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In addition - special projects

Home Canning

Laboratoire d’exploration en interventions urbaines et performatives

MIXOFF 2 — Jacob Wren + Raphaëlle de Groot

Square des Frères-Charo

Mémoire vive

duologie

 

Home

Canning

Workshop

 

Designed in collaboration with

DHC/ART Education, offered in conjunction

with the exhibition L’OFFRE

from October 5, 2017 to March 11, 2018

at DHC/ART Foundation

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Montréal

2017-2018

DHC/ART Education's blo

“Starting with a simple and playful proposition—to realize an “artistic canning”—, Home Canning echoes notions in L’OFFRE, such as exchange, preservation and shared experience. Canning is used to preserve food that, through hermetic sealing, becomes non-perishable. This technique will be used in the workshop to formulate a thought destined for someone unknown by arranging found materials.

 

The workshop begins with participants gathering material prior to their arrival at DHC/ART. They will collect odds and ends found in their environment, whether inside (at home, at work, at school…) or outside (at their home base or on their way to DHC/ART).” — Source : DHC/ART

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l'offre en cnserve
Laboratoire d'exploration

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Laboratoire d’exploration

en interventions urbaines

et performatives

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With the Collectif L’Araignée

Montreal

2015

The Laboratoire's website

Garbage and bulky waste collection day in Montreal’s Mile End neighbourhood. What better opportunity to organize a conversation with Noémie McComber and Helena Martin Franco. Collective L'araignée's Laboratory .

 

— L’Araignée, collectif de diffusion et d’expérimentation en art actuel

mixoff 2

tumblr page for the project

Article for Céline Escouteloup

by Nightlife

Performance | 6h

 

Presented within the context of the OFFTA 2014 edition’s program, in coproduction with PME-ART

 

May 31

Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui

salle Jean-Claude Germain, Montreal

2014

"Jacob Wren, interdisciplinary performer and writer, has always been interested in the idea of contemporary nomadism and the rebellion against pervasive sedentarism. Raphaëlle de Groot, a pioneer Montreal visual artist, is about to leave everything behind and settle in Brazil with her family in an attempt to radically rethink her lifestyle. On the night before her departure, they organize a garage sale during which she will be able to let go of her belongings, to free herself before leaving towards new territories. A reflection on the concept of wandering and of territorial affiliation. " 

 

—Source: OFFTA 2014

 

MIXOFF 2 —

Jacob Wren +

Raphaëlle de Groot

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square des Frères-Charon

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Square des Frères-Charon

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Public Place

Montreal

2005-2007

Conception: Gavin Affleck, architect; Raphaëlle de Groot, visual artist; Robert Desjardins, landscape architect, City of Montreal. With the collaboration of Gilles Arpin (lighting), Sandra Baronne (plantation), Michel Morelli / Morelli Designers (urban furniture), François Riopel / Genivar (engineering), Julie Leclerc and Paul Martin / Moitié-moitié (interpretation concept and design), Annick Poussart (writing).

In 2005, the City of Montreal appointed a multidisciplinary team to work out a concept for the development of the square des Frères-Charon (corner of McGill and Wellington). The selection process organized to engage an artist interestingly proposed an open-ended collaboration where the production of an art work was not the pre-set objective. The intention was above all to integrate the artist’s point of view and expertise in the whole conception process. 

 

At the start, the challenge was to provide the square with its own identity and coherence. Looking at its history, we can see that from the moment the land appears on the map of the city (1845), its destiny remains undefined for quite some time. As a sort of “orphan” space, it successively belonged to different owners who didn’t build anything significant on it and used it as a storage area and then as a parking lot. In 1965, the East portion of the site was expropriated to set up the Saint-Jacques D'Youville main sewer. The rest followed in 1974 for the purposes of a pumping station. It is only in 1989, after completion of these works, that the «parc des Frères-Charon» is developed. Its design is a sort of stopgap solution. During that period, the sector is a bit left to itself. Nevertheless, at the end of the 1990’s, the increasing number of residents and workers transform the neighbourhood. Some major real estate projects are built around the square and it becomes out of date.  

The square is an elusive space, torn between different urban dynamics and designs. As a kind of  turntable, it serves as a threshold to various destinations and activities, thus playing an important role in maintaining the relationships between the Faubourg des Récollets, the Cité multimédia, Old Montreal, the Vieux-Port and McGill street. It also harbours infrastructures and public equipments that impose inescapable constraints.

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The first challenge was to reconcile the square’s own space with its function as a crossroads. The second was to better integrate the infrastructures it must shelter. The team proposed a landscape experience revealing the present-day city as well as traces of the site’s original use. This is obtained through a circular shape cut out directly in the pavement, to recall the field where the Charon brothers, erected a windmill, itself evoked by granite marking in the south-eastern area of the square. This move suggests a time span that lets one imagine the site’s gradual transformations. The city/field contrast is accented by a choice of vegetation that stresses seasonal changes; the coloured night lighting also underlines the vegetation. Finally, one of the technical buildings was modified to inaugurate a small belvedere. Walking up the circular stairway to its top, one discovers yet another view of the square and the city all around.

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Interview with Raphaëlle de Groot by Jean-François Prost, «Le square des Frères-Charon» in Dis/location 1 : projet d’articulation urbaine, square Viger. Directed by Jean-Pierre Caissie. Montreal : Dare-dare, Centre de diffusion d’art multidisciplinaire de Montreal, 2008, p 133-146.

mémoire vive

Curatorial project presented by the artist run center Dare-dare in collaboration with the Centre d’histoire de Montréal from May 31 to September 22, 2002

 

With Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable, Caroline Boileau, Mireille Cliche, Ani Deschênes, Guy Giard, Internationale virologie numismatique, Denis Lessard, Nadia Myre, Terres en vues and Vlan paysages.

 

Montreal

2002

The intention with Mémoire vive was to bring together artists and professionals in the fields of history, heritage, and museums around questions that would prompt them to reconsider the relationships between memory and urban space: How does memory exist in the city and in the community? Who and what does it serve? Artists and specialists were asked to share investigative techniques and strategies of intervention to pose concrete actions in the city. The idea was to establish connections between “dead” memory, reified in documents, writings, objects, and vestigial artifacts—or yet still, between latent and anonymous memory—, and a “living” memory, rooted in a constantly regenerated present.

 

The projects brought forth by participants offered various points of view on history and the role of the artist. Beyond their chosen historical subjects, they explored various social functions that might generate times of rest and opportunities for chance encounters. At such moments of pause, and often of subversion, history was being reread on an intimate scale.

 

Mémoire vive

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