Author: Esther Morand

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Concert Reviews Music

Concert Review: The retro-futuristic band Automatic comes back to Montreal with their second album Excess

Automatic playing at Les Foufounes Électriques ESTHER MORAND/The Concordian

 Automatic: fighting capitalism through looped synths 

Automatic performed on Oct. 19 at Les Foufounes Éléctriques, and the show was everything their devout fans were expecting. The trio is composed of Izzy Glaudini, lead vocalist and synth player, Halle Saxon for bass and vocals, and Lola Dompé for drums and vocals. 

“We started in Los Angeles, and we’re all big music fans, we weren’t really close friends, but we all thought we were cool. The best way to start a band is to meet cool people, so that’s what we did,” Glaudini told The Concordian. 

Automatic’s genre skims between retro and techno-pop, sometimes touching upon apocalyptic futuristic sounds thanks to the lead’s synth. Their lyrics and music videos satirize our current society, with the irony of standing by while capitalism breaks everything as the climate crisis ravages on. 

Post-punk Montreal band La Sécurité opened for them. La Sécurité offered a similar genre in sound and in style. Both bands had taken care to form a retro aesthetic with neat sunglasses, pastel-coloured clothes, and a general irreproachable sense of icon. 

Automatic seemed very focused with their instruments, looking up rarely, moving their bodies only slowly when it resonated naturally with the rhythm, not forcibly. They seemed almost aloof to the crowd in front of them, focused entirely on the music they were playing. 

Automatic sequentially had an even pace all throughout their performance. They wanted the audience to perceive the style they had meticulously chosen. They captured the room’s attention with their futuristic keyboard, vocals, and synth sounds. The bass carried most of the songs.

“We have a minimal style. We’ve never had any guitars, we wanted to make it sound different to a lot of the bands that are going around.” Glaudini noted the importance of having the audience’s attention lead to the sound of the bassist. 

When the show was done, the crowd echoed in applause. Instead of retreating backstage, the trio decided to instead join the crowd amongst their friends. This was both funny and humbling. On stage, musicians are often retracted from their humanity, seen as idol-like figures. Their stepping down from the stage at the end of the show almost shyly universalized us as all human and capable of commonality. 

La Sécurité and Automatic’s music is available on BandCamp.

Categories
Arts

Want to travel, but can’t afford to? Write and receive postcards from people abroad instead!

Postcrossing: a website that allows people to exchange postcards

Postcrossing is a community with over 800,000 active members sprawling across 205 countries, that allows people to exchange postcards with one another. 

“It’s an online platform that allows anyone to exchange postcards from all over the world, for free,” said computer systems engineer and creator of Postcrossing, Paulo Magalhães. 

He shared that the idea stemmed from wanting to connect people who love writing postcards. 

Inspired by the famous website BookCrossing, which serves as a platform to exchange books with random people, Postcrossing strives to do the same with postcards.  

While postcard exchanges might seem like a thing of the past, it is always nice to receive one in the mail. 

Soon after the project started, it gained immense popularity. The year 2008 marked a million postcards sent. 

It connected thousands of people across the world who aspire to travel but do not necessarily have the time, finances, or ability to do so. 

Every postcrosser has a profile, where they write about themselves and the kind of postcards they would like to receive. This gives the sender cues for what they can choose to write about. 

Beyond mailing postcards, the community has grown to organize meetups for postcard exchanges. There’s a forum where people connect their lived realities and blog to report the stories of postcrossers around the world. 

In the summer of 2020, I was working in a tourist shop in the Old Port of Quebec City. There barely were any tourists, because it was only the start of the pandemic. The few people that did visit were from the province, sometimes Ontario, and did not have much interest in buying souvenirs. 

One day scavenging through the stock, I found hundreds of different postcards, representing facets of the city. Surfing the web, looking for inspiration on what people did with postcards of their own city, I fell upon Postcrossing. At first, I did not understand the full extent of its brilliance. 

I have written letters to prisoners for over ten years. It started as an activity product of boredom as a young teenager and turned into opening my mind to carceral justice and abolition.

Traveling across the world, I met like-minded people, who did not believe in the concept of borders and shared my interest in writing. We soon decided to write letters to each other and forge contact living miles away. 

