK)

Recent travels have brought me into contact with some difficult and potentially dangerous places. Most are sites of major environmental/ecological damage, but others include nuclear sites or the edges of military zones. The danger is not necessarily to a short-term visitor, but to the people who live there or through the location's role in geopolitical power structures. Some are areas where extreme and hostile conditions have been created, in others the danger has been hidden or absorbed into the local economy. In yet others regeneration is underway. Such places include the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine; the Caspian Oil Fields near Baku, Azerbaijan; the Munzur River (a Euphrates tributary) valley in Kurdish Turkey where 19 very controversial dams are planned; Thetford Forest beside USAF air bases in the UK; North Wales in the areas where Chernobyl fallout will effect farming practice for years to come. Many sound recordings were made at these sites. Photographic and other visual images were taken. Interviews and background research provide textual documents. It is noticeable that environmentally damaged sites can be both sonically and visually compelling, if not beautiful and atmospheric. There is, often, an extreme dichotomy between an aesthetic response and knowledge of the 'danger', whether it is pollution, social injustice, military or geopolitical. "Sounds From Dangerous Places" asks the questions, "What elements of the soundscape of a dangerous place are effected, changed, created or destroyed as a result of its 'dangerousness'? and, "What insights can sound offer into the environmental, social and political contexts of a 'dangerous place'?" The project presents the field recordings as they are, in the belief that such recordings offer insights into the locations and issues that are different from, and complimentary to, those of visual images and texts. Supplementary questions are "What information about place can field recordings give that is special to sound?" and conversely, "What information is given by the other media that sound cannot?

 

Live Dining

Nicole Fournier (Montréal)

I wish to present “Live Dining”, which is a project about validating a polyculture system of agriculture by occupying and installing a dining room and kitchen room, in a city or urban green space, where weeds, cultivated edible and non-edible plants grow, and where the dining kitchen furniture sinks into the soil. The polyculture system is basically many species of plants, which help each other grow, and attract a diversity of insects that contribute to the wellness of the system. Polyculture can look like a wild field, where human intervention of caring for the plants, is not necessary. Participants perform the outdoor actions of harvesting, in the polyculture agricultural space, which is the same location where the indoor domestic and intimate actions of preparing, cooking and eating food take place. We sit and prepare and dine on the harvests, in the dining-kitchen room installation that aims to create a sense of intimacy and security, in an outdoor public context. This work is about city land usage, polyculture (diversity), green space as food growing space. The work is about occupying land in relation to non-monetary exchange and production, about the gift of giving, receiving, sharing with others, outdoors, in an indoor domestic setting. I say, please include “weeds”, as they are containers and protectors of genetic diversity, which is vital for global biodiversity and global food security.

 

Listen! Sound, Ecology and the City (Écoutez! L'écologie sonore et la ville) *performance*

 

Permis d’exploitation

Silvy Panet-Raymond (Montreal)

Dans un carré d’espace réduit, délimité et ‘encombré’par de la végétation (en pots), une danseuse tente d’exécuter des solos autrement conçus pour un lieu ouvert. Montage sonore tiré de sources naturelles et transformées par des bruits urbains. Sur un des murs derrière l’installation, une vidéo en boucle est projetée comme si c’était une caméra de surveillance mobile. On y voit des images fugaces de la danseuse et des éléments de la nature. Jeu dynamique d’images variant de mouvement calmes à des énergies déchaînées.

 

 

La Señal (Le Signe)

Leticia Vera et Hildelena Vázquez (Mexique)

Le Signe est un appel à l’esprit de l’homme pour le respect de ce que nous sommes; à la liberté de la pensée, à la terre que nous foulons, à l’eau, au vent, à la vie.

