She’s tech-y

CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN: From BorderXing

by CHRISTINE REDFERN

Studio XX’s HTMlles festival kicked off yesterday afternoon at Galerie Yergeau (2060 Joly) and continues over the next three days with events, workshops and artist talks taking place at Oboro, the Monument-National, la Centrale, Metropolis and Parc de la paix. This year’s festival, titled Crowd Control, brings together individuals exploring “socially and historically conscious” ideas using electronics ranging from low to high tech.

U.K. duo Kayle Brandon and Heath Bunting lead a free public intervention titled BorderXing today (Thursday) at 2 p.m. starting from the Monument-National (1182 St-Laurent). You’re asked to show up with walking shoes and gardening tools, but this is not an urban guerrilla-gardening outing. Instead participants will “discover and cross borders into lesser known public terrain and experience some of the things that people actually trying to illegally cross borders do, such as digging under fences.”

Tonight, Oct. 18 at Parc de la paix (next to the SAT, 1195 St-Laurent), Irene Loughlin will be commenting on global warming with her performance Ayles Ice Shelf. The work is a reaction to the separation of the Ayles Ice Shelf, 37 metres thick and approximately 14 by five kilometres in size, from the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in 2005. Loughlin performs a two-to-three-hour endurance piece in which she lies naked outdoors with ice. The work also involves video, plastic flowers and audience participation—free, 8 p.m.

Tomorrow and Saturday (Oct. 19 and 20) from 12–4 p.m., a very cool workshop is being presented by Chilean artist Alejandra Maria Perez Nunez at Galerie la Centrale (4296 St-Laurent). The workshop Electronics Crash Course: a DIY resistance will enable participants to build a solar powered FM transmitter and an AM receiver and antennae, as well as play with the resulting feedback they create. (To register, call (514) 871-0268—the cost is $25).

Nunez will be presenting her live sound performance elpueblodechina featuring some of her handmade synthesisers at la Centrale, alongside a multimedia performance by local Rachel Echenberg, Friday at 7 p.m. The biggest evening of performances is saved for last—the closing party takes place at Metropolis Saturday from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. with headliners AGF from Germany. Check out the complete HTMlles schedule at www.htmlles.net.

DRAWN & QUARTERLY BOOKSTORE
(211 BERNARD W.) OPENS ITS DOORS
WITH A LAUNCH FOR PASCAL
BLANCHET’S WHITE RAPIDS THIS
FRIDAY, OCT. 19, 7 P.M.dx 1