I wrote postcards when traveling to people I cared about but never had thought of sending them from my own city. Postcrossing made me see a world where people are eager to know about my own town. 

“Every member I meet is someone like me — just someone wanting to share some thoughts and experiences from their little corner of the globe,” says Emma Wayne, a postcrosser from Germany.  

I encountered only a few setbacks. Canada has some of the most expensive stamps in the world, one factor being that they are taxed. With $2.71 per international stamp, there are only so many postcards that can be sent a month, without it being a costly endeavor. 

I met a community of artists, people who make their own postcards, taken from their own photos, or some who paint on cardboard, collages, and drawings. 

All age ranges exist, from older retired folks to five-year-olds who are learning to write. Once, a young girl from California filled an envelope with sand and attached a note saying that it was so I could also feel like I was at the beach. 

“Postcrossers are people of all ages and backgrounds, connected by their love for postcards. Since postcards and stamps are available nearly everywhere around the world, Postcrossing can be enjoyed by anyone,” added Magalhães. 

Most people write in English, but you can write in any language the destinee reads. It can be a language practice exercise for some. I’ve had someone write to me in Georgian. 

Determined to understand its meaning, I spent over two hours deciphering it. I would have never turned to Georgian if it had not appeared to me so randomly. 

I have stayed in contact with several people from the platform, some of whom have even welcomed me to their home while traveling. 

Postcrossing is more than a simple platform, it’s a community of nomads, travellers, people passing their time exchanging souvenirs of their own towns to the world. 

It’s free, accessible, builds community, and sometimes gives you free housing when travelling! 

Graphic by: James Fay

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Ar(t)chives Arts

The displacement and forced assimilation of thousands of children in North America: Daughter of a Lost Bird film review

Filmmaker Brooke Swaney-Perpion Meg Acosta/ @city__ghost

The film explores the ongoing cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples specifically through adoption policies

The feature documentary Daughter of a Lost Bird, directed by Brooke Pepion Swaney,  centers the story of Kendra Potter as she reconnects with her biological mother. Growing up in a white family with a white culture, she knew she was adopted, but it was only later in life that she learned she had native blood. 

Daughter of a Lost Bird is Swaney’s first feature documentary. She is from the Blackfeet nation, which was cut off from the border forming process. Swaney is most known for helping produce the first season of the All My Relations podcast, along with Matika Wilbur and Adrienne Keene. 

The term “Lost Bird” refers to native children that were adopted out of their nations, mostly by force, and never returned.

This film explores Potter’s search for her mother, understanding the forced adoption of her mother, and coming to terms that she is a direct product of forced assimilation in the ongoing cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples across Canada and the US. 

“When someone says you are Lummi, I can’t wrap my mind around that, I don’t know what that means,” states April, Kendra’s mother in the film. She was raised far from her nation, so though she finds identity in being Lummi she cannot quite comprehend it. 

The film took seven years to make, between concretely finding Potter’s mother April, breaks for mental health, and the actual shooting of the film. 

Though the film is set in what is known as the US, adoption policies and methods of Indigenous erasure were very similar to those that transpire in Canada. 

The Q&A was composed of the Swaney and Na’kuset. Na’kuset has been the executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal since 1999, and is from Saskatchewan, Treaty 6. 

Q&A of Brooke Swaney Pepion and Na’kuset, MEG ACOSTA/@city__ghost)

“Because it’s an American film, the assimilation policy that they had was named differently than it is in Canada, but the harm is the same,” Na’kuset noted. 

The assimilation of Indigenous peoples in Canada was known under the name of the Adopt Indian and Métis Project (AIM) project. On record, there were 20,000 children displaced, but as noted by Na’kuset, “the numbers are larger than that.” 

Swaney and Potter met when Potter was cast as an actress in one of Swaney’s films. It was through learning more about her adoption story and the policies of forced assimilation that Swaney wanted to produce a documentary film about Potter’s life. 

It is noticeable that Potter is a capable actress in certain scenes, as she is very comfortable as she stares directly at the camera. This has the effect that the audience almost feels like she is seeing past the camera, past the spectators, as if daring the audience to judge her.  