 

Montreal Phonographers Union

Seattle sound artist Christopher DeLaurenti will facilitate a "phonographers union" workshop and performance in which non-musicians, musicians, and sound artists convene to practice collective listening. The "union" is an ad hoc meeting open to anyone with an interest in communal listening. In performance, we listen to recordings made in many environments such as the kitchen, city streets, and nearby alleys as well as in more "glamorous" locales such as forests and jungles and combine them in real time. Although the sounds remain concretely "real" with obvious referents, the abstract juxtaposition offer new ways to hear and treasure everyday sounds. Christopher is a co-founder of the Seattle Phonographers Union and has organized phonographers union events in Seattle and New York.

 

 


 

 

Samedi / Saturday 27 Octobre 2007

» occuper quoi?

» what is (there) to occupy?

 

 

inhabited mindmapping

Anja Steidinger & Gerard Cuartero (Spain)

Architecture has always been exhibited as a representation (Olympics, EXPOs etc) of national interests, showing technological, aesthetic and social progress / improvement. A representation of national capability to compete at the world market. Specific parts of the city may get erased and cleaned to open space for a complete artificial territory that will be constructed. Paris: Eiffeltower Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair1889, Barcelona Olympics 1992, etc... How far does architecture/buildings invade every days experience and remembrance of its inhabitants? To whom belongs the city and for what reasons? How far invade architecture/buildings every days experience and remembrance of its inhabitants?

WHOM belongs the city and for what reasons? Investigation and presentation:

We examine the two buildings, Habtitat 67 in Montreal Canada and Walden 7 in Barcelona focusing on the question:

Is it possible to inhabit an idea? The two buildings we have chosen, were built in an era of social and industrial changes and intented to materialize the new ideals for living together to create a practice of a different community / a society in change.

Habitat has been built in 1967, forty years ago: meanwhile terms and conditons of work, process of production, living, pleasuretime and family have been changed: How is it like to live in a forty year old (social) construction ? Are there common spaces that weren t planned? how do people appropiate social given space - do they appreciate it or do they create different spaces or even boderlines that have been not foreseen?

http://inhabitedmindmapping.net

 

Shhhhh, Infiltrating Public Space <3 A Rebel Clowning Teaser

 

Boredom Patrol, CIRCA

This workshop is an introduction to key concepts of rebel clowning: building affinity and rethinking process through movement and physical theater exercises, reimagining political action as something which can fulfill our desires and make us laugh. Integrating these concepts participants will practice moving in groups through public space.

 

Manifester nos racines I

Julie Vaudrin-Charette (Québécoise), Julie Champagne Grenier (Québécoise)

Un atelier théâtral en où nous pourrons explorer notre attirance pour la quête de racines, pour 'l'authenticité' que nous associons à la culture autochtone. Non-autochtone en quête d'identité, autochtone en quête de paroles, comment résonnons-nous, ensemble? Création d'un espace de dialogue, puis d'expression par le corps, la voix, les sens pour connecter à notre sagesse, à nos valeurs essentielles, ancestrales, écologiques, humaines et universelles. Mieux se connaître pour passer de l'intime au collectif.

 

Hengitä.hankela hengittää (Breathe.difficult to breathe)

andrew gryf paterson (Scotland/Finland)

'Happihuone' was a greenhouse and garden in the city centre of Helsinki that served as a forum for environmental arts, urban gardening, sustainable design and ecological practices, including exhibitions, workshops, lectures, music events. It has been operating from Spring to Autumn since it's conception as a garden-park pavilion in Helsinki's 'European City of Culture' year 2000. Translated, it's name means 'Oxygen-room'. Last year, unrelated events ominously conspired to seriously affect the fate of this small, hardy and autonomous space. All the windows were broken due to vandalism and the greenhouse was boarded up. The non-profit collective who organises and owns the structure, were then told by the city authorities who own the land upon which the structure is sited, to end its occupation to make way for the large long-term-planned 'Finlandia-park'. I describe this as 'an invitation to cultural self-asphyxiation'; a gradual seven-year squeeze to death of healthy sustainable practice. As outgoing socially-engaged and activist-storyteller work, I lived and slept at Happihuone, during one week of July 2007 within a 3m x 3m x 3m approximate space of the building. To gather stories and cross-reference experiences, I solicited significant active and interested persons involved at Happihuone between 2000-2007. I asked them to 'pop in' for tea and coffee, and have a recorded conversational-interview about the issues that have grown around the site, and identify the roots and new sources of oxygen-room in the centre of Helsinki. However, as you read this, we have unfortunately already dismantled the structure and site of 'Happihuone'. We had few options but to vacate the site, and remove the building by hand, piece-by-piece. What you will see no longer exists in the same arrangement, but has been distributed and shared. Material recycling has adjusted the narrative. We explore ways to give the kiss of life to new projects, and begin the re-construction of new lungs in our and others' collective imagination. To be continued.http://hengita.info/

