Tag: Café X

Categories
Arts

Accessibility, experimentation and self-determination

Open Action Night offers artists a safe space to share their work

Full disclosure: When Lorenza Mezzapelle (Assistant Arts Editor) pitched Chloë Lalonde (Arts Editor) her story ideas for this week, saying she wanted to reach out to the students who started Open Action Night, Chloë laughed – the exact text reads “Omg I am ded. I started open action night.” 

Painting, sculpture and film are prominent in the Montreal art scene, but where does one go to casually watch or engage in performance art?

Concordia students Merlin Heintzman Hope and Chloë Lalonde are hoping to change that with a new series called Open Action Night. Similarly to an open mic, participants are invited to sign up and perform anything.

“I think a lot of people want to see performance happening,” said Heintzman Hope, adding that most often, with the desire to perform comes an intensive application process, documentation, propositions, and juries, or alternatively, grading. “It’s not for visibility but rather, ‘oh I have these ideas, I have this live art work that benefits from being in front of people, and I want to be able to showcase it somewhere.’”

“Community-based and socially engaged artwork is a big focus for us,” said Heintzman Hope. “We started working together because we wanted to have more of that.” 

With a focus on building a community around performance, Open Action Night aims to be accessible and inclusive. “We want to emphasize the child-friendliness of [the space],” said Lalonde.

“We think about age accessibility and would like that to be more of a thing, where art is for all people, where it should be,” said Heintzman Hope. “It should go for much older folk, it should go for children.”

While there are no confines as to what one can present, performers are asked to be mindful of their work, in an effort to create a safe-space.

“People should be considerate,” explained Lalonde. “They should think about what they would feel comfortable having a child witness.” Moreover, performers are expected to trigger-warn their work.

 “There’s a space out there where you can feel at liberty to try things in front of a supportive community,” said Heintzman Hope.

As practicing artists, Heintzman Hope, a Painting and Drawing student, and Lalonde, an Art Education and Anthropology student, aim to draw inspiration from, and bring their practice into, the live sessions.

“Accessibility has been a consideration of mine, which ties into my practice in a few different ways,” said Heintzman Hope. “I’m a student-parent and the range of events that I can go to with my family is pretty narrow, particularly at school.” Heintzman Hope aims to share this personal experience, towards allowing for a more accessible and community-oriented space.

On the other hand, Lalonde aims to further her practice through observation. “I’m synaesthetic and I get a lot of sensation in colour, so it’s an experiment for me,” said Lalonde, who is interested in drawing sounds and movement. “If there’s nobody there, there’s also that idea of drawing the sounds of silence.” Synaesthesia is a trait that merges multiple senses, for example, someone with synaesthesia may be able to hear colors or see sound.

Described by Heintzman Hope as a space for artistic determination, Open Action Night creates an environment for performers to experience live art, or experiment with their own practice. Artists are invited to alter space, test out a new piece, or reperform an old one.

“It’s a real try space,” said Heintzman Hope. “If people want to show something rough, try something completely new, or if they don’t have a piece but they have a method of working.” He added that performers are welcome to work with instructions, in the dark, or to create a no-talking zone.

But there’s more to the project than just Open Action Night. Lalonde and Heintzman Hope have upcoming performance-related projects in the works.

“Should they know what it leads to?” asked Lalonde. “Is it too soon?”

“They should know that there are secrets,” added Heintzman Hope. ”It’s called Sessions Aléatoires, and we’ll find different ways to rope in artists into different risky schemes that have children involved.”

The next Open Action Night will take place on Dec. 12, beginning at 6 p.m., at the old Cafe X (VA-229), in the VA building. Further information about upcoming projects can be found on Facebook and Instagram (@sessions_aleatoires.) 

 

Feature photo: Balancing a spoon – Philippe Tremblay.

Photos by Cecilia Piga.

Categories
Student Life

Attending my first feminist comedy event

Belly laughs and feminism came together at Concordia’s cozy and intimate Café X on Friday, March 31 for a night of feminist stand-up comedy.

The space was beautiful, with twinkly blue lights, potted plants and comfortable couches—as an artistic person, I felt at home, surrounded by other creative and beautiful women.

I sat down with Emily Karcz before the event to talk about her experience organizing the night of comedy. She said one of the challenges in setting up such an event is social media promotion—making sure people hear about it, and that they actually show up.