It’s in moments of reunification with her mom that the audience feels they are seeing a real version of Potter. She is not as aware of the camera in scenes reuniting with family members she’s meeting for the first time. 

When moving back to Montana after finishing her studies in New York, the filmmaker was able to reconnect with her family. 

“My mom and I grew up off-reservation, it was nice to come home, but also complicated; I have family members who are struggling with addiction, and I have nieces and nephews who are out there in foster care.”

Moving back to Montana let Swaney gain the knowledge that, “all of these topics are close to every Indigenous person, it’s not one’s own personal experience.” It’s a series of colonial policies that have constantly tried to erase and assimilate Indigenous folks. 

This film served to raise awareness about adoption programs in the US, and their direct impact on people’s identities and cultural losses. 

Crowd at Cinema Politica screening, DAVID BEAUDOIN/ @3.2.888

“Where I feel like there’s a huge difference is between our societies, is the native voices are so much more present and louder in Canada than in the States.”

Swaney’s commentary throughout the film provides context to the story. She comments on her discomfort at times of almost projecting what she wants Potter to feel with her mother. She ends the film by stating that Daughter of a Lost Bird is ultimately Potter’s story. 

In her closing notes, Na’kuset discusses one of the projects Native Montreal is working on. It’s a new project for housing women that seeks to offer supportive housing. In relating it to the film, she says: 

“This is how we get our children back.” By supporting native women who need housing, there is the possibility to return forcibly adopted children to their families and cultures. 

Categories
Community

The power of organizing as students and the possibility it provides

Union activist and writer Nora Loreto speaks at Concordia about labour organizing and the strength collective power.

Every year the Concordia Student Union (CSU) organizes a speaker series, collaborating with guest speakers from outside the University. This year, they decided to tie the series in with their annual campaign on housing and labour. 

“Things we really want to do with this annual campaign is bringing this conversation up, and have it in public discourse,” said Julianna Smith, external and mobilization coordinator of the CSU. “It’s important to have speakers coming in from different perspectives to help relate to all the different facets of the Concordia population.” 

She notes that during COVID “we’ve had an opportunity where people are reflecting on their housing situations, their employment, and they’re recognizing that things don’t have to be as they are.” She notes the possibility of action that comes from that. 

Smith emphasizes that she “really wants to make sure that the speakers who come in really represent Concordia students and are interested.” 

Writer and activist Nora Loreto came to speak at Concordia on Oct. 18 about her experience as an executive of the Canadian Freelance Union (CFU). The CFU is an organization representing freelance communication, acting like lawyers for people who are not paid for their labour. The work people do within the union is based on skill. 

Loreto co-hosts the Sandy & Nora Talk Politics podcast and has written three books. Her latest book, Spin Doctors: How Media and Politicians Misdiagnosed the COVID-19 Pandemic was nominated for the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction in 2022.

Her talk included themes of organization, collective power, and how we build collective power in the context of today and throughout COVID. 

The talk was about the objective of the labour relations regime in Canada and how we can restore power to that balance, or if it is time to completely replace it with something more radical.

Loreto began her talk by stating, “I come at the world through student-organizing eyes, and when you are a student you realize you have almost no power.” 

“You want to have power, you want to shut stuff down, you want to occupy buildings or offices, but you really don’t have much power, and worse than that you’re paying these people to put a boot to your neck.” 

Thus far, the CFU has not lost a single case. “We use the tactics of the labour movement in our union,” said Loreto. Her history as a manager of a unionized office informed her work. 

“Within liberal democracy, the way it is supposed to work is you have different actors that interact for the operation of the state,” she said.

Labour relations were codified in 1946, and in the years that followed that compromise collapsed with “more workers having fewer rights, fewer workers covered by unions, balancing work for profit.” 

“The really cool thing about being part of a student union in Quebec is we have the same legal recognition as a labour union, so it’s interesting to think about our academic labour relations in terms of labour relations,” noted Smith. 

Judging by the success of the event, to the questions asked during the Q&A, it is clear that the talk was much needed by the Concordia student community.

