Programming

Lectures

In conjunction with the Fête des fleurs event on May 26, 2007 at the park with no name, DARE-DARE offers the public the first part of a series of lectures on the hybrid relationship between art and public space. With Pratiques du territoire: occupation - dislocation - mutation, DARE-DARE wanted to gather reflections of artists and theoreticians to accompany the experiments carried out by the the artists of the programming. The second series of lectures will be part of a public art event in late September 2007.

At these conferences, the artist-run center proposes interdisciplinary approaches to rethink the conceptualization and articulation of space as a territory to occupy. Guest speakers will present, among other things, the result of activities that alter the notion and experience of the place as a social, political and economic territory. This experience of the territory is one that engages on the ground of non-place not as "out-of-place", but rather as an "atopy": space of reflection that could introduce a beneficial relationship between art and its possible impact on the social fabric. In addition, the three speakers envision changes in our relationship to the social fabric from multiple perspectives.

The practices of the territory of Kinga Araya, Claudine Cotton and Dan Pitera take into account the movement from a place to another, the maneuvers and geopoetic interventions in interaction with the practices of art, architecture and activism.

The work of our guests concerns not only the field of aesthetics, but also that of political power and the new fields it invests. Through a community approach to architecture - by exploring the associative culture and political mobilization - or by acting through a performative treatment of the social bond, as well as the speech, exile and the walk, our guests constitute singular social actors. They bring the politics back to the local level, while assuming its global implications: they seize the "glocal".

Participants at the Flower Festival: Glen LeMesurier, Mile-end bread oven, Marie-Hélène Plante, Gina Badger, Éric Letourneau, Dominique Sirois, Charles Li, Sarah Badran, Mathieu Lacroix, Althea Mamaril, Didier Delfolie-Noulin and Marlène Ferrari

Resource Committee: Constanza Camelo, Fabien Loszach and Jean-François Prost

Kinga Araya is a conceptual artist and researcher born in Poland where she grew up. She studied music (first instrument: violin) and art history at the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland. After completing two years of the Bachelor of Arts program, she fled her country in 1988 to Florence, Italy. In 1990, she immigrated alone to Canada. She has a University degree in Art History and Fine Arts in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal (she earned her Ph.D. in Fine Arts and Critical Theory at Concordia University in 2004). Through her interdisciplinary practice, she studies the phenomenon of " déambulation en conversant " across geographical, linguistic and cultural boundaries as poetic and political actions. With a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, she continues her research at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) on the phenomenon of immigration and exile as represented in contemporary performances of strolling. She is also continuing her production in the visual arts field.

Multidisciplinary artist Claudine Cotton lives in Saguenay, Quebec. Her work favors the manoeuvre, performative action and installation. In her manoeuvres, she approaches various places and circles, following processes of transaction, pact and approach of the other. It is in the sensitive areas that can be find in them that her projects like to progress, that is to say in those areas of consent that allow to feed on the peculiarities of the other and to be infiltrated or even hybridize by him/her. In that spirit, her installations are "DIY" fabrications based on current events, everyday life and the artist's cultural achievements. Since 1992, her projects and exhibitions have been presented, either individually or as part of collective events in Quebec and elsewhere (Canada, France, Great Britain). She is a co-founder and a member of TouTTouT artists' studios as well as the LOBE artist-run center.

Dan Pitera, an activist fighting for social and political causes, plays the architects. He is the Executive Director of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center at Detroit Mercy University School of Architecture. Considering design as a powerful - and essential - tool for building human relationships, the Design Center is dedicated to developing collaboration between the university and the community to create thoughtful and sustainable neighborhoods and spaces. In 2004-2005, Dr. Pitera worked as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University. He was a finalist in the 2006-2007 James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City. Under his leadership, the Design Center has won numerous prestigious awards and participated in the ArchiLab International Exhibition and Conference in 2004 and 2001 in Orléans, France.