Listen – The Concordian

Thoughts on the Fondation Phi’s current exhibitions

Listen and be amazed. These words from The Meaning of Style followed me home after seeing the Eva & Franco Mattes and Phil Collins’ exhibitions at the Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporain. (No, not Genesis’ Phil Collins, this Phil Collins is an artist and filmmaker, and yes, they are both from England.)

The title of the video [The Meaning of Style] doesn’t seem to fit with the piece. The short, four minute and 50 second film “features a group of anti-fascist Malay skinheads who appear to transcend reality and representation, circulating between the imaginative and literal spaces of cinema,” according to Harvard’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts.

the world won’t listen (2004-2007), Phil Collins. International tribute to The Smiths.

This specific information, about all of Collins’ shorts at Phi, isn’t as readily present, even in the exhibition’s programme. Instead, you’re left to wander from screen to screen and soundproof booth to soundproof booth wondering if Genesis’ Phil Collins had a secret filmmaking practice. It would make sense if he did, all the videos in the exhibition are about the relatability of music and creating various intimate installations to sit and listen.

Juxtaposed with Eva & Franco Mattes’ What Has Been Seen, the Collins’ exhibition becomes even more intriguing. According to the duo’s website, “the title refers to the “What Has Been Seen Cannot Be Unseen” meme, an internet axiom which states that repulsive, disturbing, or horrific sights can never be erased from memory once they have been seen.”

Their work forces the viewer to change the way they approach, view and generally interact with, and on, the internet. Viewers are first confronted with a smashed old desktop computer looping videos you may or may not recognize from the early 2000s. Then, you’ll walk into an open, white room, entirely empty except for a large screen and an orange cable. The individuals on the screen look back at you in shock, and you’ll wonder if they can actually see you; if Eva and Franco Mattes installed a webcam and instructed people at the other end to react to your presence. I won’t ruin the surprise.

Then you’ll continue onwards, heading up Phi’s four floors, and maybe you’ll notice the Ceiling Cat, or then again, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll just climb up the stairs and be totally thrown off guard by the TV tents and the fuzzy red carpet. Are you supposed to lie down on the ground and actually watch these videos? Or appreciate them as a sculptural object? You can definitely hear them.

Your choice. Either way, you’ll be confused. All the different Phis (Fondation Phi, Centre Phi), Phil Collins, and now this?

The way objects occupy space will really change the way you interact with them, in art museums, online and out and about in the world. We go about our lives intrinsically knowing what is okay to sit on and what isn’t. The floor usually isn’t it, especially in galleries and museums. But I’m a big floor-sitting advocate. Eva & Franco Mattes appear to be too.

Follow their collection of personal photographs upstairs. You won’t be able to actually see the images, but they’re there, through the wires and under the floorboards.

Data surrounds us at every turn, but we rarely confront it physically. Eva & Franco Mattes’ maze forces us to but doesn’t privy you to their contents. They are personal photographs after all.

The last stop is entirely different. Finally, wall art, something normal. Except it’s not. Oh and there’s another cat. Turns out they’re taxidermied (yeah, the Ceiling Cat too), creepy.

This last piece forces you to sit on the floor and look up at the video.

Abuse Standard Violations depicts images and text leaked from the duo’s interviews with web content moderators. One of these things is not like the other? Which images are ‘clean?’ How should they be classified? To flag, or not to flag?

Content moderation is one of the most interesting, mundane and horrifying professions that exist in today’s internet-dependent world. What has been seen, the three videos that follow Abuse Standard Violations, truly cannot be unseen—the duo’s way of forcing you to connect to these works in the most uncomfortable way. They moderate your behaviour. (Unless you live by a strong politics of refusal, are no fun or have bad knees.)

The work forces you to confront a world you aren’t familiar with, a world of the matrix, the other side of our crystal clear, greasy and cracked screens, changing the way we relate to our physical surroundings and to each other.

Now is your last chance to visit both exhibitions at the Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporain (451 and 465, Saint-Jean Street) until March 15. The gallery is open Wednesday to Friday from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the weekends. Admission is free.

Photos by Chloë Lalonde.

Montreal screening of renowned Lebanese filmmaker’s flick to benefit children’s charities

All profits from the Montreal premiere of Franco-Lebanese director Philippe Aractingi’s Listen will go towards four Lebanese non-governmental organizations. The screening, at 7 p.m. on Oct. 1 at Guzzo’s Sphèrteque in St-Laurent, is part of the series Rendez-vous du Cinéma Libanais à Montréal put on by Liban-Canada Fonds (LCF).

Founded in 2000, LCF is a Montreal-based, volunteer-run organization that raises funds for Lebanese charities. Its proceeds go to NGOs such as Sesobel, which provides social services for children with disability; the Institut de Reeducation Audio-Phonetique (IRAP) which helps deaf children; and the Lebanese Child Home Association (AFEL) which advocates for abused children. In 2004, the Société St-Vincent de Paul, which helps underprivileged families, became the fourth NGO in the LCF family.

The Rendez-vous du Cinéma Libanais à Montréal series is a continuation of the LCF’s five-day Lebanese film festival organized last May. Listen (Esmaii in Arabic) tells the story of Joud, a sound engineer who enjoys recording wild, natural sounds. He falls in love with Rana, a beautiful, free-spirited woman from a different social class, but her parents forbid Joud from seeing her. This is when he begins sending Rana sound bites of his voice, and tells her to listen to them.

“It is a movie that must be heard, not just watched. It is a film about noise as much as it is about silence,” Aractingi said. A self-made filmmaker from a country where cinematic studies isn’t a career option, Aractingi is mostly known for a trilogy about Lebanon’s civil war.

Ideally, all of the profits from the LCF’s events are split equally between the organizations they work with to directly help children in need. The more money they raise, the more children they can sponsor, Abdul-Massih said. The treatment and care for a child provided by Sesobel, for example, costs about $1,200 USD a year, including doctor and therapist consultations.

Abdul-Massih said LCF’s events are a great way for Montreal’s Lebanese community to gather and unite in support of a great cause. Whether it’s through a cultural event, such as a movie screening, or a simple gathering, like the LCF’s annual brunch fundraiser, showing up to these events is a community effort, Abdul-Massih said.

According to Aractingi, Listen is set “in the war-ridden country of Lebanon in the midst of a socio-political turmoil, where the only form of resistance, the only form of survival is love.”

On a recent trip to Lebanon, Abdul-Massih said she experienced that same intense love—the volunteers and employees of the four organizations there seemed to emit love in every way possible. The love was so intense that she said she felt she was leaving a sort of paradise when she returned to Montreal.

According to Abdul-Massih, the work of these organizations has helped reduce the stigma faced by children in Lebanon born with disabilities. These organizations’ accommodations have helped change the Lebanese mentality regarding disabled people, she said. So what better way to continue making a change for the better than by enjoying a movie with a down-to-earth story produced by one of the most famous Lebanese filmmakers of our time?

Tickets to the screening are $25. All the proceeds from the event—except for the renting cost—will be donated to the four LCF-funded organizations. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 514-241-9858 or visit the foundation’s Facebook page.