Transgressive Transmissions

Performances: Friday June 4 starting at 7pm
Workshop: Saturday June 5 from 1pm -6pm (limited space)
Screening: Saturday June 5 at 8:30pm (screening starts at sunset)
Conversation brunch: Sunday June 6 at 12 (discussion begins at 1pm)
All events are free!

 

A curatorial project by articule Special Projects exploring different interrelated methods of occupying three types of "public" space: 1) the inside of the gallery 2) any possible occupation outside of the first space, and finally 3) the space of AM or FM radio. Over three days, the three spaces (interior, exterior, and radio) are investigated by artists as they tackle the theme "transgressive transmissions" using experimental artistic practices that challenge the usual forms, methods and conventions of artistic production. For the duration of the programming, a 1.8 Watt FM radio transmitter will be broadcasting the sounds from within the gallery to an outside audience.

 

Performances:

Kâsibiagâde Anishnabe Madezewiin
Erasing the Indigenous Way of Life
By Emilie Monnet and Norman Matchewan

 

If they were still stripping you away from your land, your language, your ceremonies, your rights, would you not do everything you can to protect what's left of it?
Instead of being portrayed as a nation whole-heartily defending the ways of their ancestors, the Algonquin community of Barriere Lake was given the attributes of "chaotic", "disrupted" and "once again blocking the highway" by the media. Very few people know about the community's ongoing struggle to save the onakinawekin, their sacred and ancestral form of governance.

In a guerrilla radio rez-mobile form, this participatory live-in performance will look at how stories of Barriere Lake told in the media, and not told at all, shape our understanding of the situation and our will to act upon the violation of rights. Humour, live interviews and images of a blockade.

 

Born to an Anishinabe mother and a French father, Emilie Monnet is a performance artist and a community arts educator living in Montreal. She graduated from the theatre program offered by the Native theatre company Ondinnok (in collaboration with the National School of Theatre of Canada) and worked for many years at building bridges between indigenous peoples of the Americas

 

Norman Matchewan is a Barriere Lake community spokesperson. He has been active in pressuring Canada and Quebec to honour the 1991 Trilateral Agreement and to respect the Algonquins of Barriere Lake's traditional governance system and procedure for selecting a Customary Chief and Council.

FREEDOM HIGHWAY
By Emmanuel Madan

 

FREEDOM HIGHWAY is a project about mass media and American public discourse. In the period between 9/11 and the start of the Iraq war, I made numerous road trips through the United States. I covered thousands of miles, burning tankloads of cheap American gasoline, surveying the monoform landscape the U.S. interstate system has inscribed onto the American landmass. I sat alone in my car, sharing the road with truck drivers, commuters, vacationers and highway police troopers. Without a particular destination in mind, my goal was to listen to and record programming in the radio format known as talk radio.

The piece is centered around a multi-voiced spoken narrative, composited from hundreds of speakers recorded in about twenty states: right-wing call-in hosts, radio preachers, shock jocks and sports commentators as well as their guests and callers. Radio interference and static are also used extensively throughout the piece to create additional spaces besides the ones (radio studio and telephone) inherent in the programming itself. The resulting audio footage is then assembled into an audio performance, a deeply troubling "audio self-portrait" of America as rendered by the nation's political and religious radio broadcasters, and as overheard or intercepted by a listener who is not the intended audience of these broadcasts.
www.freedomhighway.org

Emmanuel Madan is a composer, sound artist, and curator based in Montréal. He studied electro-acoustic composition in the early 1990s under the direction of Francis Dhomont. He then spent five years working in community radio broadcasting as an engineer, journalist, and producer. Since 1998, Madan's main focus has been an artistic collaboration with architect Thomas McIntosh known by the name [The User]. His solo practice is concentrated on radio and transmission art and a collaboration with sound/transmission artist Anna Friz.

 

inoutinituoni
By Hélène Prévost

 

7 Radios,
AM waveband
tuning in to interstices
dust
micro
macro
old technology
air time
c(r)lash
inandoutandinandout

 

Parallel to her career as a radio producer at Radio-Canada (1977-2007), Hélène Prévost has pursued a practice in sound art. Editing and remixing field recordings, radio broadcasts and other sound sources, she has developed an instrument that is somewhere between a radio studio and a laboratory of sound and electric confrontations. She has recorded hundreds of artists and has created a number of special projects for the radio and web which investigate sound, space, process and transmission.

 

 

Workshop

 

Crystals, Cat Whiskers and Amplitude Modulation: DIY Radio for the Survivors
With Darsha Hewitt

Limited space, to reserve your place: info@articule.org
No previous experience required

 

Ever worry that your dependence on computers to think and work for you has weakened your technological ingenuity and lowered your chances of surviving the apocalypse? Fear no more! - Crystals, Cat Whiskers and Amplitude Modulation will help hone your tinkering skills and equip you with essential communication contraptions to survive the impending doom.

This hands-on workshop shows you how to build free-power AM radio so you can listen-in on the mayhem as it transpires on air and a narrow-cast transmitter so you and your neighbors can wirelessly plot against blood thirsty zombies, cannibals, warlords etc.
The radio craft projects built in Crystals, Cat Whiskers and Amplitude Modulation are based on low-tech designs developed by early 1920 crystal radio experimenters and prepares individuals for the discomfort of distopia by introducing:
- Radio theory 101
- Basic electronic tools and concepts
- Radio signal interception
- Schematic comprehension
- Solid soldering techniques
- How to make-do with paper clips, rusty razor blades, toilet paper tubes and coat hangers when all sophisticated telecom equipment has been obliterated
- Electronic circuit troubleshooting under pressure

Bring audio you are interested in broadcasting and a broken radio if you have one!

 

 

Screening

 

At sundown, curators Manon Barbeau and Guy Gendron propose a screening of short video works produced by Wapikonimobile, a roaming video and sound studio reserved for youth from indigenous communities. Projected on the gallery window, the works can be seen from inside or outside the gallery. Bring your radios, sound will be broadcast via the FM transmitter!

 

Programming:
Innu Aimun By Spencer Saint-Onge and Carle Grégoire
Wabak By Kevin Papati and Gilles Penosway
J'ai vu la mer By Claudie Ottawa
Tektonik By Louis Philippe Moar
Ne le dis pas By Jannie Bellefleur
Street By Paul Rivet (A Vidéo Paradiso and Wapikonimobile initiative)
L'amendement By Kevin Papati
Territoire des ondes By Patrick Boivin

 

 

Conversation brunch

Participating artists and the general public are invited to the table for a moderated open conversation investigating the theme Transgressive Transmissions, and the use of radio in contemporary art practices, DIY culture and activism. A free brunch of fresh fruit and crêpes will be served. The ensuing discussion will be recorded and made available on articule's website in the form of a podcast.