UniR art program transforms REM stations with public art made by university students
The Réseau express métropolitain (REM) is currently hosting the second edition of its UniR Art Program, an artistic collaboration between four Quebec universities — Concordia University, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), McGill University and Université de Montréal (UdeM). Temporary artworks created by students from these four universities can currently be seen at multiple REM stations.
Arevig Nahabedian, third-year Concordia student in Computer Science and Computation Arts, took part in the UniR program this summer.
“It was part of a summer course that was four months long, from the end of April to the end of August,” Nahabedian said. They worked alongside 11 other students who were divided into teams and each prepared a different public artwork project for the REM.
“Every year, one of the four affiliated universities has to teach a course of their choosing, funded by the REM, to create a temporary exhibit,” Nahabedian said.
Last year, Concordia hosted the course, and this year, it was UQAM’s turn. The course is open to students of all four universities, no matter where it is hosted.
Nelly-Ève Rajotte is a design teacher at UQAM and taught the summer course along with Caroline Laurien-Beaucage, a dance teacher. They both have previous experience with public art.
“We made the students bathe in the ecosystem of Montreal’s public art creators before they started creating themselves,” explained Rajotte. “It was a very intensive course, and we were there to accompany and support them every week, almost every day of the week.”
Nahabedian’s team, made up of five students, worked on a piece named Éc(h)o: passage du vivant for the Panama station. The team was supervised by Rajotte, who helped with the projection and digital art aspects.
“Every member of our team played a big role in the project,” Nahabedian said. “Everybody brought very different skills to the table.”
The teams elaborated their projects and presented them to a jury. “It was a very serious, professional process,” explained Rajotte. “They received feedback and critiques, and then the artmaking process started.”
Nahabedian explains that their team was assigned a grey, dull tunnel and that they wanted to bring a sense of life into it.
“Essentially, it’s this big structure that’s 40 feet long, eight feet tall”, they said. “So we built a box, and there are frosted glass panels with lights shining behind them. We installed some TVs, and we had fake plants which we repurposed and bought second-hand.”
Two performance artists were hired to dance behind the frosted glass for several hours on four separate days.
“It was a big play on the concept that this tunnel is always moving, nobody inhabits it, and we are now offering a very slow performance,” Nahabedian explained.
The performance was a success in the eyes of the artists, as many passersby in the busy tunnel would go out of their way to stop and watch. Some people even interacted with the performers, pressing their hands against the performers’ through the frosted glass.
Nahabedian’s team wanted their artwork to be as eco-friendly as possible. The televisions they used were donated and the wood used to build the box was partly recycled, for instance. Videos of natural landscapes and footage of the live performances that took place in the box are broadcasted on those televisions at all times.
The UniR program is part of the REM’s public art program and is funded through the Politique d’intégration des arts à l’architecture et à l’environnement des bâtiments et des sites gouvernementaux et publics, which is “a policy for integrating art into the architecture and environment of government and public buildings and sites”, according to the REM’s website (https://rem.info/en/news/unveiling-rem-public-art-program).
