by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Fielding calls from people with loaded guns pointed at their own heads might not be the most well-travelled route to the art world, but it's a trail that former suicide hotline worker Diane Rodrigue thought needed blazing. "I realized this after bringing (young rapper) Solo Messager de Dieu to Marcel Landry High. As part of his rap he gave out the number for the suicide hotline (1-866-APPELLE) and when I returned a few months later everybody remembered the number because it was in his song."

The experience taught Rodrigue, 32, that art could play a role in busting down barriers to broaching the subject of suicide - a phenomenon that claims four lives a day in Quebec and affects untold others. Her efforts to counteract the awful trend lie in an annual art intervention called Interview With Dark Thoughts, which tries to "get to know this problem through art."

Thus, during Suicide Prevention week (the second week of February) at the UQÀM building at Ste-Catherine E. and St-Denis, a variety of visual and performance artists will unveil works aimed at attacking the problem. "I think we're onto something," she says. "I think that the creative process and the suicide process are very dynamic subjects to look at. Why does a person who's creating and breathing every day choose suicide rather than being creative and living their life? We want to find out why a person cannot creatively manage their suffering or find a way out."

Rodrigue, who will also be one of 800 delegates at a massive international conference on suicide here in May, requires artists in her show to answer a question before green-lighting their participation. "We had loads of sensational and fascinating artists," she says, but she could only accept the applications that offered a way of escaping suffering.