Author: Jeremy Cox

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Arts Exhibit

[espace variable | placeholder]: experience art in a post-pandemic flux

La Centrale - Courtesy Photos

Concordia students and alumni open a new online art exhibit in regards to adapting to a world affected by COVID-19

La Centrale galerie Powerhouse hosted the vernissage of their new exhibit [espace variable | placeholder] on the evening of Feb. 2. The online gallery was created, in part, as a statement that the world of art has shifted to the internet. 

It was created out of inspiration from a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg: the third place. Third places are the spaces where people can spend time in between their first place (home) and second place (work). As of recently, the world’s third place is the internet.

The exhibit is divided into four categories: Read, Observe, Listen, and Interact. 

La Centrale Courtesy Photo

Read, the first category presents texts reflecting artists’ experiences involving themes pertaining to third places, place-making, technological presence, and artistic subversion. 

Observe, the second category, displays the interdisciplinary approach to the concept of placeholding. 

Listen, the third category, involves audible artwork alluding to memory, transmission and reciprocity. 

La Centrale Courtesy Photo

Interact, the last, is a space which provides literature for readers to further their understanding and research of third places.

This exhibit explores navigation through third places as well as artists’ “(re)telling” of stories about finding a voice, or making a place, of those who have been demeaned by racial injustice.

One of the installations at the vernissage was from artist-in-residence rudi aker of the Byte-sized Sound Creation Residency. “This work, a bird in the hand, is what feels most appropriate to share with a larger public from those recorded conversations,” explains aker in their artist statement. The audio piece is “a move to safeguard our personal and familial histories from the often prying and exploitative consumption of Indigenous oral histories.”

La Centrale Courtesy Photo

My Little thingliness (SCRUB-A-DUB-DUB-BEBOP), another creation presented at the vernissage, is a spoken-word/sound immersion performance written and performed by Faith Paré. The piece thrashes you into the world of generational forced labour and abuse that Black women succumb to in order to survive white supremacist society. Because of this, Black women of today have the choice and opportunity to work with their minds instead of their hands.

Art history and studio arts major at Concordia India-Lynn Upshaw-Ruffner was the Artistic and Community Alliances Coordinator of [espace variable | placeholder] for some time. Through La Centrale, Upshaw-Ruffner met the Publications and Communications Coordinator Lital Khaikin.

During the creative progress of [espace variable | placeholder], the two developers contacted Paré, who Upshaw-Ruffner had discovered through a project she did at Concordia. Paré knew rudi aker through a class that they took together as well. The [espace variable | placeholder] ex-coordinator met rudi aker through a class on indigenous curatorial methodologies they had together. It goes to show that networking at school is important!

If you want to frequent an art exhibit but hate walking, you can now experience it from your own home. Click here. To access La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse’s website, Click here.

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Arts Exhibit

Habitat Sonore — an immersive audio experience at PHI Centre

Habitat Sonore Exhibit at Phi Centre - Courtesy by Julien GRIMARD

Old Montreal’s avant-garde multipurpose arts and culture venue invites you to “tune out the everyday noise and lose yourself in Montréal’s new immersive listening room” until Jan. 29

Habitat Sonore, which “consists of a 16 speaker multichannel array powered by a high-end JBL pre-processor,” has a daily rotation of soundtracks played in its singular room. On the first day, I listened to 64 minutes of a neo-classical piano soundtrack by Canadian platinum pianist Alexandra Strélinski. 

As I was led down a neat concrete basement staircase, through a purple printed door and finally past a black felt curtain at the end of a dim carpeted hallway, I was instructed to throw myself onto any cushy bean bag chair of my choosing. I waited in a dark soundproofed room solely lit by magenta LED strips, which pulsated a hypnotising glow scaling the chamber horizontally. An ambient melody surrounded and greeted me — one I would put on to meditate. Soon enough, I was sent to a different universe.

Habitat Sonore Exhibit at Phi Centre – Courtesy by Julien GRIMARD

Radiating from every corner of the chamber was music that would be a pleasure to have alongside while studying, meditating or falling asleep: pure tranquillity and serenity. It was music that you could find in a cute short student film that pays homage to Wes Anderson. 

Inscape by Strélinski was the first album to be played. Each song brought a different mood. Sometimes cheeky, pensive, desolate, but never disruptive. 