Categories
Arts

Questioning women’s genders: the ongoing repression of women athletes of colour

Screening of Category: Woman - Abdelali Essaouis/CINEMA POLITICA

Category: Woman — A film about the lived realities of women athletes deemed men because of their achievements 

In coordination with four other Concordia groups, Cinema Politica organized its weekly screening of renowned political documentaries with the film Category: Woman, on Oct. 17. 

The film, directed by former olympian Phyllis Ellis, relates the story of three women athletes from around the world who are condemned for their achievements: Caster Semenya from South Africa,  Dutee Chand from India, and Annet Negesa from Uganda.   

Surpassing other women in their categories or breaking records made them objects of an investigation into their gender. They were accused of being male and had to undergo medical examinations. 

While the media put into question their gender, they were attacked from all sides. 

The accused women were deemed to have a higher than “normal” testosterone level and were told they needed to medically alter their bodies to continue to compete.

“They told me it was a medical evaluation, but they did a series of tests to test my testosterone levels,” Negesa said. 

Phyllis noted that “women were prohibited from competing because they wanted to create a so-called level playing field” with other women. 

This is known under the name of the hyperandrogenism controversy. 

While some of these athletes changed categories, others like Annet had to undergo surgery to reduce testosterone levels in order to continue to compete in their sport. 

“I am a female, I was born a female, I will race as a female,” Negesa stated in the Q&A. 

After beating the 200m running record, Dutee Chand’s gender was questioned. The Indian 100m racer won her case against the IAAF, now called World Athletics, questioning her gender — and thus, her performance. 

Expecting to get qualified for the Commonwealth Games in 2014, Chand was actually dropped by the Athletics Federation of India, who stated that “hyperandrogenism made her ineligible to compete as a female athlete.” 

The athlete appealed her case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne where she won, and was able to continue to compete. Her story is not that of most women threatened by the hyperandrogenism controversy. 

As Phyllis noted, “Men can be celebrated as being different, but no one is asking Michael Phelps to cut off his legs, or stopping them to compete, to level the playing field.” 

It has been repeatedly deemed that women who were succeeding in their domain could not be women and therefore needed to have their androgen levels tested. Several remarkable female athletes have faced exclusion from competitive sports because they had higher than the deemed normal testosterone levels in their bodies.

Through the film, we follow Negesa’s story from getting accused of being male, to having to undergo surgery. 

Negesa is the first person in the world to come forward with her story. She started the Q&A by stating, “I was a victim of the IAAF regulations.” She said this with intense resentment, as she went on to explain her story. 

“It demolished everything I was working for.”  

She’s now in Berlin seeking asylum because she receives death threats in her home country of Uganda based on questions of her gender. 

Phyllis ends the film on a note of resistance: “They want to protect women, we don’t need protection.”

Categories
Arts

Making the editorial world accessible

OK Stamp Press, which sold books and zines at the event, was founded by Concordia assistant professor maya oppenheimer and former professor M. Wright. CATHERINE REYNOLDS/The Concordian

OK Stamp Press proposes to bridge the gap between what is seen as publishable while raising queer voices

Volume MTL is an annual Montreal festival showcasing publishing and editing groups. This year, its fifth edition took place from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2.

OK Stamp press is “an experimental project press” that organizes different projects, such as book projects, social tactics-oriented events, and activism/solidarity work with local organizations and community members. 

It was OK Stamp’s first time at this festival. They started making books in 2020, but only formed a collective this year.  

Dr. Maya Rae Oppenheimer, assistant professor in the Studio Arts department at Concordia University and co-founder of OK Stamp Press, discussed her editing group and their presence at the festival with The Concordian. 

Oppenheimer explained that the project was born “from [my] personal experience [as] a student in fine arts at the University of Manitoba in the 1990s; I was keen to publish my work but didn’t know where.” 

Oppenheimer explained that the collective’s primary goals are “to center mutual aid,” meaning the printing organization does not make money from the book sales. “We give books to mobilize mutual aid within reader communities.”

She discussed the liberty of zines as mediums of expression. “The DIY nature of zines permits authenticity, in the expression of ideas, the choice of how to put words, to feelings, to ideas.” She added, “with zines and small presses, there’s more agency in the editorial process. Zines are more direct, unfiltered, affordable.” 