 

On Difference #2: Current practices in activist art in Bulgaria, an unocuppied territory?

Kyd Cambell (Montreal/Vancouver)

As part of the On Difference 2 project, InterSpace Media Art CenterBG organized a series of events eyeballing the current cultural and socio-political situation in Bulgaria within which active artistic practices are, by common observing assumption, in a dormant state. Over the past decades, Bulgarian artists have been well known to explore their local socio-political issues with visceral performances and provoking public actions. Though the current situation is still somewhat turbulent, there is a tendency for the newest generation of Bulgarian artists to avoid these topics in their work. The On Difference2 initiative in Sofia included a call for video works, a one-day workshop on the format of ‘instructional video’, the subsequent production of short films and the screening of these works during a thematic

seminar. The local events aimed to further a main activity of the OD2 project – an international exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany exploring the very actual issues brought up in the works and served in provoking the local artistic community, especially the youngest generation, to respond to these topics.

 

Occuper quoi? What is (there) to occupy? (Précarité / Precarity) roundtable discussion table-ronde

The term “occupation” often inspires images of invasion, enclosure and rape. How are spaces and bodies ruled over? What is public space, ultimately? Why do reserves exist? To ask what is occupation is in fact to ask what is left to occupy for occupation is more pervasive than it first appears. At the same time, occupation echoes resistance when it comes to certain forms of appropriation. How does one occupy appropriation or how can one appropriate occupation?

Roberta Buiani & Alessandra Renzi (Toronto): Precarious spaces / Spaces of precarity

Judith Cayer (Montrea): Centre social autogéré de Pointe-St-Charles

Marie-Hélène Cousineau (Montreal): Arnait Video Productions (Igloolik)

Keg de Souza & Lucas Ihlein (Australia): Squatfest

Aaron Lakoff (Montreal): Understanding precarity in Montreal

Bob thebuilder (Montreal): Collectif au travail/at work

 

 

 

 


 

 

Films & installations

 

 

The Circus of (Im)Migration, Boredom Patrol, CIRCA, 40 min.

In April and May, the Boredom Patrol performed the Circus of (Im)migration along the west coast, in response to the immigration debate which is a circus in itself. Our (un)circus challenged borders and walls, internal migration controls, gender borders and the G8, using lion taming, tight rope walking, burlesque, theater of the oppressed, oh yeah and clowns too! The conflict in the borderlands around the US/Mexico region represents the Other's continued struggle in an occupied land. The ideological foundation of manifest destiny is embodied in the minds and actions of anti-immigrant vigilantes. The Boredom Patrol of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army is exposing the ridiculousness within the rhetoric surrounding the immigration debate and the violence that coincides with the construction of the concept of the "illegal alien". The Minutemen are working throughout the U.S. and Canada and there are many communities responding by various means.

 

Chocolate City, Sam Wild & Ellie Walton (UK/US), 2007, 46 min.

Washington DC is rapidly changing. Soaring property prices and rampant development are literally forcing local residents out of the city. Chocolate City explores the rapid gentrification of the US capital through the eyes of a group of black women forced from their city centre homes to make way for massive reconstruction. With the symbols and monuments of the world's most powerful democracy on their doorsteps their story calls into question the fundamental foundations upon which the USA claims to be based.

 

The Right Fit, Nadia Alam (Toronto), 2006, 5 min.