Pianoscope was the second album of hers played through, and it gave pondering 19th century steam-punk villain vibes. Restful nonetheless.

The next day I listened to the second program of three, which consisted of a few different works each by a plethora of artists, totaling nearly an hour. 

Better in the Shade by Polaris Music Award winner Patrick Watson and his bandmate Mishka Stein. The alternative EP felt — in the best way I could put it — sort of low-fi psychedelic experimental. The duo of ASMR vocals and wispy percussion was the seed for melancholy throughout the playthrough. 

Next was a meditative piece by Debbie Doe called Theatre of Dreams. It was a cacophony of sounds traveling from one end of the room to the other, all blending together forming a narrative that one can only interpret using their own imagination. From mystical chiming to macabre droning, and even a demonic cackle, the piece satisfied all my expectations when walking into a sound room such as this. 

Finally, Grammy-winning mixer James Benjamin’s Rainforest enchanted me and cleansed me of all of my worries for the duration of its runtime. The room was transported deep into an unknown jungle, with creatures chirping and predators hunting. Sometimes I could hear a leaf crunching in front of me, or the passing over of a distant airplane, maybe a gunshot from behind, maybe the howling of a monkey to the left of me. For the most part, it was the most therapeutic lullabying experience I could imagine. Rain hitting the rooftop back at home would be of no match to it. 

A great experience, and incredibly relaxing. If I could sit in that beanbag chair until Jan. 29, I would.

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Arts

Drop By And Drop Dollars at the CSU’s and FASA’s Holiday Market

Concordia’s Student Union and Fine Arts Student Association have teamed up for the Holiday Market this Dec. 7 at the CSU lounge, on the 7th floor of the Hall building

The idea of the Holiday Market came from the success of the BIPOC market hosted at the chapel on the Loyola campus on Nov. 8, organised by the CSU’s Loyola coordinator Sabrina Morena. Many tables were set up and decorated, with snacks included, and Concordia’s radio station CJLO made an appearance with their very own DJ. 

“It was relatively simple to organise in many ways which is why we thought short notice would do something similar,” said CSU Student Life Coordinator Harley Martin. 

The goal of this market is to expose artists downtown and at a more festive time of the semester. “We thought, ‘why not do something similar, closer to vacation time at the CSU lounge’ given there are so many people there at lunch,” added the Student Life Coordinator.

At this event, you’ll find beautiful tangible products such as ceramics, paintings, drawings and jewelry that you can buy for yourself and others. “We talked to FASA, and they said ‘let’s do it,’” said Martin

The Holiday Market was created with one two-sided goal: the first is to provide publicity for Concordia students in the fine arts, and with a great place in mind to do it. The 7th floor of the Hall building is always busy. “There are always people there,” said Martin. “It’s a great place to allow people to see some of the art and artists produced at Concordia.” 

The second aspect is the market’s capability of providing exposure for the artists, letting people know that fellow students create art, even though they’re not necessarily enrolled in a fine arts program. “They could do art on their own time in other departments or fine arts, but it shows other students that people are making beautiful and interesting things at Concordia, so [it’s] kind of exposure for both parties,” said Martin.

The CSU has collaborated with FASA many times in the past in order to stimulate and inspire unfamiliar students who are interested in getting involved with the fine arts. “The idea is that we try to get students involved in things that they are interested in, and FASA is one of the various groups that contribute to the school experience,” concluded Martin. 

Make sure to bring your friends, your eye for gift-buying, and your holiday spirit to the CSU lounge on the last day of classes!

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Arts

An ethical lesson for audiences in Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes 

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes - Andrée LANTHIER

From Nov. 3-27, the Centaur Theatre Company presents an award-winning comedy on teacher-student relations from alternate perspectives 

Hannah Moskovitch’s fantastic piece is about writing professor Jon Macklem (played by Marcel Jeannin), freshly separated from his wife. He develops a relationship with his 19-year-old student Annie (played by Inès Defossé), who also happens to be his neighbour from across the street. Aware and reluctant of his wrongful actions, the protagonist slowly succumbs to his temptations. 

The audience watches as the professor internally struggles with the morality of his actions all while narrating in the third person with an ironic dry tone. “ The audience is a bit more forgiving, and you get into his story at the beginning,” said Jeannin. “A little bit like Walter White, where you’re sort of on board with him, because he knows what he’s doing is wrong. He has the choices, but you always see him making the wrong move, but regretting it.”