Oppenheimer discussed the importance of centering queer and underrepresented folks. She noted “publishing is a community-oriented project. We’re always trying to grow and showcase other people’s work.” 

This is possible through people buying the proposed books through donations. Their books are available at the Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room.

The purpose of the collective is to work with emerging queer artists “so they get experience going through the editorial book design process, and so they can get a CV line which opens up different grant access applications.” 

Oppenheimer emphasized that certain grant applications require people to have already been published, and this collective helps people do precisely that. 

Oppenheimer noted the importance of paying authors for their work. Some of their financing is made possible through grants. 

The idea is to “represent folks and spaces where they might not otherwise feel comfortable or welcome or afford to table books.”

“As a writer and bookmaker, there’s such potential for books to be powerful dissemination tools and sometimes we put a lot of pressure on exhibits, and the method to measure success, but books, zines, and pamphlets are such rich cultural objects that do just that.”

There is indeed a table fee at Volume MTL 5. Oppenheimer added that because of this financial tax, their table shared space with other organizations, who wouldn’t have the financial ability to hold a table of their own. 

On their table at the event, they held titles around carceral justice. She showed The Concordian a book, Open Letters, which focuses on the false accusation of Ricky Cummings as he faces Death Row in Texas. 

“It’s a way of getting Ricky’s thoughts and ideas and situation on paper to disseminate, to advocate for his cause and the cause of carceral justice in general.” 

The editorial collective seeks to use its access to publishing as a ground for social justice advocacy. 

“Books and letter writing is an important way of connecting communities that are either separated by prisons or political borders,” said Oppenheimer.

“In editing, with the authors, it’s always an exchange,” she continued. “We have a collaboration agreement rather than a contract. Folks can withdraw writing at any time, it’s always a dialogue about how we edit to support their work, not to alter their work in any way, and they always have the right to refuse edits.” 

“We always accept submissions. It’s very much collaborative,” she added. 

A new project the collective is working on is called Epistolary Webs — epistolary meaning letters, and webs meaning the connections between people. The project serves to connect individuals by creating a book made of a collection of letters. It will ultimately raise funds for carceral justice organizations. 

“The letters can be anything and everything from a love letter, a breakup letter you want to share, an invoice, a bill, something you find on the sidewalk, a crunchy text; it’s taking correspondence in an expanded sense, but then using it to raise money for carceral justice.” 

To get involved, people can visit OK Stamp on their website. Furthermore, letter donations for the Epistolary Webs project are welcome. 

Categories
Arts

The CSU is trying to bridge the gap between art students and the rest of the University

Art Swap event at the VA building - Esther Morand/The Concordian

By proposing events such as Art Swaps, the CSU proposes to serve as a ground for the exchange of supplies among students and the general Concordia community

On Sept. 29, the Art Swap series held its first event in the courtyard of the VA building at Concordia’s downtown campus. 

“We figured that having this event in the courtyard would create the sort of traffic that this event would like to cater to,” said Sean Levis, sustainability coordinator for the CSU and co-organizer of this event. 

Thanks to a collaboration with Zero Waste Concordia, Art Hives, the Fine Arts Student Alliance (FASA), and Concordia University’s Centre for Creative Reuse (CUCCR), the CSU was able to make this event possible. 

Art Hives staff and volunteers preparing their stand – Esther Morand/The Concordian

The CSU decided to organize a four-part swap series building off of the Queer and Kids Clothing Swaps that happen every year during the anti-consumerism week. 

The Art Swap is a space “where students are encouraged to either take the art materials that are viable to them or leave any art materials that they don’t use,” Levy noted. 

These events raise awareness around the idea of exchanging, rather than spending.

“The purpose of this event is to get students on campus, exchange different materials and promote a culture of sustainability, discouraging the commercialization of specific products, encouraging gifting and trading,” Levis said. 

Glitter containers – Esther Morand /The Concordian

“The whole point is to avoid buying new things and encourage this cycle of reusing and recycling and overall bring more sustainability on campus,” added Julianna Smith, external affairs and mobilization coordinator for the CSU. 

