Category: Arts

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Arts

Is Bill 96 relevant in Montreal: What do polyglots at Mundo Lingo think?

Third and fourth-language speakers talk about learning French at the famous Mundo Lingo meetup

Mundo Lingo is an international project that promotes language exchange operating on four continents and thrives to make language learning accessible to all. The project was founded in 2011 by Benji Moreira, and the first event happened in Buenos Aires. Moreira wanted to organize a space where locals could practice foreign languages, and foreigners could practice Spanish; this eventually became a global event where people are welcome to practice any language. 

People that attend Mundo Lingo meetups come from all walks of life, old and young, international and local; they all come for one purpose: to discuss the languages they are learning and help people that are learning their own. 

Each participant is given sticker flags for the respective languages they speak and want to practice, to signal to other people which languages can be spoken in their interactions.

Several Mundo Lingo enthusiasts spoke about their opinions on Bill 96 which imposes the speaking of French in the workplace among other things. 

Courtesy of MUNDO LINGO

David Tousseau, an ambassador at Mundo Lingo who speaks French, English, Kinyarwanda, Spanish and Gaelic, says that as a university researcher, “linguistically I am not very involved politically,” and admitted to not really caring about Bill 96. He speaks these languages for patrimonial value, family relations and general interest. 

Others like Argentinian Joaquim Marubio, who speaks Spanish, English, and a bit of French, spoke against Bill 96. 

“Let me tell you something, Canada is part of a British Commonwealth, it belongs to Our Majesty, so we better speak English. Quebec is part of Canada, people need to speak English, it belongs to Our Majesty!” 

Marubio continued to praise the King and said that imposing French was ironic with regards to Quebec’s ties with the Commonwealth. 

Anthony Gagné, originally from Quebec, had opposite views to his friend Marubio.  He comes to Mundo Lingo to socialize and practice his languages. He speaks French, English, Italian and Portuguese, and is learning Chinese. 

“I think it’s a good law, we need to protect the language.” He says Montreal is a perfect example of a place where this law needs to exist. “There are two cultures, Bill 96 creates controversy, it’s taboo to talk about it, but we need to address it.” 

He added that “the province of Quebec runs Montreal and that makes for a rather interesting phenomenon,” referring to the recent elections, of a majority government not representing Montreal voters. 

He continued, “here it is sure that you will meet people that their French is a third, fourth language, but in everyday life there are not so many, but I really understand linguistically that French is complex, more complex than the other Romance languages” 

Two women speaking in Spanish stated that they really appreciated being there, because everyone was so friendly, and it allowed them to practice French without shame. They said that in their workplaces they did not feel comfortable practicing their French because they only speak a bit of it. 

Whether it be in language circles or the streets of Montreal, there is a lot of divide on questions of language protection and Bill 96 more specifically. What is certain is Mundo Lingo provides a space where people can share in any language they desire without fear of being shamed for having an accent. 

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Arts Culture

Seeing Loud: A look at the love story between Jean-Michel Basquiat and music

Man looking at painting - VALENTINE ALIBERT

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts collaborates with the Musée de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris to create the first large-scale multidisciplinary exhibition on the role of music in Basquiat’s art

Upon entering the exhibit, visitors are embraced by the first room’s black painted walls as new-wave music plays. The smell of paint lingers in the air as people gather to admire the artwork while music from punk band The Offs plays loudly in the background. 

This is how curators decided to open Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music, an exhibition centered around the major role that music — be it opera, jazz or hip-hop — played in Basquiat’s life and work. 

Spectators are propelled into the musical universe of Basquiat’s era and the New York underground scene of the 1970s and 1980s that inspired him throughout his artistic career. 

The walls are covered with colourful posters and flyers of the bands that the artist listened to and formerly collaborated with. Between his emblematic crowns and anatomical drawings, musical references start to emerge in visitors’ minds.

Musicologist and guest curator from the Philharmonie de Paris Vincent Bessières explained that the first part of the exhibit was made to give a contextual and biographical background on the importance of music in Basquiat’s life, while the second part centers on how music oriented his pictorial universe. 

From his band Gray to his appearances as a DJ, nothing is forgotten in the extensive discography that has found its way into the artist’s work. 

The scenography uses a multidisciplinary approach that reflects Basquiat’s own methods. 

Woman looking at painting – VALENTINE ALIBERT

Visitors are projected into an atmosphere by the music playing in each room while videos and archives play everywhere. 

Visitors Ismaila Diallo and Anastasi Eosforos said they particularly appreciated the exhibition’s scenography and the way the different parts were orchestrated.

“Seeing urban art in a museum was fun,” said Diallo. “You would think there’s kind of this clash between the two, but it was very well executed.”

Jazz specialist Bessières explained that, even though Basquiat was a painter of his time and was involved in a dynamic and creative environment, he brought past music to the canvas.

