Tuesday, August 30
Curators’ tour with Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm: 5 pm
Opening: 5:30 – 7:30 pm
LOCAL RECORDS
Jean Préfontaine Fonds, Special Collections, Concordia University
Tuesday, September 13, 2:30 – 4:30 pm
Workshop led by Eric Fillion on the history of le Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec and Atelier de musique expérimentale and the question of the place of improvisation in the archive.
Free jazz “is not a form of collective hysteria,” explain the members of Jazz libre at the beginning of the 1970s. As a musical genre it is “a sort of joyous and aggressive cry of liberty, a cry of relief, an explosion of life, an audacious and sound force of affirmation.” However, collective improvisation in music (both free jazz and non-idiomatic improvisation) is always ephemeral, in effect, elusive, as it unfolds within the moment and is generally deployed at the margins of mainstream culture. Such is the case of Jazz libre’s practice of marrying politics and music, aligned as they were to the leftist sovereignty movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The same is true of the work produced by the young improvisers who founded the Atelier de musique expérimentale [Experimental Music Workshop] in 1973. What place do these groups occupy within institutional archives? Need their spontaneous compositions be inscribed in our collective memory? What challenges do improvised acts (aesthetic and/or political) present the archivist and historian? This seminar seeks to address these questions through a return to the 1970s, recruiting a vast range of archival documents (posters, correspondences, flyers, unedited recordings, newsletters, video recordings, etc.) drawn from the files of Tenzier, a non-profit cultural organization, and Concordia University’s special collections (Fonds Jean Préfontaine and Véhicule Art).
Eric Fillion is a PhD candidate in the department of history at Concordia University. His research focuses on the origins of Canada’s cultural diplomacy and – more specifically – the use of music in Brazilian-Canadian relations (1938-1968). This project builds on the experience he acquired as a musician and his ongoing work on the Quatuor de jazz libre du Quebec. Eric Fillion is also the founder and director general of Tenzier, a non-profit organization, which has as its mandate to preserve and disseminate archival recordings by Quebec avant-garde artists.
In French
Local Records is a program that pairs exhibitions with relevant archival holdings in Montreal. Animated by a guest researcher each seminar coordinates encounters and discussions around a selection of primary documents, offering a local lens through which to consider the exhibition and a point of departure for new research.
Program of multilingual and themed tours
To better serve the diversity in Montreal’s population, the gallery is offering this fall a program of guided tours in languages other than English and French as well as themed tours.
Tuesday, September 27, 5:30 pm
Tour in Mandarin with Tianmo Zhang
Tianmo Zhang is an MA student in Art History at Concordia University.
Tuesday, October 4, 5:30 pm
Themed tour in French with Sophie Devirieux
Dramaturge Sophie Devirieux (PhD candidate, Comparative Literature, Université de Montréal) examines the exhibition by way of the history, transmission and reception of postdramatic theatre.
Tuesday, October 11, 5:30 pm
Tour in Farsi with Nima Esmailpour
Nima Esmailpour is a PhD student in Art History at Concordia University.
Free admission and no reservation required for all tours
Response
Wednesday, September 28, 6 pm
Ara Osterweil (Assistant Professor of Film and Cultural Studies, Department of English, McGill University) on Constanze Ruhm’s X Love Scenes (2007)
Film scholar Ara Osterweil offers an analysis of Ruhm’s film as read through her research and criticism on experimental film and postwar art. Her response will consider the ways in which the foregrounding of rehearsal and performance in Ruhm’s film broaches questions of female representation, authorship, and authenticity.
Photo: Roxanne Lapointe
Wednesday, October 12, 6 pm
A scripted critical conversation about issues raised in the exhibition organized by Vancouver-based artist Althea Thauberger, based on discussions with artist Dayna Danger, filmmaker Mia Donovan, community organizer and writer Am Johal, media historian Elena Razlogova, theatre director and artist Diane Roberts, and artist, writer and performer Jacob Wren.
The event includes participation by the audience and student collaborators: Amir Atouani, Matt Daly, Awa Dembele-Yeno, Georgia Graham, Léa Incorvaia, Roxanne Lapointe, Mico Mazza, Phil Mercier, Pierre de Montalte and Steven Smith Simard.
In English
The documentation of this event is threefold:
- The audio recording is available in the Audio | Video section
- The script compiled by Althea Thauberger is available in the Texts | Documents section
- The visual documentation is presented below:
Public Recordings, New Dramatics: an editorial meeting
Wednesday, October 26
Doors open at 6 pm
Performance at 6:30 pm
Free admission
So much contemporary art combines practices of writing and performing together, in that order–so why does so little position itself as drama? Does this avoidance point to a failure of tradition, community or documentation? What does it say about the optics of collaborative practice, about power?
A magazine fits neatly into the gap between these questions.
Long-time collaborators inside and outside of Public Recordings, Evan Webber and Frank Cox-O’Connell had a problem with theatre that turned the company into the editorial committee for its first serial publication, planned to launch in 2017. New Dramatics presents texts, scripts, plays and scores that precede underseen and unseeable performance, playfully calling this writing dramatic literature.
Rehearsing writing
New Dramatics’ format places two unpublished texts together with a commissioned essay that crosses the distance between them. Zine-making, unsurprisingly, shares a procedural resemblance to rehearsing. So New Dramatics gets made live. Where better to wonder what the new dramatics is?
In a singular event presented by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, the editorial committee uses the live situation to feel the space between Evan and Frank’s Little Iliad and Nadia Ross and George Acheson’s 7 Important Things. Writer and performance-maker Jacob Wren publicly creates an essay that crosses the gulf.
Concept and creation: Frank Cox-O’Connell and Evan Webber
Created in collaboration with: Ame Henderson, sandra Henderson and Jacob Wren
Design: Jeremy McCormick
PUTTING REHEARSALS TO THE TEST
It’s not about models, it’s about modeling
August 30 – October 29, 2016
Martin Beck, Rainer Bellenbaum, Merlin Carpenter, Harun Farocki, Marie Claire Forté and Alanna Kraaijeveld in dialogue with Sophie Bélair Clément, Hanako Geierhos, Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, On Kawara, Krüger & Pardeller, Achim Lengerer (in collaboration), minimal club, Regina (Maria) Möller, Yoko Ono, Falke Pisano, Constanze Ruhm, Klaus Scherübel, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Katarina Zdjelar
Curated by Sabeth Buchmann, Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm