Present presents

Get into the here and now and treat yourself to the opening moves of the brand new international art event Viva! Art Action, a 10-day festival focusing on live performance. Tonight, Sept. 28, Japanese artist Tari Ito kicks off the opening party with her performance Where Is the Fear? at the Bain St-Micheal (5300 St-Dominique), which will act as festival headquarters throughout its duration. It’s the place to check out artist talks, workshops and events starting daily at 2 p.m. From 5–7 p.m., stop by for happy hour and a chance to meet and talk with the participating artists.

Other highlights include performances tomorrow night, Sept. 29, at Dare-Dare’s new location in No-Name Park, related programming and activities at Skol, Articule, la Centrale and Praxis and the closing bash on Oct. 7 that promises to be one of the must-see evenings of the festival, which is all free, by the way. Visit www.vivamontreal.org for more info. —Christine Redfern

Doodle kaboodle

For most folks, open-ended doodling is an activity limited to occupying fidgety hands while tied up on the phone. For the Canadian artists assembled for the latest book from Montreal’s Conundrum Press, however, it offers a whole new vista of expression. Nog a Dod: Prehistoric Canadian Psyckedooolia is a weighty tome, edited by former Mirror comic-strip creator Marc Bell, which Bell and likeminded ink-slingers such as Peter Thompson, Keith Jones, Jason Maclean, Mark Connery, Owen Plummer and Amy Lockhart have stuffed to bursting with sketches, jams, abstract comics, odd texts, collages, altered photos and all manner of combinations thereof. Expect wizards and wildlife, hobos and hot rods, priests and pyramids, monster machines and mustachioed macho men. Do not, conversely, expect to make heads or tails of the damn thing. Bell, Jones and Lockhart will be on hand for the launch at Boa (5301 St-Laurent) on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 8 p.m. —Rupert Bottenberg

Romania mania

Romanian-born poet-about-town Oana Avasilichioaei likes to keep busy. She’s curated the Atwater Poetry Project for the past couple of years, launched her first book of poetry in the spring, and this Sunday she’s launching Occupational Sickness, a collection of her translations of Nobel-nominated Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu. “I’ve lived most of my life in Canada,” says Avasilichioaei, “and though Romanian is my first language, I’ve actually spent more time in English. In some ways I feel I inhabit English the most, but I’m very interested in the crossings between languages, which is why I’m interested in translations.” Check out the dual launch, with Montreal poet Angela Carr reading from her first collection, Ropewalk, Sunday, Oct. 1, 7p.m., at Boa (5301 St-Laurent), free. —Vincent Tinguely

Behind the gloss

Torontonian Mike Hoolboom has worked in cinema since the 1980s, but his exhibition The Invisible Man at Concordia’s Leonard and Bina Ellen gallery (1455 de Maisonneuve W.) marks a crossover in his work from the movie theatre to the art gallery. As I watched Hoolboom’s videos, which weave together clips culled from famous Hollywood films, documentary footage and home movies, it was immediately apparent that the appropriated footage was produced using budgets and resources rarely seen in the world of video art.

There are some beautiful images to be found in all the works on view, but what really caught my attention was the inclusion of so many clips involving high-end film technology and not the actual content of the final pieces. Over the sequences, a narrator makes comments such as, “There are only two tragedies in life: getting what you want and not getting it,” and “Which is more painful? Annihilation or forgetting?” Hoolboom’s work is slick and seductive, yet in the end it left me feeling like I’d watched a bunch of trailers and missed the actual movies. The Invisible Man runs until Oct. 7, info: 848-2424, ext. 4750. —Christine Redfern

Is it Art?

WHEEL ENTERTAINMENT: Hop in and buckle up, y’all, Optative Theatrical Laboraties is back with Car Stories, possibly the only chance you’ll ever have to watch a play from the backseat of a moving automobile. Part of the mammoth province-wide Journées de la culture festival, the theatre experiment sees actors taking spectators through Montreal’s streets and alleyways, pretending that the “Urban Wonderland has been taken over by the Church of Capitalism... and a group of radical freedom fighters are trying to take it back.” Want a ride? Just show up this Saturday, Sept. 30, between 2–6:30 p.m. at the lawn (you’ll see) outside the Bifteck (3702 St-Laurent), or, better yet, reserve a spot at 583-FEST. It’s pay-what-you-can and videos of past performances are online at www.optative.net/carstories.

ArtsHole

LEMURS, WOLVES AND TAMARINS: No it’s not a band, just the subjects of Mathieu Laverdière’s Jardins d’hiver series, taken at the Vincennes zoo in Paris. They’re currently showing alongside fellow up-and-coming artists Isa B. Junk, who works with odds and ends she finds on St-Henri streets, and Sophie Privé’s silkscreen and acrylic portraits, at galerie [sas] (372 Ste-Catherine W., #416), through Oct. 21. • HELPING HYPE? Art Criticism: Prospecting or Promotion is the name of the symposium at the Musée d’art contemporain this fall (Oct. 27–29). It tackles subjects such as “criticism and the metamorphosis of the artwork,” “criticism as the driving force of the system” and “criticism of criticism.” See www.macm.org/en/education/conferences.html for details.

ARTISTAT: Number of unused buses transformed by 10 artists on the storied plains of Abraham, to be publicly shown all this weekend in their respective municipalities of origin (look out for one driving around the South-West district and St-Michel) as part of the Journées de la culture celebrations: 10

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