Programming

The words clash. They are mixtures of dazzling truths and bursts of delirium, they put on the same level the history - the small one as the big one - of the human and non-human figures, of the stars and the abysses, of the cabalistic signs, of the daily and spiritual gestures which animate us. They form black diamonds, the poetic jewels of Club Ami. The spaces where they can be read or heard have become rare - it must be said that the air to breathe has become scarce. Although there are annual reports and mobilization actions, these require words that communicate and tie in with functionalities, with clear-cut objectives: too clear-cut, too fixed. It doesn't suit us. DARE-DARE's illuminated sign is a perfect echo chamber for projecting the complex and living written material that weaves our history. Club Ami is not interested in "mental health", that objectified expression that is exchanged in the circuits of the good world of moms and dads sitting in the living room. Club Ami crosses states, changes form, seeks forms, and proposes to offer you during these few months the traces of these mutations, these escapes and these cavalcades.

Club Ami is a composite creature erected like a sculpture of the Facteur Cheval, from the assembly of all sorts of visions, languages, voices, psychoses, narratives, experiences, geographies that are the worlds of its members. It is sometimes haggard, pierced by the absence of those who are hospitalized or who are too ill to come, or full of noise, of desire, always alive. It whispers or shouts, it claims or invokes. There is no translation or analysis, sometimes not even dialogue, but flows tuned here and there, or addressed with force. 

Club Ami is a mental health day center founded in Montreal in 1983. It is located on the 5th floor overlooking the Côte-des-Neiges skyline. It is a place for people, most of whom are psychiatrically ill, with severe and persistent psychopathological problems. While everyone can find support and active listening at the Club, the goal is not so much to provide services as to create a small community around the simple fact of being together. We meet here to chat, play cards, dominoes and explore in a minor but continuous way all kinds of creative practices: drawing, collage, writing, radio, film, photography. A fanzine was launched in 2019, the eighth issue is in preparation. Equipped with a risograph, we now print it ourselves.