For the 11th edition of Place Publique, the Darling Foundry offers neighborhood residents and art enthusiasts an exploratory, diversified and participative program. While reaffirming its role as an artistic and cultural landmark in an ever-changing neighborhood, Place Publique 2018 aims to experiment new forms of interaction with the public. The renewed programming incorporates an interdisciplinary approach.

Interaction between artists and public is integral to the mission of Place Publique. Fermons les yeux pour voir. Always mind your surrounding is a series of six weekly nights conceived by Darling Foundry curator Ji-Yoon Han. These nights revolve around listening, attention, sharing experiences and narratives. Montreal and international artists activate Place Publique through performances, walks, listening workshops, and sound performances to encourage the public to perceive Place Publique and its neighborhood in a new light. Through these offerings, they mobilize found objects, the history of the district, Darling Foundry’s architecture and its acoustics, and surprising inhabitants. Fermons les yeux pour voir (Shut your eyes and see): this formula drawn from James Joyce's Ulysses invites us to tap into a synesthetic experience in which vision is non-spectacular, introspective, and preferably supplied through hearing and touch. The English title, Always mind your surroundings, calls on us to take care of our immediate environment, namely the urban landscapes of Griffintown and Old Montreal undergoing massive transformations.

Two cartes blanches are extended on different evenings: one July 12^th to New Brunswick collective performance at PERFform 18, and the other one August 2^nd to Maude Veilleux who brings together artists from housing cooperative Cercle Carré, near the Foundry. These cartes blanches allow Place Publique to reach an extended community and to cultivate links with the neighborhood.

Collaboration with universities and emerging artists is at the core of Darling Foundry’s values. This year, two undergraduate students studying visual arts at UQÀM won a contest to have their public art project realized on the Place Publique. Générateur spectaculaire is a performative public artwork conceived by Catherine Landry and Gabriel Lapierre as a truthful metaphor for both upheaval in sound and architecture within the neighbourhood. The duo will activate Générateur spectaculaire during five Place Publique nights. This exhibition will be on Ottawa street all summer long.

Ultimately, Place Publique is a welcoming, congenial space for all art enthusiasts and neighbors of the Darling Foundry. Due to its success in 2017, the Terrace/Bar, created by design students Noémie Bélime, Maude Huysmans and Anya Messaoud-Nacer, will be reinstalled. The Second Nature Bar will be open from Wednesday to Sunday, during the gallery's regular opening hours.

PROGRAM - Fermons les yeux pour voir. Always mind your surroundings

June 21 Inauguration of Place Publique 2018 and first activation of Générateur spectaculaire (GS) by Catherine Landry and Gabriel Lapierre, opening of summer exhibitions
June 28 Fermons les yeux... 1 : Jean-Philippe Luckhurst-Cartier / Kévin Pinvidic
July 5 Fermons les yeux... 2 : (GS) / Ida Toninato / Félix-Antoine Morin
July 12 Carte blanche to PERFform 18 (Linda Rae Dornan & Mathieu Léger)
July 19 Fermons les yeux... 3 : (GS) / Rixt de Boer / Natalia Lassalle Morillo
July 26 Fermons les yeux... 4 : Scott Thomson and his brass ensemble, a proposal by Esther Bourdages
August 2 (GS) / Carte blanche to Maude Veilleux (COOP Cercle Carré)
August 9 Fermons les yeux... 5 : Anne-Françoise Jacques / Philippe Battikha / (GS)
August 16 Fermons les yeux... 6 : Antonija Livingstone

The performance guidebook Saint-Sulpice Saint-Sulpice Saint-Sulpice designed by Ross Louis will be made available to the public at the reception desk and encourage visitors to themselves become performers.

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL 

The Darling Foundry aims to make Place Publique a permanent project that will be animated throughout the year. Never-ending constructions, noise, visual and air pollution, cars everywhere… It is high time to establish a space dedicated to the citizens in a neighborhood increasingly shaken by the destruction of old buildings, the construction of new condominium towers and the traffic of multiple vehicles. Conceived as a space of collaborative construction from the inception to the realization, Place Publique aims thus at being a portion of asphalt appropriated by artists and citizens. Let’s reclaim a permanent Place Publique dedicated to citizens, arts and ecology in Griffintown!