Something is happening at Concordia, and for once it’s not a protest. Yes, I’m serious.
If you’ve managed to make it past the angry mobs and riot police, you may have noticed that Concordia has a fine arts department. And hey, art matters.
That’s right, Art Matters, everyone’s favourite multi-disciplinary fine arts festival kicked off it’s third season at the uber-hip, revamped Reggie’s on Oct. 10 with the Art Matters Info Party.
The event, which included dance and DJs as a preview of art that matters, marked the official beginning of the six month build up towards the festival, which will be held Mar. 7-21.
Art Matters is a forum for all artists of every type to present their work to the Montreal community at large. If you paint, dance, sing, act, write, film, tell jokes, or do some weird sort of dog juggling, you’re invited to fill out a proposal and then, hopefully, present your genius to the world. If your piece is voted in by the Art Matters jury you will be provided with a venue, technical support, individual show publicity and funding.
Art Matters has some big plans for the season. They’ve booked several off-campus venues, including Studio 303 for dance and theatre, and Studio 306 for visual arts, both located in the famous Belgo Building on Ste. Catherine’s.
If you don’t know the Belgo Building, just play along, all the hip kids will be impressed.
Showing their humanitarian side, Art Matters is renting Open City Productions, a community based association that brings art to the streets. Open City works with marginalized community groups in Montreal.
An online artist database is being launched this year as well, sort of a classified ads for artists to find other artists in other disciplines to co-operate with. Emily Pearlman, Art Matters co-head explained that if you’re a director looking for actors, you can go online and look them up. Pearlman’s partner this year is second year communications student Craig Desson.
Your proposal will be put anonymously before the jury. You need to submit a sample of your work, an artist’s statement, one short and one detailed description of the piece and 100 words stipulating what sort of bigger event you see your art being apart of.
You also need a budget breakdown and a list of technical needs.
If all this sounds confusing, Art Matters will be holding workshops on proposal writing in early November.
Proposals are due by 5 p.m., Jan. 5 and can be dropped off anytime at the FASA office in the Hive at the Loyola campus, or downtown at the visual arts building in room 250.
For more information or to obtain a proposal e-mail [email protected], or check out their website at artmatters.concordia.ca. Failing an accessible computer, you can always walk yourself down to the Visual Arts Building, a.k.a. the VAV building, on the corner of Rene-Levesque and Bishop and ask the office.
