Aiming to explore new perspectives about our society’s reliance on incarceration while stressing the importance of critical reflection about possible alternatives to imprisonment.

Thursday- June 16, 2011

7:00 to 10 :00 PM

Eastern Bloc Gallery

7240 Clark, 2nd floor

!!!Warning: the exhibition is ending on Thursday June 16, 2011 at 6:45pm!!!

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Sorry, only the french version is available …

Presenting the myths and realities of incarcerated people and promoting public awareness of the challenges associated with social reintegration faced by women who have been in conflict with the law.

Thursday- 9 june, 2011

7:00 to 10 :00 PM

Eastern Bloc Gallery

7240 Clark, 2nd floor

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Saturday, March 19th, 2011 - Devora Neumark, co-director of LEVIER, was accompanied on the occasion by Geneviève Fortin, coordinator of the project « Donner une deuxième chance » and ex-participant of the project « Agir par l’Imaginaire ». The goal of this meeting was to discuss the barriers that have been broken during several artistic projects. The project Agir par l’Imaginaire, a collaboration between Engrenage Noir/LEVIER and the Société Elizabeth Fry du Québec (SEFQ) is a perfect example of a project where many barriers needed to be broken.

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Temps d’agir launch

5:00 PM to 7:00 PM - Friday, April 29, 2011

Écomusée du Fier Monde

2050 Amherst (corner Ontario)

Come and be present to some readings, testimonies and performances. Special book price during the launch: 20$ (tax included).

Temps d’agir presents extracts of Agir par l’imaginaire texts and creations.

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The AGIR exhibition presents an array of interdisciplinary works created inside four different carceral institutions. For over two years, this community art initiative has involved approximately fifty criminalized women and eight professional multidisciplinary artists.

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Femmes et justice (Information Bulletin of the Société Elizabeth Fry du Québec), Summer 2008, pages 14 to 16.

Le quotidien de l’Été d’été - Institut du nouveau monde - (vol. I, numéro 2), La créativité est le moteur de nos défis, article par Marie-Ève Dumont, 29 août 2009, page 2.

SNAP! Magazine (Issue 8), Agir par l’imaginaire: Critical Context, article par Natasha Viau-Skreslet, September/October/November 2009, page 27.

Culture pour tous, Artistic expression helping women in the justice system, article by Michel Lefebvre, January 2010.

Parole citoyenne, video interview with Véronique Leduc, June 2010.

Revue Amnis, article by Eve Lamoureux, Les arts communautaires : des pratiques de résistance artistiques interpellées par la souffrance sociale, September 2010.

Art Bridged

Inspire art

In the United States, the carceral system is profitable and the relationship between incarceration and slavery is flagrant. Prison construction sites continue to flourish. In the last decade alone, the state of California built nineteen prisons (and only one new university!). Inmates work 40 hours a week for the measly sum of two to twenty cents an hour. Blacks represent 12% of the general population but 48% of the prison population. One in every seventeen African-American men is incarcerated. This is what the organization Critical Resistance (www.criticalresistance.org) calls the Prison Industrial Complex, a system that benefits economically from the incarceration of its population.

Herman’s story takes place in a penitentiary in Louisiana commonly called Angola in reference to place in Africa where the original plantation owners believed the most profitable slaves came from. Is it a coincidence that today Angola occupies 18,000 acres (7,300 hectares) of an ancient plantation that once exploited african slaves?

Herman Joshua Wallace has been incarcerated in the Louisiana Penitentiary for almost 40 years. As a member of the Black Panthers Party he has always been kept in segregation, 23 hours a day, in a cell measuring 6 by 9 feet.

Jackie Sumell is a multidisciplinary artist inspired by the lifes of everyday people. In 2001, during the public appearance of an ex-inmate of the Louisiana Penitentiary, Robert King Wilkerson, Jackie learned of the existence of Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, also incarcerated in Angola. She then made contact with these two men. Seeing Herman’s psychological state deteriorating during a particularly difficult time in the penitentiary, she wanted to bring him some comfort and asked him the following question:

“What kind of a house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?”

And this is how the project THE HOUSE THAT HERMAN BUILT was born, a manifestation of the power of imagination, a symbol of the resistance against injustice, racism and torture, a celebration of history and its battles. The collaboration between Herman and Jackie is the birth of a dream that reminds us that we all have the right to dream.

Today Herman’s House is being built thanks to the mobilization of citizens - architects, lawyers, militants, mothers, poets, engineers, philanthropists, inmates - who are contributing in different ways. To become involved or to learn more, please visit their Internet site http://www.hermanshouse.org

Four women incarcerated in the federal penitentiary Joliette Institution, an afro-contemporary dance artist and a videographer worked more than 30 hours on a filmed choreography.

For more details of this project and to see an excerpt of the work created during this workshop please go to the sub-category Workshops in Agir par l’imAGinaIRe in our blog.

Four women incarcerated in the provincial prison, Maison Tanguay, as well as a musician/sound engineer/artist, Andrew Harder, worked closely together for more than 15 hours to create a collective audio work.

For more details and to listen to an excerpt of the final product of this workshop, please go to the new sub-category Workshops in Agir par l’imAGinaIRe inside our blog.