by RAF KATIGBAK

By now, calling Montreal “a city of contradictions” is about as played out as complaining about how trucker hats are played out. But the fact remains: Montreal is a hideous bitch goddess (and trucker hats are played out).

Of course you have the English and French thing (duh), but the longer you live in Montreal, the deeper and stranger the polarity gets. Take the food scene for instance.

On one hand you have a major global gastronomic destination that filled nearly an entire issue of Gourmet magazine two months ago, and on the other you have dining establishments with names like Hot Doggeria.

In fashion, the puzzle continues. How can we have one of the most amazingly style-conscious cities in North America, with top tier designers like Dubuc and Morales making international waves, and then have a major chunk of the population whose idea of dressing down is leaving the unicycle at home and just going with the Day-Glo fleece jester hat, plaid riding pants, wool socks and Tevas?

This polarization of language, food and dressing habits make this city the amazingly schizophrenic cultural acid trip that it is, and I love that, but there is one part that needs a swift kick in the ass. Can I please call bullshit on Montreal’s contemporary art scene?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we don’t have great young artists and art spaces here—guys like Massimo Guerrera are completely off the chain, and Clark and Zeke’s Gallery are great places to see new shit. But why does the majority of the population feel so alienated from fresh art?

I know it’s stupid to compare cities with different population densities, historical backgrounds, economic prosperity, and blah blah blah... but New York seems to be doing something right. What we need here is a series like PS1’s Warm Up, where amazing music is brought in to rock a party every Saturday throughout the summer. We need a contemporary art centre that knows the value of injecting some vibrant youthful energy into the institution, not the small, stuffy, unimportant-feeling MACM we have now. Hopefully they can take a cue from the beautifully chaotic and exciting Nuit Blanche that passed last winter.

Okay, perhaps the MACM isn’t entirely to blame—Montreal artists are a notoriously laissez-faire bunch when it comes to self-promotion. But I can’t help but feel like Montreal’s flagship Contemporary Art Museum can do better. That’s why, when I heard about the museum’s project that proposes to move the permanent collection to the abandoned Silo #5 in the old port, I giggled with glee like a little schoolgirl.

Did you know that the MACM only displays around two per cent of its permanent collection and that almost 7,000 works of art are just locked away somewhere where no one is able to stand there and scratch their head and not understand them? A travesty! The project proposes to take over the two floors of the Silo and convert it into an exhibition space for the permanent collection. Despite what you might think about the museum’s partners in the project (Groupe Cardinal Hardy are developers of the Redpath Lofts and the Sleb1 condos at 10 Ontario W., two spaces that evicted tons of artists in favour of building high-end condos), the idea of creating a Tate Modern-esque space in Montreal is crazy good.

Built in 1905 at the birth of modern architecture, Silo #5’s weight and simplicity caught the eye of masters like le Corbusier and Walter Gropius and became for them a symbol of the future. Abandoned a decade ago and briefly used as a musical instrument by new media duo the User, the Silo currently stands as a hulking, dilapidated mass that blocks the view of the St. Lawrence and takes up prime development real estate, a giant 45-metre concrete “fuck you” to the encroaching gentrification.

Recently, the three finalists for the development project were granted an extension, so we may not know if the plans will go through until June. But the MACM’s proposed project would not only save this amazing and impressive structure, but also give people another reason to go to the Silo, other than just getting super high and tripping out at the immense other-worldliness of the building. And it just might be what this city’s art scene needs.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca

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