“Looking at Basquiat through the prism of music allows at the same time to talk about the social journey of his life but also an interpretive key that allows us to understand things about his work,” said Bessières. “Jazz is really the music that he most celebrated, quoted, and represented in his works.”

For Bassières, these visual references to African-American culture and music are part of Basquiat’s wider connection to his identity as a Black man. 

The exhibition shows how music in Basquiat’s mind connected him to the world as an artist but, more importantly, as a Black artist living in America.

Seeing Loud runs until Feb. 19, 2023. Tickets are $16 for 21 to 30 year olds while general entry is $24. For more information, visit the MMFA’s website.

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Arts

SIGHT+SOUND: a festival that expands beyond linear definitions of art

Perpendicular screens with TV prompter - ESTHER MORAND/THE CONCORDIAN

Dancing While Waiting (for the end of the world): an exhibit that makes you question the intermediate between one’s body and the inevitable apocalypse

The 12th edition of the digital art festival, SIGHT+SOUND, took place at the Eastern Bloc from Oct. 26 to 30, and performances will continue until Nov. 12.  It’s a festival that primarily aims to provide a platform for emerging artists.

The curators of SIGHT+SOUND are Sarah Ève Tousignant and Nathalie Bachand. 

After two years of moving to an online format during the pandemic, this edition of the festival comes in full force as people are able to interact with the artwork in-person once again. 

The Eastern Bloc was founded in 2007 and is an art center that brings together technology, art, and science. It provides a laboratory space, proposes workshops, and hosts exhibits. SIGHT+SOUND’s theme this year is Dancing While Waiting (for the end of the world). 

The festival is composed not only of an exhibition section but also of a series of dance performances and musical and audio works/installations. It plays between the grounds of definable and uncategorizable artwork. Venues are located all across Montreal. 

The main exhibit was packed into a small rectangular room. Upon entering, one was immediately drawn to a table on the right side of the room that was organized with a series of pillow computers and screens. 

Table at entrance of exhibit – ESTHER MORAND/THE CONCORDIAN

On the left, visitors could raise a tablet over hanging clothes, and view a green body shaped into a dress through the screen. 

Screens were installed at either end of the room, displaying videos of artists’ works. People could use headphones to listen, which created a sense of isolation from the rest of the exhibit as visitors’ eyes and ears were entirely fixated on the short video. Strange and almost human-like figures appeared on the screens. 

In the middle of the room, two large panels perpendicular to each other showed two video screenings simultaneously, while a TV lodged at an angle displayed a TV prompter. One video, tinted in red, showed a woman racing, while the other displayed dancing bodies — some drawn, and some in live-action. 

Perpendicular screens at SIGHT & SOUND, ESTHER MORAND/THE CONCORDIAN

The sharp contrast of black words on the white screen offered a clear reflection of the seriousness of the statement. The text was set as a sort of conversation, discussing climate anxiety and the inability of humanity to focus on saving itself. 

The festival sought to retract individuals from their preconditioned lives surrounded by technology, and allow them to reflect on their states of servitude. It was intended to bring awareness to social spaces, and reappropriate what it means to be in contact with one another.

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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.

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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. 

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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.”

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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

Optimista kicks off

Optimista Conferance. DALIA NARDOLILLO/The Concordian

An exhibition about having courage against all odds

Saturday, Oct. 15. marked the launch of the Optimista Conferences organized by Yellow Pad sessions. Each conference has a specific theme: courage, compassion, love, and community.

The Concordian had the chance to speak with Grace Sebeh Byrne, one of the co-founders of the series of cine conferences, to get a better understanding of the idea behind the event.

“Optimista is a response to what happened during the pandemic. Before Optimista we used to put on more traditional film festivals. But then we have kids in our twenties, we mentor a lot of young people and it’s very clear that there is a sense of hopelessness and despair and mostly isolation. That’s a big horrible thing, to experience isolation,” Byrne explained.

During a time when we all felt isolated during the pandemic, Byrne wanted to come up with something that would bring back hope into the community. 

“We are very passionate about the arts. Art we know is a powerful tool for social change. We asked ourselves, what are we going to create, a nice and safe and welcoming immersive experience. People can come in and enjoy the arts and at the same time explore themes,” Byrne said.

Over the course of four cine conferences, art lovers can gather and experience various keynote speakers, performers, and photo galleries grouped together for every themed night.

On the opening night of Optimista, there was the visual artist Augustina Pedrocca exhibited her photographs entitled, Happy and Beautiful out of Spite.

 

Pedrocca presented an evocative series of portraits that clearly documented the loves, pleasures, hardships, and heartaches of Montreal’s Queer Community.

