Bar service until 10pm
Catering service by Le Serpent

KAREN ELAINE SPENCER 

After presenting a performance-intervention in her current exhibition, karen elaine spencer invites you to take part in a stroll through the Old Port, where the public can peel and share oranges while discussing (or remaining in silence) the themes of the performance, including grief and death.

Called “one of the most exciting and hilarious performance artists around” (ArtSpace) and “vulgar and profane” (NYTimes), Alex Tatarsky makes improvisational clown performances somewhere in between comedy, experimental dance, object theatre, and deluded tirades. Tatarsky will share scores and screeds prompted by an array of haunted items gathered from their clown closet, the garbage, and the audience. The show may include rant songs, associative monologues, and possible visits from a grumpy court jester and a cat in heat: unashamed to scream and writhe all day long.

With live music by Shane Riley.

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Alex Tatarsky was born and raised in New York City before moving to Philadelphia for clown school. Their performances careen wildly between registers, from literary adaptations of obscure German texts to extended explorations of the pratfall. Original solo shows include Americana Psychobabble, Buttplug Gnome, the compost clown lecture Dirt Trip, and Sad Boys in Harpy Land – a falling apart gesamtkunstwerk about wanting to die.

GUI B.B. / On The Edge Of The Swamp I Shot This Old Piece Of Skin I Shot It Hard My Friends

A half-human, half-amphibian entity stands there, facing what was once her swamp - now gone. Lost in a fragmented memory, it tries to reconstruct the contours of its existence, only recovering its memories in bits and pieces. Haunted by a desire to disappear, she screams, echoes and hammers the ground to bring back the marsh, to awaken what, in the depths, still refuses to die.

In this performative research, the artist employs the codes of drag—specifically a kind of amphibian drag—where the body transforms into a haunted interface, traversed by abstract figures that create a dissociative chorus. She thus creates an aesthetic of glitch and overflow, invoking a baroque iconography nourished by pop culture and punk ritual.

In her quest for a cross-genre methodology, she intertwines themes such as non-human figures, precarious work, debt, and the effects of capitalism on queer subjectivities. The result is a troubled fable that merges elements of queer myth and horror. Space becomes a ground of speculative exploration, where the desire to dissolve and reemerge in a fantastical, unconventional fairy tale is boldly expressed.

With appearances by Scott McCade and Ellen Furey.

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Gui B.B. is an artist based in Tio'tia:ke/Mooniyang (colonially known as Montreal). She works mainly in the field of experimental performance. In a profusion of object gestures, she creates spaces in which the public can experience nonsense, an eruption of alterations to normative identifications. It is in these baroque spaces that she imagines playful “trans-fictions”, poetic narratives in which dissident mythology is created.

Her work has been presented in numerous venues and festivals, both in Quebec and internationally. Among them: OFFTA, VIVA! Art Action, La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines, Le Lieu, L'Écart, SKOL, AXENÉO7, la Fonderie Darling, Les Urbaines in Lausanne, and she will soon be presenting her work at ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival (in the 8:tension section).

PRETTY PRIVILEGE

Pretty Privilege is the founder of FLINTA* party series microrave and a resident of LATEX, Montreal’s iconic queer kink rave. She has gained international recognition over the past 4 years, filling dance floors from Chicago to Warsaw.