The kids smarten up

Greasy Goose lecture series brings its
weirdo intellectual cabaret to the streets

OUTSIDER INTELLECT:
Sara Spike (L) in photo and spirit and Jenny Lee Craig (R)

by FIONA FOSTER

In 17th century France, brainy aristocratic ladies fed up with their hedonistic lives at court but excluded from formal education invented a wonderful thing: the salon. The hostess (or salonnière) artfully arranged her sitting room and sent out fancy invitations; nobles, and later the intellectual bourgeoisie, came out to share enlightened conversation about art, literature and politics.

These days, the invitation might come through Facebook and the sitting room is at the back of a bar, but the idea remains the same—you too can escape the vapid vulgarities of life on the scene with an evening of edifying entertainment.

At the Greasy Goose Salon, held monthly in the Mile-End, local residents discuss subjects as diverse as food, cities and memory. The series was born when Jenny Lee Craig and Sara Spike discovered they’d each been plotting a salon-type event, albeit from slightly different angles.

Craig, who runs the Puces Pop craft fair, says she envisioned “an alternative performance platform, where artists could discuss their projects in a community atmosphere.” Spike, a graduate student in Concordia’s history department, wanted a venue to counteract the too-cool-for-school attitude she saw inhibiting intelligent conversation around town.

The series strikes a balance between Toronto’s light-hearted and popular lecture series Trampoline Hall and Montreal’s more serious-minded University of the Streets Café.

The Greasy Goose includes artists’ talks and academic lectures, literary readings and comic performances. No lengthy introductions, or long, drawn-out question periods. Presenters take the floor in quick succession, speak 20 minutes each and then mingle with the audience.

Planning the first salon, Craig and Spike weren’t sure anyone would show up, but the back room of Cagibi is routinely filled to capacity. It’s not uncommon to pass by on a Friday night and find the room packed with a crowd attentively following a PowerPoint presentation instead of a band.

“They’ve hit a goldmine,” says past presenter Bartek Komorowski. “It’s exciting to be able to go to a public event that’s not a show.”

The highlight of one recent salon was a performance by writer Sean Michaels and artists Kit Malo and Julien Ceccaldi. While Michaels delivered a wacky discourse on insects, prison breaks and the sex lives of eels, Malo and Ceccaldi provided live illustration.

Using laptops and an interactive drawing program (LopArt DUO, created by Montreal software studio LopLop), both artists worked on the same projected image, winning laughter and applause from the crowd.

“One of the things that was so neat was that it felt so geeky in the most amazing way,” says Malo. “When you’re a kid, you can find other kids that are hyper about what you’re hyper about but there’s less room for that in adult life.”

This summer, the Goose is branching out from its roost at Cagibi. The last salon was held at the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore and the next, themed “Street Meet,” takes place outside la Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, during the St-Laurent street fair.

“It’s going to be particularly interesting because it’s outdoors, on the street during the street fair,” Spike says. “We’ll be literally acting out the Street Meet theme, creating a public intervention in the street with this weirdo intellectual cabaret.”

The Greasy Goose salon takes
place Thursday, Aug. 21 outside La
Centrale Galerie Powerhouse
(4296 St-Laurent), 7:30 p.m., free