“There’s been this culture of individualism with the pandemic. This is a community effort to get people to connect, have fun, and promote sustainability on campus,” noted Smith. “On top of that, a lot of these events are trying to involve students to allow them to share common ideas and feel like they belong to a space.”

People painting and crafting at the Art Hives table – Esther Morand/The Concordian

Other spaces like the Art Nook offer students the possibility to make art and use available materials. 

“It’s always open, it’s a free space, where people leave and take supplies, it is an ongoing art supply swapping space,” added Smith. 

The Art Nook is located just behind the CSU offices on the 7th floor of the Hall Building. 

Three other swaps will occur throughout the year. At the beginning of November, there will be a book swap that will feature events such as “dates with books,” where book covers will be covered in brown paper with only short descriptions to accompany them for people to pick up. 

“It’s the idea of not judging a book by its cover,” Levis said. “It’s the idea of the de-commercialization of certain products.” 

There will also be a seed swap in April with the Greenhouse, where planting workshops will occur. 

Lastly, there will be a Black hair-care products swap in February. The workshops will be for people to be able to make their own hair-care products. 

“We are creating specific themes for these events. It’s an effort to reinvigorate student life at the same time,” Levy added. 

Categories
Arts

For Love: A film of Indigenous resilience

A scene from FOR LOVE - Image courtesy of Touchwood PR

Mary Teegee’s film explores a breaking of the imposed colonial linearity

Mary Teegee’s breathtaking documentary For Love delves into the issues that Indigenous folks across Canada/Turtle Island deal with, through the constant erasure of their culture, language, and ways of knowing. 

The documentary was released on Netflix on Sept. 21. 

The film’s introduction announces a harrowing tale. Somber music sustains the presenters’ voices while installing a sentiment of discomfort among viewers. 

The only people who have a voice in the introductory scenes are white politicians, while the Indigenous children filmed in later scenes are voiceless.

The clips are soon replaced by numbers and statistics, hoping to give a factual understanding of different issues within Indigenous communities.

Though this film’s purpose is to expose truths about Indigenous healing and resurgence, the opening scenes support a colonial mindset. 

They discuss themes such as child overrepresentation in the health system, deep poverty, and rates of suicide, rather than concentrating on representing Indigenous ways of knowing. 

While English dominates the first 20 minutes, it is refreshing to finally hear some Micmac.

The trailer to this film paints a picture of different cultural practices, such as throat singing or language revitalization programs, yet the beginning of the documentary frames a colonial perspective in the imagery that then follows.

Images of throat singing, for instance, would have been more powerful as stand-alone pictures, not as objects of what could have been if the colonial agenda had not produced such high erasure. 

“The numbers speak for themselves,” says narrator Shania Twain. These words only serve to further silence the broader political settler context regarding high mortality rates, poverty, and suicide within Indigenous communities across Canada/Turtle Island.

Twain offers a historical context to the colonial project on “the Indian problem.” A series of interviews are intertwined with stunning imagery of Kahnawake, Whitefish Lake, Attawapiskat, Nisichawayasihk, and Puyallup, which demonstrate the beauty of nature and our need to conserve it. 

The images would often need trigger warnings, as academic parallels and uncontextualized sufferings are spoken about as if they were facts. Maps are shown with colonial names, such as Alberta or Quebec. Even on reserves, only the British names appear. 

Twain discusses an idiom that has entered the English language: 60 scoop, meaning “the practice of taking of Indigenous children from their families,” emphasizing the deeply-ingrained colonial roots present in the settlers’ language. 

The first 20 minutes of the film are misleading; they paint just another colonial picture, yet when the voices of the interviewees become centered and when the screen only leaves space for breathtaking imagery and Indigenous voices, the film starts to become unique and truly representative. 

It is only after this dehumanizing introduction that the documentary paints a vivid picture of Indigenous peoples. The sounds of canoes on water, wood chopping, and resistance music by Mathieu Carratier announce a documentary distancing itself from colonial understandings.

Themes of solidarity, cultural appreciation, healing, and medical knowledge are reflected in interviews, while clips of politicians offer a humorous twist. Though given attention at the beginning of the film, during the rest of it these clips serve to satirize white voices describing an “issue” settlers have produced themselves. 

