PLAYING THE VICTIM: Lorraine Mattox as Rose

“The thoughts that drive us to the worst forms of madness almost always come up slowly and unperceived—some terrible idea in the back of your mind that sneaks to the forefront with the slow, stealthy gait of a wolf.”

Intense New York performance-theatre group Temporary Distortion bring their unsettling and compelling show, Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) to Montreal as part of the Festival Temps d’Images at Usine C (1345 Lalonde) starting tomorrow, Friday, Feb. 19 until the 21.

The group blurs the boundaries of theatre and cinema in shows that take up to a year for the company to develop. Set up in claustrophobic, box-like sets, performers never make eye contact or touch, and they barely move as streams of video are projected above them. Stories about the violence, sexuality and madness at the heart of the American Road Movie unspool as the actors’ softly spoken words are amplified, telling the story of a man haunted by his past and drifting across America.

Temps d’Images, the 10-day touring European festival founded in 2002, makes its way to Usine C for a fourth year, with Montreal the only stop in North America. Tickets are $30.

by NEIL BOYCE

Haunted by ecology

NATURAL ELECTRICITY: Hozhro

The incredible space that is the Darling Foundry (745 Ottawa) comes alive this week with Hozhro, a multidisciplinary performance about a woman haunted by an ecological crisis and searching for a more sustainable way of life.

Taking its name from the Navajo expression for harmony and beauty, the show—which runs from Feb. 22–27—was inspired by writer/composer Michel Gonneville’s own desire to live a more harmonious existence with the natural world. In 2002, Gonneville brought a selection of musical excerpts to the attention of Montreal string quartet Quatuor Bozzini. As cellist Isabelle Bozzini explains, “we found the music very beautiful and have been working on developing this collaboration ever since.”

In addition to Gonneville and the quartet, the show combines the talents of choreographer Danièle Desnoyers, videographer Mario Côté, set designer Pierre Thibault and lighting designer Jean Gervais. The foundry, with its industrial past always physically present, also played a major role.

Gonneville describes the collaborative process that brought the work to its present state as a “global artistic undertaking” in which each discipline deployed its own means to motivate the spectator—resulting in an event that is both thematically compelling and a feast for the senses.

by STACEY DEWOLFE

 

Beads, boobs and
Brazilian dancing

by MATT JONES

Home invasion

In a choreographic home invasion of sorts, dance production company La 2e Porte à Gauche and a dozen dancers take over a loft in St-Henri (3737 Notre-Dame W.) until the end of the month with a cozy site-specific piece 9 1/2 à part

Since January, the group has been creating and rehearsing the work in a spacious, renovated loft-style pad, which incidentally was a bowling alley in another life, while its residents continue to inhabit the living space.

“It was funny, sometimes we would be rehearsing scenes that take place in the dark, and one of the roommates would be making pasta in the kitchen. The lights would go off, and he would just continue cooking,” explains artistic co-director Katya Montaignac.

The 50 spectators per show are free to wander throughout the apartment during the performance since organizers want to give the audience an intimate interactive experience and maybe teach them a bit about line dancing. Head out to St-Henri until Feb. 27 for one of the shows at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. nightly. Get the complete schedule at www.la2eporteagauche.ca.

by MARITES CARINO

Is it art?

PRINTABLE MORNING COFFEE: You already buy free trade, organic coffee, but imagine if you could take the grinds from your daily caffeine fix and put them to use as printer ink? That’s just what Jeon Hwan Ju, the designer behind the RITI printer, wants you to be able to do.

Ju’s design is just one of 50 that has the opportunity to take top prize of $5,000 at this year’s Greener Gadgets Design Competition. Hosted by industrial design magazine Core77 and sustainable design blog Inhabitat, the competition, which is open to anyone, asks participants to create innovative consumer electronic designs.

The RITI printer works by placing used coffee grinds or tea leaves in the empty ink cartridge, and also requires some good old hands-on help from the user, who has to physically move the ink case back and forth in order to print the desired image. It might not be the ideal situation, but a little human help means the printer doesn’t use any electricity. And as a bonus, it smells of coffee. Voting ends tomorrow, Friday, Feb, 20, get your votes in at greenergadgets.com

Arts hole

LIVING DANCE: Vernissage-Danse #143-Live! is at Studio 303 (372 Ste-Catherine W., #303) this Saturday, Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. with performances by Sarah Bild and Susanna Hood, Mathieu Campeau, Jody Hegel, Andrew Tay and Sarah Wendt. • INSIDE THE MIND OF THE WEB: Oboro gallery (4001 Berri, #301) presents Flußgeist by Grégory Chatonsky, a work that attempts to contemplate the Internet on a deep level by asking, “Does the Internet have an imagination?” It opens this Saturday, Feb. 21 with a vernissage at 5 p.m. and runs until March 21.

Artistat

The number of artists participating in the latest group show, Slightly Uncanny, which opens tonight, Thursday, Feb. 19 at 7 p.m at Push Gallery (5264
St-Laurent): 3