Anniversary program launch

MONTREAL, MARCH 9, 2022 — Fonderie Darling opens the first exhibitions of its anniversary program on Thursday, March 17, 2022. Performance, guided tour and Open Studios Event with the artists in residency are planned for the occasion.

Fonderie Darling is pleased to present a major exhibition focusing on Marshall McLuhan's radical thinking on media and technology, as well as his innovative performative and editorial practices. Realised in collaboration with German-Canadian curator Baruch Gottlieb and presented in co-production with the Dutch Institute for Contemporary Art West Den Haag, Feedback #6: Marshall McLuhan and the Arts testifies to the still vibrant influence of this iconic thinker on current art by juxtaposing various archival documents with contemporary artworks.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Fonderie Darling, the public is also invited to discover the patrimonial exhibition Fonderie Darling: 20 Years + 1 Century. Presented in the Entrance Hall throughout the year, this three-part exhibition revisits the industrial past of the site and the legacy of the Darling brothers' company through various artifacts.

FEEDBACK #6: MARSHALL MCLUHAN AND THE ARTS

Feedback: Marshall McLuhan and the Arts is a series of recursive exhibitions and public programs focused on Marshall McLuhan's radical thinking about media and technology and his innovative performative and editorial practices.

More than forty years after the death of this iconic Canadian thinker, artists continue to revisit his work to understand personal and shared experiences of contemporary digitization and globalization. In the context of this exhibition, archival materials are presented in conversation with contemporary artworks, exploring different facets of literal and figurative notions of feedback as they apply to technologies, our environment and our bodies. Produced in collaboration with German-Canadian curator Baruch Gottlieb and co-produced with the Dutch Institute for Contemporary Art West Den Haag, this exhibition also brings together excerpts from McLuhan's television appearances and copies of his experimental publications, such as Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication (1953-1957) and DEW-Line Newsletter (1968-1970, which are presented in the exhibition spaces of Fonderie Darling alongside works by local and international artists.

Programmes publics 

Cette exposition de groupe est également appuyée par un riche programme public, qui comprend des ateliers et des performances, des conversations et un colloque avec des spécialistes de la théorie mcluhannienne, étalés sur les 5 mois de l’exposition, incluant le lancement d’une publication très attendue sur le sujet, sous la direction de Sarah Sharma, intitulée Re-Understanding Media: Feminist Extensions of Marshall McLuhan.

FONDERIE DARLING : 20 ANS + 1 SIÈCLE

Presented in the entrance hall of the Fonderie Darling, the anniversary exhibition Fonderie Darling: 20 Years + 1 Century aims to introduce the Montreal public to the material traces of the Darling Bros Ltd., the company that first established the site of the Fonderie Darling in 1888, and which was in operation until 1991.. Based on an exceptional collection of tools, technical and administrative documents, letters and photographs from the company's archives, the exhibition wishes to bear witness to the memory of the workers whose hard labour formed the backbone of this great industrial complex. Converted into a visual arts center for the creation and dissemination of contemporary art in 2002, the site still contains traces of its industrial heritage. Fonderie Darling: 20 Years + 1 Century acts as an invitation to explore this history, which will unfold in three major phases throughout:

Conceived in collaboration with the design studio House9, the exhibition design invites the public to appropriate the material presented and to follow the different iterations of the project by collecting the perforated cards offered on the wall; it will then be possible to assemble these into a booklet at the end of the exhibition cycle. 

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Links:

•  West Den Haag

• House9 Studio

Visuals:

(Click here to access the high resolution files)