Programming

Sub-event of

VICTORIA STANTON

May 24, 2016 — March 31, 2017

A year-long project. I realize that this will be a particularly difficult task: Doing nothing (anticipated paradox).

As part of the yearlong project, The Sanctimonious Sect of Nothing Is Sacred, Victoria Stanton is inviting artists, researchers, thinkers, and practitioners of various disciplines – both within and outside of the arts – to present their reflections in an informal series of discussions around the question of Doing Nothing. The format is wide open so each presenter will determine how it is they wish to approach the topic, and engage the audience.
 
"Although I see (once again) how paradoxical it is to be making myself busy in the planning & carrying out of these events, it feels like this is nonetheless exactly the right time; an opportunity to collectively contemplate Nothing while the project is still happening (or not happening, as it were)."  _{Victoria Stanton}

The second in the series is Montreal-based performance duo with a work entitled: Bring Something To Do Nothing

Le Collectif Vierge (Montréal)
Sunday December 4,  2016 ▷ 3 pm - 5 pm
@ DARE-DARE

////// The action will take place outside, dress appropriately for cold //////

In a society where value is given to tangible productivity and efficaciousness, we are questioning our relationship to non-action and to nothingness. Is it actually okay to do nothing?

During our first project, Les Berceuses, our rocking chairs have become our object of transition towards this nothingness. Our pretext is to re-place the rhythm of slowness and reflection in places where it is not supposed to be. Our companions in order to acknowledge the benefits and the values of nothingness.

This new non-event is an invitation to activate the nothing inside us; to let it become something through the use, or non-use, of an object. Together, we will experiment and question why and how those objects allow us to do nothing. Is it actually nothing? What does this nothing activate inside and around you?

**When you're doing nothing what do you do?  What do you use?   Bring this thing with you!

Collectif Vierge is born from the meeting of two visual artists during a Montreal performance festival. While they each have their own artistic approach related to different mediums, they meet together in the practice of performance art. Vierge (virgo) underlines their shared astrological sign, but vierge here also refers to the blank page (la page vierge) or the virgin forest. They question and place value on the notion of dérive (drifting), as well as the everything within the nothing, the emptiness before the creation, the silence before the density.