It wasn’t hard, however, for the actor to portray a hateable yet torn anti-hero. “You never want to judge a character, as an actor,” said Jeannin. “The audience can do it. What’s this guy’s job? He’s there to tell the story, and the playwright made him conscious that what he was doing was wrong.”

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes – Andrée LANTHIER

Jon Macklem, for Jeannin, was interesting yet challenging. His interest for the character was sparked immediately when the script was handed to him. “At one point I thought it was too one-sided against him,” said the actor.  “I was a little scared: I wasn’t sure. I was given the first draft. I read it and it was not perfect. I said there was something here, and I was curious to see the following one.” 

Guided by the brilliance of director Eda Holmes, the physicality and movement in the piece was accentuated by her vision, which was guided by her dance formation in ballet. The play itself was not especially designed for dance and movement, but there were many clown-esque moments between the characters, punchlines delivered through physicality, in which Jeannin did a fantastic job. At times, the movement took the form of a ballad between the two, bringing metaphor into their sensuality.

As a public entertainer and artist, Jeannin was careful to analyze the ethics of the new play, which premiered in 2020. He did so to make sure that participating in a play with such a heavy subject and controversial angle was not in fact distasteful, and upsetting to audiences. “When they gave it to me, I read it. I gave it to a thirty-year-old woman and said ‘what do you think?’ She said it was funny.”

“The play weighs it so that you sympathize with the guy to a point,” added the actor. “But in the end, what he does is wrong.” The play is fitting for all audiences who could be interested in watching a play on dark subject matter interpreted in a tasteful comedic manner, riveting and engaging from beginning to end. All in all, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes is a great production, and a fresh point of view on such a hot topic amid the #metoo movement. 

It’s from his point of view but from her point of view. If the audience isn’t on board with him at the beginning, then there’s no place to go.

You never want to judge a character, as an actor. The audience can do it. What’s this guy’s job? He’s there to tell the story. The playwright made him conscious that what he was doing was wrong.

When they gave it to me, I read it, and I gave it to a thirty year old woman, and said what do you think, and she said it was funny.

The play weighs it so that you sympathise with the guy to a point. But in the end, what he does is wrong.

He falls in love with her, is it genuine love, or is it infatuation?

At one point I thought it was too one-sided against him. I was a little scared: I wasn’t sure. I was given an earlier draft, the first. I read it and it was not perfect. I said there was something here, and I was curious to see the following draft. and  then I got the following draft and I was a little taken aback because in the first draft, she was a little more experienced.

 In this draft they’d taken away all the experience. It was the right decision because from my perspective, i go, you’ve totally weighed it against him. Its not ambiguous. The director says yes but the play is from her point of view. The writer got rid of the stuff that made it ambiguous.

It’s  a  very good play, I love it the more I work on it.

Nothing special, the only thing i did that i don’t usually do is i got off book early. Usually I learn my lines in rehearsal. This time we only had four weeks. That’s the only thing I did differently to prepare. Otherwise, nothing. I made sure I understood every moment, and that every time there was contact that I was initiating it. 

It’s a big one to unpack, you tend to think what the character’s writing, or what he speaks about, is autofiction. The play is autofiction. He put everything in the third person, he did autofiction. and that at the end of the play you find out it’s not even his play, it’s her autofiction, her perspective of his perspective. He’s in somebody else’s autofiction. 

The toughest moment for me to play is the moment in the bar when he walks away from her because I’ve been in some positions where I can kind of understand. There’s a lot of him that I can understand. 

Me: I go: schmuck, listen to her. He’s at a level of selfishness that he makes about him, which is why he walks away from her. Again, me, my self preservation would go: listen to her. It’s a heavy lift for me.

A lot of clown in this. Quick shifts, barrelling, the specifically clown bits were the bandage scene: that’s pure clown.

Categories
Arts

Coextinction teaches viewers to “put the eco in economy”

Graphic: James Fay/The Concordian

The political-environmental documentary was presented on Nov. 7, for the first time at Concordia’s weekly Cinema Politica event

Coextinction, a 2021 film by environmental activists Gloria Pancrazi and Elena Jean is a beautifully shot film that primarily follows one of the few remaining pods of Southern Resident orcas on the coast of British Columbia and Washington. A group of scientists get down to the bottom as to why the orcas are sickly, famished and inevitably dying one by one. 

