Montreal’s 15 minutes

The Factory Project recreates the spirit of
Andy Warhol’s New York in a Montreal loft

TURNING ANDY: Steve Gin as Warhol

By NEIL BOYCE

Of the several “Factories” Andy Warhol established in New York City for his work and amusement, the first—festooned with silver paint and tinfoil and known as The Silver Factory—is where it all began. As Sally Banes wrote in Greenwich Village 1963, “The Factory was both site and symbol of the alternative culture’s disdain for the bourgeois ethic, from work to sex to control of consciousness—a sanctified space where leisure and pleasure reigned.”

The creative underground of an era passed through its doors, and after-hours, Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows combined music, film and dance under a thick impasto of drugs and drag queen glitter.

David King and Miriam Ginestier, artistic directors at their respective cross-disciplinary theatres (Out Productions and Studio 303), looked at the creative cauldron of Warhol’s early-’60s Factory and wondered how it would play in 2008 in Montreal.

“It was huge ... a refuge for so many artists to come and go as they please,” says King. “We wanted to look at the nature of the Factory—mass production and business and art and celebrity—without focusing on Warhol,” he says. “Instead, on the need for connections, a sort of residency where we could have a ‘no rules’ environment.”

Co-curated by King and Ginestier in an artist-run loft, Factory Project unites artists from across Canada for a week to explore the spirit of the Factory, a kick-start for new work in performance, audio and video installation and painting.

With a central lounge and surrounding maze of interactive exhibits, “What the audience walks into each night will be totally different,” King says. Parties follow opening and closing nights (Sept. 20 and 27) and (for good or bad) aim to be free of the drugs and police raids that played such a large part in Factory history.

In 8 Portraits of Andy Warhol, Steve Gin draws from interviews and Warhol’s paintings, film and writing as the Calgary-based actor enacts portraits of Warhol at different stages of his life. Having performed the piece at the New York Museum of Modern Art and Vancouver Art Gallery, “Steve Gin will give audiences an examination of the ’60s,” says King, “the historical time frame, while the rest of the events are contemporary perspectives on The Factory.”

After years of great work with Dummies Theatre, Anna Papadakos returns to the scene with PEEP!, a look at the nature of intimacy: “The human need to connect with one another ... what happens to our basic requirements of touch, smell, taste and face to face conversation when we live in a field of communication platforms?” The peep-show piece offers a brief pause from our thrilling, alienating world of technology.

For Loft/Afterlife, artistic director Stacey Christodoulou and designer Enrique Enriquez (of The Other Theatre) reconfigure Warhol’s Silver Factory via iPods and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The audience becomes co-creator in an installation that transforms the loft into a charged theatrical event.

Sky Gilbert’s Pick Up is a short meditation on the art of a pick-up, where sex, money, desire and regret merge. Drag queen Jane (aka Gilbert) and John, an aging hustler played by Greg MacArthur, negotiate a sex scene. You get to watch, up close.