Ever since 9/11, the media has taken full advantage of telling people all over the world what the religion of Islam is and what Muslims essentially do in their daily lives. Muslims since have became the centre of media attention everywhere and the true religion, as I know it, has been stained. Since then, many documentaries have been made that are directed to educate audiences about issues of Islam, and in particular Muslim women. But, most of these documentaries focus on Muslim women in oppressed countries, and are very serious and heavy, fostering that the veil is a burden. To counter the misunderstandings of the religion of Islam, my work uses humour and aims to educate the public with regard to the experience of young Muslim women in Canada from various backgrounds to discuss their viewpoints and demonstrate that being a Muslim in the Western world and wearing the hijab is far from being a weighty obligation.

 

Wilderness Trouble, Carry Peppermint & Christine Nadir (US), 2007, 4 min.

Wilderness Trouble is inspired by William Cronon's article entitled "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature." This article, which was critical to ecocriticism's recent shift from deep to social ecological models, argues that the concept of "wilderness" has no basis in nature but is a historical and cultural construction. Cronon points out that the U.S. preoccupation with conserving "natural" spaces untouched by humans was a guise of American colonialism (throwing indigenous people off their land to make national parks), and his concern is that it fails today to imagine new, healthy, and sustainable relationships between humans and their environments. This meditational DV attempts to add a consideration of the digital to this reevaluation of wilderness—by refusing to separate modern human life from relatively "natural" environments and by thinking about nature and the digital technologies that make this work possible in the same frame.

 

IDP, Tamara Vukov / Volatile Works (Montréal), 2007, 7 min.

The piece concerns the situation of internally displaced people (who don't qualify as refugees) from Kosovo in Serbia 8 years after the war and NATO intervention in Kosovo.

 

Sight for Sore Eyes, Ryan Mitchell-Morrison (Mik'mag from Listuguj), 2007, 7 min.

Sight for Sore Eyes is an adapted piece about a rabbit and a wolf played by 2 women who square off on a Ping Pong match in a hyper surealistic land called Gnarnia.

 

HMMM-Audio Performance, Kathy Kennedy (Montréal), 2007, 4 min

HMMM is a large-scale sonic performance which took place along 1.8 kilometres of Montreal's St. Laurent st., otherwise known as The Main. People were encouraged to hum along with a soundtrack (of human humming) that was broadcast on radio and on the street's speaker system, to create a sonic tsunami! More info and feedback can be found at: http://kathykennedy.wordpress.com.

 

One Hundred Thousand Pieces of Possibility, the vacuum cleaner (UK), 2007, 2 min.

On 28/09/07 we gave away our Anti Festival artists fee of €1000. From 10 am, in the open lobby of the Kuopion Osuuspankki Bank (Coop Bank in Kuopio, Finland), people could take away as much as they needed or could carry. The money was in 1 cent pieces. (Which are not used in Finland, but are still legal.) Participants needed to take the coins to a different bank to exchange them into a higher currency. Whoever said there was no such thing as a free lunch was a liar. Presented here for the first time, a short video document of what happened when we were given permission to give away money in a bank. Commissioned by Anti-Festival, Kuopio, Finland. Antifestival.com thevacuumcleaner.co.uk/100000/

 

untitled part 4: terra (in)cognita, Jayce Salloum (Vancouver), 2005, 37 min.

Focusing on fragments of histories, of pre-contact, contact, and settlement of the Kelowna area though the accounts of several N'Syilx'cen (Okanagan) speakers, this videotape traces connections and correlations between the periods of extermination/disintegration, assimilation, and marginalization to their present day and context of being First Nations. Sites of social and historical significance are encountered juxtaposed with the current realities of the area's 'landscape'. An experiential videotape that lends itself not to a comprehensive survey, but a sifting through the layers of time and present, an inconclusive yet incisive speculation, a history lived and survived. Through various generations of accounts, the familiar and historical read the existing with the disappeared, just past the surface, digging into our (not unproblematic) relationship with the complexities of the past, our presence here, and that of the original inhabitants of this place.

