The sixth and final evening of the Possible Awakenings series is made through mutual aid and collective creation. In the context of a collaboration carried out before the event or in the case of a first encounter between the artist and the public, the projects are inspired by various performative traditions, including participative happenings, flash mobilizations, and transactional practices. Exchanges and meetings, whether long-term or accidental, materialize on Ottawa street and mark the end of this performance series focused on the participative experience where states of passivity and action follow one another, through an ambiguous sharing of roles between performer and observer.
This sequence of actions on Place Publique begins with activation of EmballeToi! Landscape, a work by Nicole Fournier, and ends with Mumu LP Vol 2: The Orchestra, a performance by Ayọ̀ Akínwándé, played in collaboration with Montreal based musicians.
5:30PM: Nicole Fournier - EmballeToi! Landscape
The installation EmballeToi! Landscape, presented on the Darling Foundry's Place Publique for the next thousand years, is an extremely durational performative work. The artist compiles several gestures contributing to the decomposition of synthetic fabrics by burying them under a mixture of clay, sand, humus, and compost.
Nicole Fournier's artistic practice is based on interdisciplinarity, weaving together aspects of public art, participatory performance, collaboration, cultural mediation, and ecovention - a concept which applies to an intervention in eco-art, which results in positive outcomes for degraded ecosystems.
6PM: Sylvaine Chassay in collaboration with Dans la Rue - We are here
We are here is an invitation to speak together, to say aloud what we think in a whisper. In the era of social networks and the reign of over-communication, we like to believe that everyone has a place in the public debate. Yet there are still voiceless people. Dans la Rue is the partner of the Darling Foundry that the artist Sylvaine Chassay chose to share his performative space in the Place Publique. By going to Ontario Street every day to meet young people and workers on the premises of the organization, she listened and tried to get the words out. Carriers and voice bearers will share the words of these people united in their struggle against precariousness. It will be the moment to listen to those who have the will to affirm their presence.
Founded by Father Emmett Johns “Pops” in 1988, Dans la rue helps homeless and at-risk youth. With dedication, empathy, and respect, and with the support of the community, the organization cares for their immediate needs and helps them acquire the skills and resources needed to lead more autonomous and rewarding lives.
Sylvaine Chassay has been involved since 1994 in an approach at the junction of contextual and participative art, based on an attentional aesthetic. She observes, examines and questions our way of life, our annoyances, our individual and collective values, including as much as her contemporaries in this intuitive process.
6:30PM: Tina Carlisi - Laugh Like the Sun, Dance Like the Wind
Laugh Like the Sun, Dance Like the Wind is a participatory happening. Through movement, poetry, props, and sound, participants are individually invited to perform a specific gesture — collectively activating the space into an intimate and poetically unpredictable moving landscape.
Tina Carlisi is a socially engaged artist driven by creating poetic situations that connect people. Through ephemeral and intimate ways of making and performing - whether it is art actions, encounters, happenings, improvisation, poetry or DIY print practices - her work explores the possibility, utopias, and togetherness as poetic and political expressions of the self as it relates to collective experiences.
7PM: Victoria Stanton & massage therapists - Questions of Care
With the participation of Annik Baillargeon, Christina Bosowec, Amber Dawn, Chad Dembski, Chantal Lemieux, Shanthi Minor, Christiane Patenaude, Renaud Phaneuf, Josée Tremblay.
Artist Victoria Stanton is inviting massage therapists into a conversation about "care." Asking the question "How do those who care for others care for themselves?" The artist proposes a two-part session in which a collective brainstorming/dialogue may take place. The first part, an informal gathering over dinner, addresses this question collectively among the invited therapists. The second part, a panel discussion, continues the dialogue by inviting Place Publique’s larger public into the conversation.
Victoria Stanton is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher/curator/educator who works with live-action, human interaction, video, film, photo, drawing, and writing. Continually exploring within such diverse media, while the outward results of her practice may manifest in a multiplicity of forms, performance is the unifying central focus and the invariable core of her research. Considered a pioneer of transactional practices in Quebec, Stanton has presented exhibitions, performances, infiltrating actions, and films/videos in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Australia, Japan, and Mexico.
8PM: Ayọ̀ Akínwándé - Mumu LP Vol 2: The Orchestra
Invited in residency to realize a project in response to the specific context of Place Publique, Akínwándé presents Mumu LP Vol 2: The Orchestra, a performance in which voice archives from the Nigerian public space are transformed into music played by six Montreal-based musicians in collaboration with the artist. In the pidgin English used in Nigeria, the word “mumu” refers to an individual with a stupid, naive, or reckless attitude. For Akínwándé, when people protest or complain that nothing is being done, their voices take on a certain rhythm, somewhat like a song being played in a loop in the media or at a bus stop.
Ayọ Akínwándé’s practice is multi-disciplinary, experimenting with lens-based media, installation, sculpture, performance, and sound to explore concepts of identity, duality and the multi-faceted layers of the human reality. His artistic process involves constant monologues and dialogues on socio-political realities in his environment while the subsequent presentations incorporate architectural processes in a spatial detailing and sectioning of these ideas and thoughts to evoke both intimacy and the monumentality.
Starting at 5:30 PM, come and enjoy the local craft beer from our generous sponsor, the microbrewery 4 Origins Brewing Co.'s and delicious tacos by Vitamina T (cash only)!
DJ set by Jérôme Nadeau.