As the story goes on, the causes for the desperation of the orcas are unveiled. Pipelines, fish farms, cargo ships and dams alike are direct causes for the extinction of these whales. Along the way, the audience is introduced to many Indigenous activists who are equally affected by these government installations that are unjustly trespassing on their territories. 

Kwekwecnewtxw guardian Will George, a resistance leader and member of the Coast Salish Watch, was introduced in the documentary during his protest against the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project. The pipeline was installed on the coast of the Burrard Inlet, which was property of his nation. 

(K’wak’wabalas) ‘Namgis Chief Ernest Alfred played a large role in the film by protesting against fish farms on Swanson Island, Discovery Island, and the Broughton Archipelago. His village, whose lifestyle centred around eating the fish that they catch naturally, was affected by the fish farms plaguing their local wild salmon population.

After Chief Alfred’s protests on Swanson Island, the archipelago has shut down 35 fish farms and counting.

“I wouldn’t feed it to my worst enemy,”  said Alfred in the documentary. 

“I was taught as a child that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada was the enemy. They stopped counting fish when I was about six years old. So there’s no problem,” said Chief Alfred. “Consistently, for the better part of the decade, we’ve seen 200-250 salmon in the territory. Since the removal of the Broughton Archipelago fish farms this year, the first generation of fish that have been able to migrate: 11,000.”

The ‘Namgis Chief explained that the world wants to hear what they have to say because their cause makes sense, and more importantly, that the economy does not drive this planet. “As soon as we put the eco back in the economy, we’re going to figure some things out,” concluded Alfred. “Go and sit with an Indigenous person and listen to them because we’re not trying to hoard and make money, we just think several generations ahead.” 

In a similar vein, resistance leader Will George was ignored by a large corporation known for their activism. George claims that Greenpeace put a heavy task on the backs of Indigenous militants like himself. According to George, Greenpeace took pictures of the blockades and banners he made and installed at his own risk, added a watermark and used it for their own benefits, and he hasn’t heard from them for years. 

“Far too often do our spiritual ones get arrested, and our holy ones get arrested,” added George. “They’ve criminalized me for witnessing the destruction of my land.” The Kwekwecnewtxw guardian had been sentenced to 28 days in prison for his acts of protest in defence of his nation’s land. 

“We have a simple philosophy here,” said Chief Alfred. “You can’t take without just saying thanks. Say thanks and have gratitude.”
For further information, you can visit Coextinction’s website.

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Arts

PHI Centre’s Horizons VR brings a whole new form to film

Adil Boukind/Centre Phi

The multipurpose venue displays award-winning virtual reality works

The PHI Centre reopened its Horizons VR exhibition on Nov. 9. The installation consists of four different rooms, each designated for a virtual reality exhibit, some including user-interactive elements. These award-winning pieces were all breathtaking in their own unique ways. Each one had me pulling off my headset either in complete awe or in intense reflection on the content I had just experienced.

Goliath: Playing with Reality is about a man who is diagnosed with schizophrenia after losing his parents, after which he spends several years in isolation taking strong medication. The protagonist, who goes by Goliath, finds solace in connecting with the outside world through video games after his return home. 

This piece is a true sensory overload. Bombardments of colours, shapes, and creatures create an intense feeling of hallucination and detachment from reality, all while keeping a video game theme as the virtual world demonstrates pixelated elements over many occasions. A few interactive moments involving first-person shooting and old arcade games allowed an extra level of immersion, and Tilda Swinton’s partial-narration was a soothing contrast to the chaos displayed throughout. 

Adil Boukind/Centre PHI

A following room is designated for the viewing of Reeducated, the animated true story of three strangers who were placed in a Xinjiang “reeducation” camp. The three men were caught in the middle of quite possibly the “largest internment of ethnic and religious minorities since the second world war,” according to The New Yorker. 

Displayed as a 360° VR short film, the memoir strikes emotion visually and through storytelling. The animation, created with a nod to Chinese ink wash painting, exposes the bleak horrors that average citizens must endure if they come from circumstances that aren’t to the government’s liking. As for the narrators, their friendship formed through hardship is poignant and tear-jerking, and it can be felt through the story they recount.

The third VR work, Kusunda, brings the viewer to rural Nepal, where they are placed in an interview conducted as a POW with shaman Lil Bahadur, who has forgotten his dying native dialect of Kusunda. Meanwhile, his granddaughter Hima takes initiative to revive the language of her family and ancestors. 