 

Muqaddimah Li-Nihayat Jidal (Introduction to the End of an Argument) Speaking for oneself... / Speaking for others..., Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman (US/Palestine), 1990, 41 min.

With a combination of Hollywood, European and Israeli film, documentary, news coverage and excerpts of 'live' footage shot in the West Bank and Gazastrip, Introduction to the End of an Argument critiques representations of the Middle East, Arab culture, and the Palestinian people produced by the West.

 

Nikamowin (Chanson/Song), Kevin Lee Burton (Swampy Cree from God Lake’s Narrow’s, Manitoba), 2007, 11 min.

 

Me, Myself & Kevin Costner, Melissa Mollen Dupuis (Montréal), 2007, 7 min.

Le vidéo se présente en forme de tryptique, qui souligne les 3 étapes importantes de ma vie (enfance, adolescence et adulte) dans ma compréhension de mon staut d'amérindienne métissée. On y voit aussi l'impact qu'a eut sur moi le film "Il danse avec les loups".

 

GRENZE, Patrick Fontana, Emeric Aelters, Pierre-Yves Fave (France)

GRENZE est une vision des métamorphoses du système capitaliste. Il s’articule autour de lui. Il en donne une traduction visuelle. Il met progressivement en place une chaîne de mouvements métamorphiques. A la construction d’un mécanisme infernal qui emporte tout, répondent notre regard, notre attente, le temps. GRENZE est composé de séquences appelées UNITÉS DE DÉVELOPPEMENT ARTIFICIELLES (UDA). Le texte paraît fragmenté, désarticulé. Puis il se confronte à la vie des figures qui sont ses traductions visuelles. Les séquences (animations 3D, 2D) sont projetées et mixées en direct. A chaque UDA correspond un fragment du texte de Karl Marx. En modifiant son déroulement en mettant en crise sa durée en la faisant se répéter, GRENZE se recouvre, s’inverse pour reveler une autre durée s’accomplissant dans une synthèse du temps présent entre passé et futur, toujours instables. Entre capital d’aujourd’hui et celui d’hier, comment nos vies, nos subjectivité sont captées.

 

I Look Out Of The Window And I See My Death Getting Near, Freda Guttman (Montréal)

A video, postcards to read and postcards to send about Abu Ghneim Mountain in the Occupied Territories which became an Israeli settlement, Har Homa, part of Greater Jerusalem. In the summer of 2006, I lived for 3 months in Beit Sahour, a town adjacent to Bethlehem. The dominent feature of the landscape in that area is Har Homa, an illegal Jewish settlement which looms above Beit Sahour, Bethlehem and the many small towns nearby. One day Ghassan and Yammen, friends from Beit Sahour, took me on a tour in Yammen's car, from Bethlehem and into Beit Sahour to film all the ways and places from which Har Homa can be seen. You're invited to take the journey with us now. And invited to tell the world by sending the postcards to those who know and those who should know.

 

Reflet, Thomas Fourmond, Maxence Mercier, Remi Delarboulas ( Otra ) (France)

Reflet est un tableau animé de tranches de vies écrites et sonores laissées par chaque visiteur. Le principe est simple, il s'agit d'utiliser une interface pour offrir une contribution écrite dans l'alphabet de son choix ou d’enregistrer une contribution sonore. Deux modes de contribution pour une accessibilité la plus large possible et ainsi tenter de s'affranchir des limites imposées par un handicap ou par l'absence de transcriptions écrites de certains dialectes, langues ou langages.

