DIGITAL DUO:
Collaborative laptop drawing by Malo and Ceccaldi

Pop Montreal kicked off yesterday, and with it, the fourth installment of Art Pop. Organized and curated by Kit Malo and Julien Ceccaldi, the five-day mini-fest takes place at venues around the city, giving Pop-goers some fantastic visual complements to the festival’s aural offerings.

Originating as a showcase for the posters and art of musicians participating in the festival, Art Pop has come into its own, evolving into an interactive multimedia event with a distinct identity. Seeking to engage and integrate, Malo, Ceccaldi and their collaborators kept their focus on that space where art and music intersect, selecting works that interacted with Pop’s other venues, so they could be “enjoyed by people who don’t necessarily like going to galleries,” says Malo.

There’s something for all tastes, from the nightly Tag Team Drawing at le Divan Orange, where pairs of artists armed with laptops create collaborative drawings inspired by live musical accompaniment, to the nightly laser-tagging on the Ubisoft Building (corner of St-Viateur and St-Laurent).

Lone Orchestra, the collaboration between Japanese performance artist anti-cool and our own noise merchants Duchess Says at Cabot Square (Ste-Catherine and Atwater) promises an intense evening tonight, Thursday Oct. 2, and the curiosities and kinetic installations at Paul Warne’s Lumenarium (927A Mont-Royal E.) will leave your heart humming.

For more information, check out www.popmontreal.com.

— STACEY DEWOLFE

Altered status

DESIGNER BABY: Transhumain

The new company DOC.THEATRE blasts off at Pop Montreal with the bilingual, five-day multimedia production Transhumain, about the effects and dangers of technology and its growing influence on our bodies.

“Since the caveman, humans have always used tools as extensions of their body—from stones to cell phones,” says Stéphanie Lambert, director and co-creator of the project with Audrey-Anne Bouchard. “The difference now is their impact on our own evolution. We passed from a technical, local stage to an accelerated, world-wide technological phenomenon.”

The title comes from transhumanism, an expanding movement whose objective is to employ all facets of modern science to allow humans the control of their own evolution and “improve the human body through science.”

Half documentary and half theatre, the project looks at the choices and implications of a future where technological alteration becomes commonplace: designer babies, GPS trackers implanted under the skin, or the addition of a third ear on the arm if we feel like it (as artist Stelios Arcadious has already done).

The emerging Montreal artists of DOC.THEATRE dig into this phenomenon with film clips, music and live performance. Talkback sessions with guest speakers are held after each performance. You can read more about the project at theatretranshumain.blogspot.com.

At Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), Oct. 1–4 at 8 p.m., Oct. 5 at 2 p.m. Tickets: (514) 284-3939.

— NEIL BOYCE

Bridge building

The intersection of community action and artistic process is a familiar one to dancer and spoken word artist Jane Gabriels. “My work for the past eight years has been as the director of Pepatian, a small non-profit in the South Bronx,” says Gabriels. “A lot of my work experience has been to create bridges and networks between artists, venues and audiences.” This Wednesday at Casa del Popolo (4873 St-Laurent), she’s doing just that.

ARTS AND ACTION:
Jane Gabriels

The show features Montreal dancers Carmen Ruiz and BGirl Bounce, and Bronx-based dancer Christal Brown and poet Victoria Sammartino. “Victoria has an organization, Voices Unbroken, that strives to equip young people and those in prison with the tools of expression to tell their own stories,” says Gabriels. “And there are four local readers who will be reading the work of four NYC-based poets.”

On Oct. 8, at 8:30 p.m., artists talk about their community projects; at 9:30 p.m., poetry and dance; $7.

— VINCENT TINGUELY

 

Architecture as art

Often overlooked as a “pure” art form, architecture combines some of the most challenging aspects of other art—geometry, space, light, scale, form, function and ideas.

A new exhibit of architecture-related art, running until October 12 at the UQàM Centre for Design (1440 Sanguinet), considers architecture in some of its present, future and fictional forms.

STACK TO THE FUTURE: Dujardin’s Toren Armen

In the work of Canadian photographer Arni Haraldsson, we see close-up views of a structure by noted French architect Le Corbusier. The photos reduce a grand, imposing building to more comprehensible forms, without losing a sense of the overall grandeur or vision.

Meanwhile, local artist and professor Céline Poisson and Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin present two fictional takes on living and working spaces. Among Dujardin’s works is a series of fictionalized architectural projects, imagining a future where every inch of space must be used and re-used, altered, added to and built upon.

And with Poisson’s maquettes, we see renderings of a utopian architecture, celebrating and celebrated by its surroundings.

—LORNE ROBERTS

Is it art?

AUTO FOCUS: This weekend, the Eastern Townships village of Ogden plays host to the Art and the Automobile conference. Kicking off tonight, Thursday, Oct. 2, and running through Sunday, the event pays tribute to fancy car designer Paul Deutschman, and will feature the unveiling of his newest creation, the Callaway C16 Speedster.

This automotive geek’s wet dream will also include a display of “cars of distinctive styling” from all eras, including the very first car to come out of Canada, an 1867 steam buggy designed by one Henry Seth Taylor.

Other activities over the festive weekend include a car rally, an exhibit of automotive art and a (seemingly un-car-related) guided tour of a bog. A portion of the $10 entry fee will go to a regional food bank and local historical societies. Find out more at www.artandtheautomobile.com.

Arts hole

HAMMERING HARPER: The Department of Culture is a national organization of pissed-off artists hoping to get out the anti-Conservative vote in swing ridings. On Monday, Oct. 6, the Montreal chapter of the DOC mounts a soirée of political theatre, The Wrecking Ball, at MainLine Theatre (3997 St-Laurent). Kiss My Cabaret’s Danette McKay hosts the evening, featuring fresh new works from local playwrights David Fennario, Julie Tamiko Manning and Julian Doucet, and more. Doors are at 7 p.m. More info at www.departmentofculture.ca. • ISH HAPPENS: Local arts Web site Indyish presents a shambolic smorgasbord of multimedia work at their Pop Mess event this Friday, Oct. 3 at 8:30 p.m. at les Saints (30 Ste-Catherine). Attractions include Liederwolfe, dancer/choreographer Amy Blackmore, comedian/sportscaster Sonali Karnick, a Kidnapper Films short and more. Both events are PWYC.

Artistat

The number of local and international contributors to Typhon, NYC comics artist Danny Hellman’s latest anthology, whose work will be gracing the walls of Monastiraki when Hellman launches the book this Friday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m.: 12