The heartwarming film tells their story through colourful CGI animation as well as live-action, splitting between informative and artful entertainment. The learning experience is topped off interactively, as the viewer is asked to pronounce words of the Kusunda language in order to resume the experience, which in turn spreads the subtle revival of the dialect. 

Finally, Marco & Polo Go Round tells the story of a couple facing problems in their relationship, which takes a severe anti-gravitational twist. As we follow the couple around their messy apartment, many objects around the kitchen fly up in the air, sticking to the ceiling. This is a reflection of the gradual dissolution of the protagonists’ love. 

Marco & Polo Go Round is about half the length of all of the other pieces, so it only has enough time to strike hard with its surrealism. The message, while not up-front, is especially thought provoking given the minimal context provided. It’s a beautiful animated metaphor.

It’s clear why the PHI Centre selected these four works to display. Each one deserved to win their multiple respected awards. Virtual reality, if done correctly, can definitely be an art form.

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Arts

À bout de bras: A Greek myth told at the Agora

Courtesy of Agora de la Danse

The dance-movement performance piece by Emily Gualtieri and David Albert-Toth was presented at Montreal’s Agora de la danse from Nov. 2 to 5


À bout de bras involved acrobatics and contortion, magic, humorous poems and storytelling, performed uniquely by Albert-Toth, all based on the theme of Tantalus.

The Greek mythical figure was famously punished after death in the deep abyss of Tartarus, where he was forced to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree with low hanging branches. The water would sink every time he went to drink it, and the tree branches hanging over him would elude his grasp every time he was hungry.

Albert-Toth’s original inspiration for this piece came from the concept of solitude. “We looked to use an example of a fallen hero. The Joker, Muhammad Ali, who’d experienced their own solitude amounting to their self destruction. When we discovered the story of Tantalus, we knew we found the one,” said the performer. 

The mythological figure was known to have been a ruler of the Anatolian city of Tantalís. He was sentenced to his infamous punishment after having offered his son as food to the gods when invited to Mount Olympus to prepare a feast for them. 

The idea had been in the works since 2019. After the arrival of COVID-19, during which the world had to confine and experience solitude, Gualtieri and Albert-Toth knew it was essential to present it as soon as possible, after the ebbs and flows of the global crisis. 

Courtesy of Agora de la Danse

The dancer started the piece almost nude, wrapped in a sparkly cloth. He argued to the crowd that instead of attending his act, we as citizens should be taking action to prevent the ongoing domination of capitalism. If we believed it was important, we wouldn’t choose to merely sit in our venue seats looking for entertainment. Only after Albert-Toth clothed himself and provided a powerful dance representing Tantalus’ struggle and torment, did he reveal the reason for his monologue on the economic system.

The following segment was an allegory involving a Coca-Cola vending machine and how desperate he was for a soda, but didn’t have any change. The soda represented relief and reward for hard work. The dancer humorously hyperbolised his desperation for it by contorting and writhing on the floor, rhythmically rapping about how he would do anything for that “kssss” in his life. 

Albert-Toth alternated between expressive dances on Tantalus’ desperation and the real matters of companies capitalizing on our selfish needs. The performance ended in a heartwarming magic act, with many colours which contrasted the darkness submerging the dancer for nearly the entirety of the piece.

All in all, the show was brilliant and thought-provoking. As someone who found it difficult to understand interpretive dance and movement performance, the story, humour, and sheer athleticism opened a new world for me. 

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Music Quickspins

QUICKSPINS: Westside Gunn is a 10

LILY COWPER @lilycowper

 Is Hitler Wears Hermes a 10/10?

The Buffalo MC and Griselda record label founder dropped his 10th and final instalment of his Hitler Wears Hermes series on Oct. 28th. The 12-track mixtape concluded a decade-long legacy of HWH, which started in 2012. 

It’s very difficult for Westside Gunn to miss. Since first listening to Griselda’s perfectly eerie WWCD project in 2019, I was hooked. From then on, I’ve put every new album of his on repeat for at least a week. This one is no different. However, there are some elements from 10 that contribute to missing its spot on the shelf with his other stellar projects. 