 

Remote Sensibility: Binocular Sensing, Marten Berkman (Whitehorse)

Remote Sensibility: Binocular Sensing is an art installation project consisting of stereoscopic (3-dimensional) cameras in remote and wild environments, and corresponding stereoscopic (3-dimensional) projection environments in galleries or other public spaces thousands of kilometers away. Originally conceived to be viewed on the web, the project will now involve 1:1 scale projection environments as demonstrated at the Banff Centre's Optic Nerve Artist's residency in 2005. This art installation is part of my education and outreach project entitled "Remote Sensibility" is supported by the International Polar Year Committee. This installation will concentrate on remote arctic and subarctic environments, and the transmission of stereoscopic interpretation of those environments (including on site environmental and performance art) to distant audiences during the international Polar Year and beyond. In an age where the impact of industrial culture on remote environments is not in concert with this culture's awareness of remote environments, Remote sensibility: Binocular Sensing dissolves our geographical and perceptual boundaries with an artistic bridge to the immaterial meanings in the land.

 

Sensity, Stanza (UK)

Sensity visualizes the dynamic data around my district as an audio visual artwork. I have set up a wireless sensor network around my house in London. I live nearby a railway line, a factory, some trees and a mobile phone mast. (This is using real data). This is version three of this project. The city is made up of bits of data that change. This artwork captures this change to try to understand the underlying fabric of city space. Sensity is part of "The Emergent City" series of works by Stanza.

 

Welcome Here, Sophie Le-Phat Ho (Montréal)

Welcome Here is a sound sculpture that attempts to insert a critique of current representations of asylum seekers in the UK/London and the dynamics they produce by exploring the role of sound (and the idea of remix) in the expression (and interruption) of precarity - a sonic assault, a mental assault. The listener should choose when to press PLAY.

 

Wheat paste, powdered milk, and other means of social adhesion, David Widgington (Montréal)

This collection of posters was curated throughout the province of Québec between February and October 2007 by David Widgington. Many were peeled off walls and billboards. Some were wallpapered on conference room walls, previously obscured from public appreciation. Others were carefully kept in private collections or rolled in boxes collecting dust in the back of people's closet. All were made available to the curator in the context of producing a book of posters of social movements in Québec destined for publication in late November 2007 by Cumulus Press.

 

Hors-site / Off-site

 

Montréal. Urbanisme 101. (C'est ainsi que les poules en perdirent leurs têtes)

 

Marjolaine Samson (Montréal)

Pour la durée de l’événement, je désire m’approprier différents espaces réservés à la publicité (clôtures, pans de murs). Pour l’événement Artivistic 07, je désire me réapproprier et intervenir sur des espaces d’affichage sauvage. En découpant et déchirant ces affiches, je désire créer une «œuvre» intrigante, agréable à contempler et dénudée de tout mercantilisme. Ce geste se voudra aussi une réappropriation de notre propriété intellectuelle, trop souvent sollicitée et influencée par la trop grande présence de messages publicitaires. Sur un autre espace publicitaire, je voudrais simplement le recouvrir de papier blanc. Peut-être y inscrire au centre en noir «espace libéré pour vous». J’aimerais inciter les passants à intervenir eux-mêmes sur ces interventions, sans pour autant le dire explicitement. Souvent, ces espaces publicitaires se font sur des clôtures ou des facades de bâtiments condamnés. Inutilisés, ils sont alors réappropriés par différents médias afin de vendre leurs modes de vie. Ce geste propose un temps d’arrêt pour les passants, le temps de reprendre son souffle.

 

The Empty Show, Texta (Australia)

In Australia, over the last four years or so, there has been occurring a new phenomenon of creative resistance: 'the empty show'. Various unoccupied, otherwise abandoned buildings or 'empties' have been temporarily sequestered by artist/activists/comic artists/graffiti writers to create drawn/painted/sculpted/destructed/rebuilt pieces and installations in response to the space and often from materials found in the space. On a certain date and at a specific time people meet at a nearby location, that has been announced on flyers and emails, and are led to the site. How long people stay, how many go through, the duration of the show, depends on whether and in what way law enforcement intervenes. Empty shows have included a small terrace house in Williamstown, Victoria; an empty demountable at Canberra University; a derelict reception centre; a Melbourne city warehouse; and a pair of roofless and floorless suburban Sydney houses where the only interaction was to build a walkway weaving through the 6ft high overgrown weeds. I would like to present documentation of many empty shows during Artivistic within the context of a Montreal empty show.