Café X is entirely student-run and open to collaboration with other people, organizations and groups for special events or exhibitions. It offers an alternative space for emerging artists.

The night started with a casual ice-breaker game where volunteers were invited up to the microphones to “verbally vomit” out any words that popped into their minds. This game made for some deep stories about hair colour, heavy drugs and annoying cats. I volunteered to participate and had a lot of difficulty forming a story with random words. This made me realize how difficult it is to build a chronological plotline on the spot. I could see how this game would help creative individuals build on their vocabulary.

Two hilarious women performed interesting comedic monologues. Menstruation, awkward first dates, ways of saving money on tampons… no topic was off-limits.

“I think feminist comedy is still something that people have to understand. Everyone who will present tonight will probably have a different view on feminism,” said Karcz. “There’s a healthy way to cope with things that are going on. Women are hilarious—I have great conversations with my girlfriends. People in oppressed positions often experience a lot and they rip on that,” she added.

“Yeah, that was my first time doing comedy. I felt great, definitely a very welcoming atmosphere,” said Emily Estelle Belanger, one of the stand-up comedians.

“Everyone is super supportive, no hecklers for sure. I spent the last week making all my friends listen to it. My speech is typed up in a draft email to myself. I would love to do more of these things in the future if the opportunities were there,” said Belanger.

Comedy helps women laugh about their stressful experiences and transform hardships into something positive and bright. I am incredibly happy I went to this event because it made me feel empowered as a woman and ready to take on the world without fear. I appreciate my female friends even more now and feel so thankful for their constant love and support.

Categories
Arts

The art of getting by

Photo by writer.
Photo by writer.

Stepping into the VA building’s Café X, guests have two options: turn immediately to the left and be greeted by a glass cylinder full of food, a smiling face, and a giant chalkboard of tasty options, or turn immediately to the right and be greeted by a topless, bald, androgynous monster-human spewing paper fortunes out its mouth.
That’s right. Art in Action is still happening.
Gallery X, which inhabits the walls of Café X, is hosting the works of seven of the 30 artists who contributed to the 2012 Art in Action exhibition that ended March 4. The gallery will continue to show the pieces until March 24.
For those who can’t go—or those who just want something to read—here’s the rundown.
As mentioned above, the gallery decided to place the most shocking and unappetizing work closest to the entrance and directly next to the food. Shaw Desjean’s La Logorrhee comprises three pieces: two square canvasses, and that alarmingly ugly (in a good way) human form, which is meant to represent man’s inadequacy in expressing feelings in words.
To the left is Naomi Large’s Our Boxes, a group of brightly painted squares with vague human forms. The pieces attempt to explore “the human form in its natural state,” and the societal boxes in which its sexuality is constrained.
Turning around, visitors can take a seat on what looks like one half of a 1980s family sofa. On the way there, it’s hard to miss Karen Boyles’ Lighten, a giant graphite drawing of a kind of patchwork parachute-tent attached to strings weighed down by bricks. The description states that the structure “suggests our capacity to construct new environments. Environments that are transient, nomadic, adaptive, inclusive: created from a diversity of materials from a diversity of perspectives.”
Across from the partial couch is the second half of the gallery, located inside a turquoise painted room. Here, as before, guests have two options. Turning to the left, one can peer out the wall of windows overlooking the construction on Bishop Street. Or, looking to the right, one can ungracefully lean over someone studying in an effort to examine Keara Yim’s selection of high-colour photos that illustrate Canadians’ relationships with the land they inhabit.
Although Yim’s bright outdoor-themed photos (one two three tree) mirror the openness created by the wall of windows, the feeling of a room wide enough to walk around in is just an illusion. The room is pretty narrow. All the artwork is on the walls, but all the seating is up against the walls, too, underneath the artwork. Therefore, visitors can’t really see anything if they choose to sit down.
Him, Her, Us by Bianca Hlywa offers an examination of subtleties in gender differences through the representation of similar androgynous figures. Opium Dreams by visual artist Emily Yun Ching Claire and literary artist Ryan Kai Cheng Thom has strong messages of diaspora, queer desire and gender fluidity, and requires a lot of looking-at time.
So while the student strike may last for another week, Art in Action proves that there is certainly room for art in the Concordia fine arts landscape, no matter how many students it takes to meet quorum.

Art in Action runs at Gallery X (VA building, second floor, room 229) until March 24. For more information, visit www.gallery-x.com/current.

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