The album felt rushed. Gunn’s last album, Peace “Fly” God, was released 5 months earlier, on July 8. There were many of the same features and similar beats, which may produce a déjàvu feeling for fans. The return of AA Rashid talking over the beat in “Intro” felt like a repeat of Peace “Fly” God, which I was listening to up until 10’s release.

This album felt less like a Westside Gunn album than it did a Stove God Cooks album. There are twelve tracks, eleven if you exclude “Intro,” which is more of a skit than a song. Stove God contributed significantly to six of the remaining songs. A featured artist should not be in half of an album’s tracks. No discredit to Stove God — he has immense talent in his verses, voice and hooks, and I couldn’t stop listening to his part on “BDP.”  

As a finale to such a grand series, I expected to hear a variety of other features on it, and found some happy surprises. This album felt more upbeat than other Gunn productions, with cheeky features from artists that we love. There were contributions from members of the Wu-Tang Clan, including RZA’s production of the Intro track, and the appearance of Raekwon and Ghostface Killah on Science Class (also featuring Busta Rhymes). It was produced by Swizz Beats of all people!

DJ Drama continues his trend of guesting on many recent albums such as Tyler the Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost and Dreamville’s D-Day: A Gangsta Grillz Mixtape by making two appearances on Gunn’s album. The rap duo Black Star appears on “Peppas,” and A$AP Rocky makes an appearance on “Shootouts in Soho.” 

This album was very solid, and I’ll certainly listen to it on repeat. It’s superior to any other album released in the past months. I’m giving it a hard time simply because it’s not the standard I’d usually expect from Westside Gunn. It was heartwarming to hear elements of the many friends and affiliates of Griselda, and a decent conclusion to such a legendary series. It just felt rushed, and a shame that the artist had to cater to the decennial date.

Trial Track: “BDP” (feat. Rome Streetz & Stove God Cooks)

 7/10

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Arts

Ji zoongde’eyaang opens with a strong heart

Credit: David Wong

Mother and daughter dig up old works to tell a story on Indigenous heritage in new MAI exhibition

Montréal, arts interculturels, or MAI for short, opened Ji zoongde’eyaang on Oct. 22. The exhibition features work from Lara Kramer and Ida Baptiste, an Anishinaabe Oji-Cree mother-daughter duo. The title, in Anishinaabemowin, means “to have a strong heart”.

Baptiste is a visual artist, traditional pow wow dancer and Ojibwa language teacher based in Rama, Ontario. She is a member of the Berens River First Nation, Treaty 5 territory. Many of her works, consisting of oil on canvas, weaving and printmaking, were famously shown between 1975 and 1990 in Ontario.

Lara Kramer, her daughter, is a performer, choreographer and artist of many disciplines from Oji-Cree and settler descent. Her work is grounded in intergenerational relations, intergenerational knowledge and the impacts of the Indian Residential Schools in Canada. 

Most of the pieces in this exhibition touch on generational practices as well as experiences involving memory, loss and reclamation. Some of the works by Baptiste are from the early ’90s and have never been seen before, representing her experiences from her time at Brandon Indian Residential School in Manitoba.

Baptiste worked as an Ojibwa language teacher at Mnjikaning Kendaaswin Elementary School in Rama, Ontario from 2011 to 2019. “There’s a big language component in all of these works and it’s reflected here with the audio recording of them learning together, but the exhibition of all of these blankets actually started during the pandemic,” said MAI head of communications Jaëlle Dutremble-Rivet.

Much of Baptiste’s works consist of oil paint on canvas. Many of these paintings depict young Indigenous children superimposed over backgrounds thematically tied to residential schools. 

In addition to the language component of this exhibition, Kramer and Baptiste collaborated to gather several trade blankets representative of Kramer’s memories growing up and connecting with her Oji-Cree culture. “Gorgeous Tongue,” one of the blankets on display, represents Kramer’s memories of growing up in poverty. She also touches upon sentiments of rebirth and family lineage. 

“Emily” is a trade blanket that represents Kramer’s relationship to her lineage. She speaks of her “nookomis,” her mother’s mother, and the brief relationship they had. Kramer recounts witnessing her nookomis’ anguish through a series of seemingly paranormal interactions. The piece has heavy tones of generational trauma and the ways in which they shape intergenerational relationships. 

