NO STOPPING HERE: From the Cardall Collection

Dazibao (4001 Berri, #202) opens its 2008–’09 season tonight, Thursday, Sept. 4 at 5 p.m. with Emergency Weather, a photographic installation by Berlin-based Finnish artist Ulrika Ferm.

One of Finland’s rising stars, Ferm has been exhibiting her work in Europe since 2000, and is only now making her debut in North America, with a first stop in Montreal.

Compelled by a desire to remember and readdress heretofore unexplained historical phenomena, Ferm’s attention is focused here on Ireland during World War II and the invocation of its “Emergency Powers Act” (1939–’46). Used by the Irish government to demonstrate its neutrality, the act controlled the dissemination of information such as weather reports so as to deter military aircraft and ships from landing on Irish soil.

Drawn from several years of research, and containing hundreds of archival photos from the National Library of Ireland, Ferm’s work aims to reconstruct an accurate accounting of time and place.

Using interviews, as well as her own reflections and interpretation of events, the show operates as both fiction and document, slipping between reality as it existed, and as it is shaped by memory.

— STACEY DEWOLFE

Timely advice

PUBLIC GUIDANCE: Poster by Tija

Writer and artist Sherwin Tjia is the co-founder of the popular Slow Dance Nights. “I like to create events where the people who come are the people who perform,” Tjia says. “I’m trying to restore the idea of the village or the extended family.”

Now his fertile imagination has cooked up three new live audience participation concepts, running on three consecutive Sundays at Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent).

The first event is Advice Night, happening this Sunday, Sept. 7 at 8 p.m., with Tjia hosting and animating.

“Think of it as a real-time advice column, but this is advice from your peers—not from Dear Abby or Dr. Phil,” Tjia explains. Audience members take part by writing out a problem they want to share (anonymously), and placing it in a box. Tjia will read out each problem, and the audience members are invited to brainstorm solutions.

“The idea behind this is that you can help people,” says Tjia.

$3 at the door.

— VINCENT TINGUELY

Body/climate parallel

Four years ago, local choreographer Sylvain Émard embarked on the creation of a trilogy of works called Climatology of bodies. “I wanted to inspire myself with climate and see how it could transform itself through movement,” he says on the phone from Holland after the world premiere of Wave, the series’ closing chapter.

LADY POWER: Wave

Following on the heels of Émard’s breathtaking Temps de chien (2005), a stormy and destabilizing piece for three men and three women, Wave is a contrast since it’s the first time the choreographer has worked with an all-female cast. “When you work with women, there’s an assumption it’s going to be more lyrical and fragile,” he explains. Instead, he found the opposite.

This piece, he says, has “an undercurrent of power,” with the movement being “more round, with a breathing quality to it.”

Émard started working on the piece last December, and continued working with his original concept. “I chose to use the climate as a metaphor to make a parallel with climate and social changes that society is going through.”

At Usine C (1345 Lalonde), Sept. 9–20, info at (514) 521-4493.

— MARITES CARINO

 

Psycho art

A man slouches in a wheelchair, his legs barely distinguishable from the spokes, a single tear falling from his stooped head. The straightforward depiction of the man’s condition elicits sympathy, the viewer compelled as much by the simplicity of the lines as the explicitness of the man’s suffering.

MAPPING THE MENTAL: Hébert’s “Maze Brain”

The painting is just one of the acrylics on view in Psychosocial, a solo exhibition by Danielle Hébert, which opens tonight, Thursday, Sept. 4 at 5 p.m. at the artist-run gallery Usine 106U (111 Roy E.). Engaging in a “mental exploration of contemporary urban and social psychosis,” Hébert’s investigation into man’s deepest interior states employs mental pictograms and cerebral topography to illustrate its findings.

Also opening is the gallery’s monthly group show. Artist and curator Eric Braün describes the collection as “full of mysterious and symbolist thematics,” its intentionally open-ended focus allowing for greater artistic freedom in both content and medium.

Comprising the work of 25 emerging and established artists, Conspiration has something to tickle everyone’s fancy: from hallucinogenic paintings and pop-trash silkscreens, to modified plush toys and surrealist jewellery.

—STACEY DEWOLFE

Is it art?

SIGN UP NOW: Sick of Facebook? You’re not the only one. Local company Park-Ex Montreal are taking their attack on the networking site to the streets, one Fuck Facebook t-shirt at a time.

Tired of receiving invites to join, and sick of looking at photos posted by long-gone friends, two “non-virtual friends,” Jessica and Laurence started their own real-life company. Since starting in January, their 100 per cent Montreal-made tees—the material is knitted in the Park-Ex garment district, and locals even sew, cut and print the shirts—have been steadily gaining popularity.

Facebook isn’t the only cultural phenomenon to get the honour, however. Oprah-championed book The Secret, which suggests you can change you life through visualization, also gets it’s own Fuck The Secret shirt, as does the city’s own favourite quarter, the Plateau.

www.parkexmontreal.com

Arts hole

RENAMING GAME: The MAI (3680 Jeanne-Mance) presents Behind Walls by artist Khadija Baker. The multi-media show, combining fibres, shadows and sound, explores the renaming of Kurdish villages in Syria with Arab names. The vernissage takes place tonight, Thursday, Sept., 4 at 5:30 p.m. • GOING GLOBAL: Optica (372 Ste-Catherine W., #508) goes international with their latest exhibit, a joint show by London-based artist Janice Kerbel and Chilean artist Claudia del Fierro. The show opens Saturday, Sept. 6 at 3 p.m.

Artistat

The year sculptor Steven Heinemann, whose Recent Work is currently on view at Galerie Elena Lee (1460 Sherbrooke W., Suite A), mounted his first solo exhibit: 1982