Love for the
lower Main
SIGNING OFF: From SYN’s “Hypothèse d’insertion IV”
The days are getting warmer and art is moving back out into the streets of Montreal. VOX (1211 St-Laurent) is currently presenting seven projects that focus on the neighbourhood around the gallery that is to become the city’s new Quartier des spectacles.
Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Gilbert Boyer, Christoph Fink, James Partaik, Jocelyn Robert, SYN (Jean-Maxime Dufresne, Luc Lévesque, Jean-François Prost) and Felicity Tayler were chosen by curators Marie-Josée Jean and Patrice Loubier for their exhibition Mobile Space, to observe and interact with this historic neighbourhood on the lower Main before it disappears.
“Even since we started this project a year ago, visually the area has changed dramatically,” Jean says. “We have all seen the news about the Quartier des spectacles and now we are seeing the beginning of it. But there is the danger that the area will become homogeneous, and that the culture that is represented will be the cultural industries that bring large public profits and attract tourists.
“But the question that we need to ask ourselves is, does it signify all of a sudden that the alternative culture, the marginal cultures are excluded from this big development?”
Until May 31, with a public debate on May 3, at 2 p.m. Info: (514) 390-0382, www.voxphoto.com.
by CHRISTINE REDFERN
The art of war
MOUTHFUL: “Oratoria”Cuban photographer and performance artist Adonis Flores is currently showing a striking series of images at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (372 Ste-Catherine W., #216). This body of work, says Flores, “is not a comment on the Cuban military, but on the military everywhere.”
The images include the horrific but well done “Cannon Fodder.” Here we see Flores’s face covered in meat in a way that gives us the very real impression that his skin has been removed. Others are much more humorous, but equally compelling, like the video “The Art of Spring.” It shows the public’s reaction to Flores walking the streets of Havana while wearing fatigues covered in white Marguerite flowers. Apparently some people even asked if it was a new military uniform.
Another video beautifully captures the absurdity of war, as we see Flores, as always in fatigues, spinning a hoola-hoop round and around in the work “Last honors.”
His portraits and videos are worth checking out for his uncanny ability to combine the forces of order and subversion in the same image.
Until May 10, info: (514) 395-6032, www.pfoac.com.
by CHRISTINE REDFERN
Brokedown Piggy Palace
“To be honest, I was waiting for someone else to write about it … but it wasn’t happening, so I felt moved to speak,” says Vancouver writer/director Crystle Reid of her one-act play, Slaughterhouse Sisters, which takes a fresh look at the missing and murdered women of the Robert Pickton case.
Reid had heard about the parties at a barn called the “Piggy Palace” outside Vancouver, and she knew people who went there. After the story of the pig farmer/serial killer broke, Reid visited the courthouse, watched the media  coverage and was struck by how routine the case soon became.
“It was this really brutal story, but for everyone working on it, it seemed to be just a job, a day-to-day thing.”
She spent two years gathering material from interviews, Web forums, news stories and court documents, putting together a portrait of a community usually demonized or ignored.
Posing the overarching question, “Who is to blame?” Reid’s play shows an alternative to lurid headlines and stereotypes about sex-trade workers, addicts and the homeless. “It’s still going on,” Reid says. “There are still missing women. It won’t stop until we perceive these people as human beings.”
April 23–26 at Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.). Tickets $12–$15, info (514) 482-8965.
by NEIL BOYCE
Thoughts into movement
Absence makes the heart grow dance. That was the concept behind Concordia dance grad Hinda Essadiqi’s second collaboration with Mexican dancer-choreographer Aladino Rivera Blanca.
“The idea of absence is such a universal concept, but the challenge was to represent it on stage,” says Essadiqi, who chose the MAI gallery (3680 Jeanne- Mance) to present the piece L’absence/La ausencia.
The intimate choreographic installation, with no assigned audience seating, takes place in a makeshift abandoned apartment space and combines contemporary dance, physical theatre and video projections that “represent the unconscious of the different characters.”
Since September, Essadiqi has been brainstorming with her collaborators and discovered what absence means to them while transforming these thoughts into movement.
“We experience many emotional states related to absence,” she explains, “like uncertainty and the feeling of loneliness.” After Friday’s show, the cast speaks with the public in a post-performance chat. The show runs until April 20, 8 p.m., tickets: (514) 982-3386.
by MARITES CARINO
Is it art?
PITY THE FOOL: If The A-Team means anything to you—and if you remember the ’80s, it should—then you probably have fond memories of Mr. T, the show’s  no nonsense star who was known as much for his catch phrases (see above), as his affinity for gold chains and bulging muscles.
Mrtandme.com is a Web site created by Mike Essl and Greg Rivera, aimed at cataloguing the vast array of Mr. T products, everything from slippers to cereal.
It might not be your typical fan site—you won’t find Mr. T’s bio, or any information on the new A-Team movie (Woody Harrelson and Ice Cube have signed on)—but you will find product histories alongside artwork inspired by the legend, and Mr. T news. The latest of which has Mr. T giving you driving directions on a GPS navigational system.
www.mrtandme.com
Arts
hole
YOU ARE HERE: Iranian-Canadian photographer Babak Salari’s show, Where Is Afghanistan?, exhibits images of Afghanistan shortly after the coalition invasion in 2001. Travelling with volunteers of Médecins du monde Canada, Salari was able to capture their mission to bring medical attention to those in need in the southwest province of Nimrooz. The exhibition opens tomorrow, Friday, April 18 at 6 p.m. at Mekic Galerie d’art et librarie (4438 de la Roche). • LYRICAL: Words and Music at the Casa has its latest installment at Casa del Popolo (4873 St-Laurent) this Sunday, April 20 at 9 p.m. The multilingual event features Kaie Kellough, Alejandro Saravia, Marc Gagnon, Tammy Forsythe, Hideous Ontology and a mystery guest. The Mirror’s own poetry buff, Vincent Tinguely, will be hosting the event. $5.
Artistat
The number of voices that will be singing the praises of Earth Day as part of MAHA’s spring concert, Vers le Vert, this weekend, April 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. at Eastern Bloc (7240 Clark): 30 |