The trade blanket has a lot of meaning. It was used during colonization, spreading smallpox to indigenous communities — a devastation in the genocide against Indigenous people. The blankets were also used in trade between different communities. Kramer and Baptiste are reworking and tasking that symbol, adding regalia from traditional jingle dresses and beading work. 

“The paintings were an addition because at the beginning it was only supposed to be the blankets and a projection,” said Dutremble-Rivet. For instance, the painting titled #64 is a triptych of a young child on a swing set, with a background composed of different numbers. 

“All of the children in residential schools were given numbers, and 64 was Ida’s number,” said Dutremble-Rivet. “There’s a lot of residential school history in Ida’s work. [Ji zoongde’eyaang] is a really important work to show, especially that it was truth and reconciliation day a month ago, so it’s the real history.” 
For more information about the exhibition, please visit the MAI’s website.

Categories
Arts

CFBA: The student source for all things fashion business

Courtesy Photo - Valérie Belanger

The CSU organization is the on-campus remedy for all your vogue cravings

The Concordia Fashion Business Association (CFBA) was founded in 2017 in order to connect student fashion enthusiasts to the industry by providing events, cocktails, talks, and mentorship involving experienced professionals in the field.  

The CFBA isn’t “just about networking with professionals, but other students as well because there aren’t any means provided by the school to do that,” mentioned CFBA co-president Sydnee Grill. 

Last year featured the first appearance of the Cocktails & Connections event held at Apt. 200, where the turnout of business-professional guests and student attendees alike surpassed expectations. The guest speaker for the night was Zach Macklovitch, co-founder of Saintwoods. 

“This year we want to do it bigger and better because we won’t have to worry about the vaxicode,” said Grill, “and we have a much higher cap on the amount of people who can attend the venue.”

Before 2021, the CFBA only held one or two of these events per year. Fashion Conversations was the recurring activity, which won an award for Best Virtual Event 2020-21 from the CSU. The fashion conference includes different events involving several speakers, workshops and a session after a cocktail event for recruiters to talk to students.

The club will also participate in Fashion Spectrum, a Quebec-wide case competition for all universities. The deadline to enter is Nov. 14 for students who want to get involved and enhance their skills in fashion and business. The competition is from Jan. 13 through 16, and the team will meet weekly with fashion mentors in order to prepare. 

As for the weekly timings, the CFBA meets once a week on Sundays for a general meeting. Closer to an event, many more meetings and a lot more work and time is put in.  

“At that point the events team is planning, the business relations team is reaching out to sponsors and speakers inviting guests and the social media team is pumping out all the content for that event,” said Grill.

“In the past, websites have been the main source to find business information. Now, Instagram is the top platform to keep consumers up to date, whether it’s student-run or professionally run,” added the co-president.

This year, the club’s new content creator Lucie Sarrazin created and posted a video on “what Concordia students are wearing” that garnered almost 50,000 views on Instagram. From that video, the club gained around 300 new followers in a matter of two weeks — more than what they gained throughout all of last year. 

“If you don’t go out and seek us out, the only other place you’re going to find us apart from going straight to our website is finding us on the CSU clubs website page. Every time someone new finds us, they’re amazed at how they’ve never heard of us,” Grill said.

Stay tuned for late April activities involving Concordia-based businesses and possible thrifting. 

This Nov. 10 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., students who attend the event at Apt. 200 will be able to network with each other and business-professional guests over food and drinks. The event will also feature a main guest speaker who will speak for 30 to 45 minutes.

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Arts

Public Intimacy—discovering the margin between the public and the private

Exhibition, Courtesy: JewishMuseum

The interactive piece kicks off the reopening of the Museum of Jewish Montreal

There is a line drawn between public and private spheres. In our lives, everyone has a limit as to what is kept personal and what we want to display to the public. As of Oct.13, art enthusiasts have the chance to explore this idea through the creation of Berlin artists Sophia Hirsch and Johannes Mundinger titled Public Intimacy, showcased at the Museum of Jewish Montreal until Jan. 22. 

The installation is composed of a plethora of curtains hung from a tall metal framework. Curtains of different materials, densities, and colors, are meant for the public to wander through and reflect upon. It’s a maze, and it provides the chance to close each participant off from the rest of the public, allowing them as much intimacy as they desire. 

“The curtains are second hand, they all come from a regional context that has a history with the Holocaust, the contemporary rise of neo-fascism,” said Stokvis-Hauer. “I don’t think that the exhibition is only about that, either. There are a million different things that public privacy can be associated with, it’s such a broad topic.”