There is a focus on sounds, which brings the film away from its grim context. Paddles on water, children’s laughter, and plates clinking at meals metaphorically demonstrate the resilience of Indigenous peoples. 

A mundane scene at the supermarket shines a light on the humanity of different Indigenous peoples. It strives to universalize experiences on the ground of basic needs, such as food. 

The film ends on a resistant note and shows the importance of conserving languages, and culture and centering the voices of the children in the process of resurgence. 

Categories
Arts

Être ensemble: an art display that reflects on appreciating art rather than consuming advertisements

The City of Laval's public art project, Zoom Art, in Montmorency metro station. ESTHER MORAND/The Concordian

Zoom Art is a project that recommends people to look up from their mundane routines to discover public artwork

Curator Geneviève Goyer-Ouimette’s Zoom Art Project, presented by Ville de Laval Art Collection, is on display for its third edition until Oct. 16. The theme of this year’s edition is “être ensemble” which loosely translates to “being together. 

The artworks will be accessible until Oct. 16. 

The artworks are presented on astral panels, bus shelters, posters in the Montmorency metro terminus, as well as in light boxes on metro platforms. These works replace advertising, displaying artwork instead of ads. 

“The idea at the beginning was to allow a break from advertising and to have a kind of artistic oasis in the spaces where there usually is something to sell.”

Here, nothing is sold. People are invited “to reflect on their state, to have time for themselves, to be addressed as human beings, not as consumers,” notes Goyer-Ouimette. 

The project was born three years ago, in the midst of the pandemic. Goyer-Ouimette explains that “museums were closed, people had limited access to culture.”

The first edition, curated by Anne-Sophie Michel and Anick Thibault, was organized in less than two months, with a selection of artists whose works were posted in bus shelters and on astral boards. 

Previously, the project served to help emerging artists, but for the second and third editions, pieces were chosen around a specific theme. 

It was important for the curator to find an accessible theme that spoke to a large audience, where people could make links and think about the artworks without having necessarily studied fine arts. She wanted to find a theme around the term “to gather” without explaining it further. 

“With the theme ‘être ensemble,’ contrary to the notion of ‘vivre ensemble’ there is no intent given, it is more of an observation,” Goyer-Ouimette notes.  

“Being together can reach the intimacy of conflicts between people, that it be in love relationships, power relationships, indoctrination, or even very positive ones, such as relationships with a family, or being bored of being together.” The theme is thus reflected in the chosen pieces. 

There are reproductions of artworks put into photography; sometimes they are digitized because they come from real photographs that have been enlarged. 

What is particular about Zoom Art is that “you can discover it by walking around randomly, but you can also discover it by day or by night. The works are very different depending on the time of day,” Goyer-Ouimette said. 

She notes that the project resembles a catalog, but that the result is a display in a public space. 

“One of the crucial steps in producing a catalog is to ensure the quality of the images. We often had to rework the size of the images.” 

In choosing what artworks to represent, Goyer-Ouimette wanted “all the works [to] have a very strong visual appeal. In the bus shelters they contain details that will allow people to reflect,” because they have more time to wait for a bus, whereas in the metro it has to be effective more quickly, so that the piece can convey itself effectively. 

“Often people think that the worst that can happen is that people don’t like art, but the worst is when people don’t see it, don’t identify it as art, simply ignore it.” 

The curator did not want to have to explain what artwork belonged to which artist, so 

the graphic designer selected a color inside each work to write the name of the artist.

“What this does is that we will associate the image with the name without it having to be explained,” Goyer-Ouimette notes. 

Two of the 17 artists, Jim Holyoak and Matt Shane, work in synchronicity. Their work through the project is present on a bus shelter. 

“One draws, and the other adds to it, they are truly working together,” notes Goyer-Ouimette. “It’s a visual folly, the more you look at their work, the more you notice details. The drawing of one leads to the intervention of the other.” 

On the other hand, Rafael Sottolichio’s work — displayed on a highway poster — deals with the theme of family coming out of the pandemic and external family reunions. Such works are a reminder of what we have just experienced throughout the pandemic . 

The artworks intersect with the theme of togetherness through different meanings and mediums. 

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