During the main portion of the night Diana León, a performing artist,  put on a beautiful choreographed performance. The main idea behind her performance was to put forth the idea of self-love despite the times that we live in. 

Two documentaries were shown during the inaugural night. The first was a short film entitled The Black Cop by Gamal “G” Tuwara.

Tuwara flew all the way from England just to be a part of the conference and give a talk about his documentary. 

The Black Cop follows Tuwara’s journey in the British police force. He explored his earliest memories of racial profiling and harassment in the force, as well as the homophobia he endured.

The second film of the night featured a longer documentary entitled Writing with Fire which followed the story of India’s only women-run newspaper. It was directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh.

The Concordian had the honour of getting to chat with Tuwara right after the screening of the film. Tuwara, or G as he prefers to be called, gave The Concordian truly inspiring advice for individuals that face adversity in their chosen career field. 

“First of all, I would say to build up your network around you and find people that you can talk to and trust. Talking and sharing the story is what makes it. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I know it could be scary asking for help because in your head you think that you might be failing. It’s quite the contrary, asking for help makes you stronger,” G explained.

If you can take anything away from the inaugural event, it is the following; don’t be afraid to be yourself in dark times and pursue what you believe in.

Photographs by Dalia Nardolillo/The Concordian

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Arts

Murals at Concordia: the University’s first student-led public art initiative

Justin Philippe practices breakdancing at Concordia every week. VERONIQUE MORIN/The Concordian

New faces appeared on the Hall Building’s walls last spring

A project initiated by the CSU financed two murals that were painted in May. Artists Monosourcil and Teenadult were invited to embellish the downtown campus. Colourful and detailed, the artworks’ aim is to represent all aspects of campus life. The student group who initiated the project were finalists for the Forces AVENIR provincial awards in the Arts, Letters, and Culture category.

The seventh floor of the Hall Building is always full of life. During the day, students chat and study while others wait in line for a meal at The People’s Potato. In the evening, a completely different crowd, and groups of dancers gather, in the open space. 

Cristobal Perez-Boudon comes to campus almost every day after work to practice breakdancing. “People come to dance here all the time. Sometimes we are more than 30 people. There are the K-pop dancers and the B-boys,” he explained.

Perez-Boudon witnessed the production of the murals, and for him, they added new energy to the space. “Since they are here, it feels like having our own studio. Before it was just an empty white space, you could think it was a cafeteria, but now there is something more.”

Plain, white walls are what stayed in Christopher Vaccarella’s mind when he started studying at Concordia in 2017. “Everything was the same colour, no life, no personality,” he said. When he became a councilor for the CSU, adding art to the campus walls was one of the projects he wanted to propose. 

Former  CSU coordinators, Shivaane S. and Camina Harrison-Chéry both joined forces with Vaccarella to secure the funding needed to produce the murals. 

Their goal was to feature female and BIPOC artists. “We all wanted the same thing where it focuses on diversity and people you don’t often see at festivals,” said Vaccarella.

Art on campus 

Painted beside the CSU office, Maxilie Martel-Racicot’s mural reflects the artist’s unique style while integrating elements from Concordia’s faculties. Depicted in contrasting shades of colour, the detailed work presents a large group of characters. Their identities are unclear, neither human nor animal. 

Under her artist’s name, Monosourcil, Martel-Racicot created a world of her own in which she mixes sci-fi inspirations with references to everyday life. For the muralist, the themes of coexistence, tolerance, and multiculturalism are always central to her work. “We are all humans, social animals, so it’s this idea that I represent, that we live in a group and in a community in a certain way,” she said.

On the CSU’s Art Nook walls, artist Kezna Dalz (who also goes by Teenadult) replaced the seventh floor’s light grey walls with a creation full of flowers and butterflies. Dalz included the words “art heals” in her work. In the center are two black faces, as the artist aims to include diversity in all her creations. 

With this specific one, Dalz also wanted to create a positive atmosphere in the space. “The faces are tilted upwards, so it’s about being confident, and just feeling good and creating in a space where you are feeling yourself,” she explained.

“People gravitate towards colour,” said former CSU coordinator Shivaane S.. She sees this addition to the Art Nook as a way to make the space even more inspiring for students, and to “cultivate more student-life as well.”

For more public art

This is the first public art initiative to be fully student-led at Concordia. As the University is currently developing a new public art policy, the colourful murals engage a reflection on what art can add to life on campus. The new policy should be delivered this fall and then implemented in winter 2023. 

Even though the project’s organizers have now left the CSU, the initiative is to be continued. A new mural should embellish the ceiling of Loyola’s G-Lounge this winter. 

Loyola’s new CSU coordinator, Sabrina Morena, believes art is meaningful to campus life: “To me, it means that we are not just here to study, we are also here to create a culture of care, and community.” She hopes to have even more murals painted at Concordia this year.

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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

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.

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