The installation’s walls are occupied by immense photographs of mysterious residential windows, accompanied by existential and thought-provoking questions. 

The curtains were found around the Berlin area in historic places. Some were found in abandoned buildings previously occupied by German Democratic Republic government officials, some belonged to Mundingers’ grandmother, and others were found on the street. 

In 2019, the two artists were called in by the Museum of Jewish Montreal to present a project on-site. However, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down any works in progress, and the Museum of Jewish Montreal was shut down. 

This is the first exhibition since the museum’s reopening and the first Montreal-based project for the artist tandem. In this new space, the artists found even more room for freedom of discovery.

There certainly is an element of the exhibition that harkens to the past and present and leans towards elements of “Jewishness,” according to the museum’s artistic director Alyssa Stokvis-Hauer.  Themes of racism, xenophobia, and possibly other matters relevant to a broader community than the Jewish. 

“We aren’t Jewish ourselves, but we have history with the culture,” said Mundinger. The artist had been invited to participate in an exhibition at the Galicia Jewish museum located in Kraków in Poland. Hirsch had gone as far as spending three years with a concentration camp survivor to create his biography in the form of a graphic novel. The work is not yet published through an official company.

In terms of an exhibit, the museum’s staff team saw Public Intimacy as a connection of interest to the Jewish community in Montreal. For the team, there’s a wide range of interesting questions that are relevant to the Jewish community, and further relevant to other communities. 

“What’s so great about Johannes and Sophia’s work is that it asks infinite questions,” added Stokvis-Hauer. “It invites everyone to think about where the line is between public and private on the macro and micro scales.” This piece, she emphasized, is meditative.

If you want your brain and heartstrings tugged on, all while experiencing the essence of a homely yet conflicted culture, you should visit the installation in the Mile End before it closes on Jan. 22. You can read more about the event on the Museum’s website.

Categories
Arts

Encore Books & Records: A gem that you’ll never find elsewhere

The Encore team. KAITLYNN RODNEY/The Concordian

The mom-and-pop second hand books and records shop finds a way to stay alive despite various adversity

In the early 90’s, Sean Madden, a young Concordia graduate, began buying books and records from local yard sales and auctions, eventually sparking his interest in selling them. As his hobbies pursued, his father — playwright Peter Madden — joined him, setting his literary passion ablaze.

“We often buy things from the community, and then it’s a nice process because it returns to the community. I always feel like I work really hard to keep Encore open because what we do here isn’t as much about selling as being a space for works of art to find other lives,” said Madden, the dedicated owner of Encore Books & Records.

Shawn Madden, owner of Encore book store Kaitlynn Rodney/The Concordian

The two would trade from all sorts of stores across town, namely S.W. Welch, The Word, and Odyssey. “Eventually we had so much stuff piled up, we were getting too good at it,” said Sean Madden.

“We stopped supplying other stores and looked for our own. It took us a year and a half to find this location. We lived in NDG, and we wanted something from NDG.” Thus, Encore Books & Records was opened in 1999 on Sherbrooke West and Harvard. 

Madden was keen on finding unusual records from niche genres. “People were throwing out all kinds of things, and it’s always so fun to find somebody’s collection and learn about who they are, what they enjoy.” 

Encore Books & Records has well over 100 genres of books, and over 40 genres of music on vinyl. However, running a second-hand bookstore on a busy street is no simple task.

“Our profit margins are fine, but it’s a lot of work and I think it’s difficult, because our customers are also our suppliers, and people aren’t used to selling things to us,” said Madden. However, the team is always looking for great finds, and people can make their own contributions in their own way and pick something up for themselves.

Caitlin, waiting at the cash for her next customer. Kaitlynn Rodney/ The Concordian

The owner disclosed that he was not planning on expanding the franchise, especially after how COVID-19 affected small retail businesses over the past couple of years. 

“I hope Encore is here forever.”, said Caitlin Van Fossen, an Encore Books employee and a student at Concordia. “I think folks do love supporting local, and Sean likes to emphasise that we want to support the local community, unusual gems that you’ll never find elsewhere.”

Kaitlynn Rodney/ The Concordian
Encore bookstore, is a used and new book store they carry all kinds of genres, as well as records , cds and cassesttes. Kaitlynn Rodney/ The Concordian
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