Photos by Geneviève Fortin

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Written by Rodrigue Mugisha; performed by Rodrigue Mugisha, Christian Kagabo and Lisa Ndejuru

La Malédiction des nuages begins where the journey ends: Ousman, the traveler, a poor African boy who wanted to cross the Atlantic, ends up in Lord Bacar’s palace. Years, maybe even centuries ago, Lord Bacar, a strange aquatic character, had embarked on a similar voyage to the “Land of Clouds”.

Audio recording available. To listen please click here

The complete stage reading will be performed April 10th at Théâtre Parenthèse.

Photos by Geneviève Fortin

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How many slaves do you own? This question should be accompanied by another one: How many owners do you have?

Being a member of the First Nations in Canada or belonging to any indigenous nation often comes with a baggage of enslaving facts: poverty, low education rates, values that don’t fit with the industrial world, racial profiling, historical collective and personal wounds.

In a performance tainted with humor, the many types of slavery that indigenous people are submitted have been explored less as a way of criticism or to install any particular dogma, than as a platform to open the subject up for discussion. Sitting on the sidewalk, in a ‘’classical” native posture, on a platform of opened cardboard boxes, is the “sellout” (homeless/ craft maker/plastic shaman). By her side is her slave that is to say her projected image: the fantasy of a free, wild and sexually open savage. During the performance, spectators have been invited to exchange valuables in their possession for souvenir spiritual- crafted objects, performances by the slave and even a guided visit by the “Indian guide”. A map of the Indian stars of Montreal was also offered for a very honest fee…

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This roundtable brought together disturbing personal testimonies from a variety of women addressing different forms of illegal exploitation such as the lucrative sex industry as well as government institutionalized forms of exploitation such as the immigration laws affecting Philippine women occupying positions of domestic workers within Canada.

Listen to the recording by clicking here

Participants

Representatives from CLES (Concertation des luttes contre l’expoitation sexuelle), representatives from PINAY (Filipino Women’s Organization in Quebec), and performing artists Naila Keleta Mae, Émilie Monnet, Caroline Hudon, Lynne Cooper, Moe Clark.

Facilitated by Devora Neumark and Louise Lachapelle

André-Éric Létourneau presents his findings from his public intervention on Friday March 12th 10:00 AM - 8:00 PM and Saturday 13th 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM at Galeries du Parc - la Cité (3575 Parc Avenue)

How Many Slaves Do You Own? is a socioaesthetic study carried out in public areas to assess people’s perceptions about the origins of common consumer goods and services; particularly in relation to ethics in the context of socio-economic production.

The audio recording of his performance lecture is available by clicking here.

Photos by Geneviève Fortin

Saturday’s afternoon , March 13, 2010, ended with four exceptional performances. The audio recordings are available by clicking below. An exchange with the artists followed the performances.

Blood River

To listen please click here

Moe Clark in collaboration with Jenn Doan, Jawad Chaaban and Andy Williams.Video projections by José Garcia-Lozano courtesy of projects aval and (hope. love. forgiveness.)

The music and compositions prepared for this performance come from a long time of listening, feeling, praying, praising and purging. From improvised visits and explorations with sound and stories built in layers, drawing from the feelings of water and blood, lamentations are created. What we carry can be heavy, but if we let go of ourselves and float for a moment we will be carried on the blood river. This story is just as much mine as it is yours. Millions of people on this earth live in a position of internalized exile. The performance is called Blood River: a journey through our conscious and spiritual connections to slavery, as it has existed in our ancestral lineage and the slavery we wounds and ask for healing for those which have yet to stop bleeding? We offer a telling of a story that comes from the water that cleanses us of our sins, that washes us of our scent, and carries us through space and time. It’s about the ghosts that live in the waters, and flow through our blood river: ghosts that continue to haunt us from our pasts, personal and collective. We hope to deconstruct collective histories and rebuild them: through water and sound, with an invitation for you to reclaim yourself, with love, strength, and freedom.

INT/EXT

To listen please click here

An interdisciplinary collective creation by Reena Almoneda-Chang, Pascale Gagnon, Caroline Hudon, Émilie Monnet, Meena Murugesan

INT/EXT is an interdisciplinary performance exploring the themes of power and control within the prison industrial complex as well as the social implications of the growing number of criminalized women. The five artists on stage have all met within correctional facilities and together reflect on how society justifies the role of prison as an institution of punishment for criminal behaviour and the effects of incarceration on individuals. Once one is surrounded by walls, constant surveillance and guards, the final and most intimate containers of control become the body and the mind. The external prison becomes interiorized in the skin, bones, thoughts and breath of the individual. From the school of crime to the concrete walls, and then out into the world again, this performance is a journey that challenges people’s pre-conceptions on criminalization and incarceration.

on love

To listen please click here

Performance by Naila Keleta Mae in collaboration with Rebecca Foon and Pohanna Pyne Feinberg

on love is an experimental performance installation. We shielded our eyes from the sun struggling to see Nigger Rock; the 300 foot black rock shaped like a whale that the black population in St. Armand (Québec) used as a headstone for their dead as early as the 18th Century. But, Nigger Rock is on private property now and permission is needed to visit. It is rumoured that years ago the remains of the dead were dug with tractors and dumped elsewhere. I began to contemplate black people’s experiences of love in Canada through the text on love long before I heard of Nigger Rock. Arguably, the TransAtlantic Slave Trade made ‘black’ as an ethnicity possible such that regardless of one’s lineage, to inhabit a black body in Canada is to embody an economy of violence from which the Canadian state distances itself. It is rumoured that love is “the fine balance between hope and despair.” on love attempts that balance. The Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts generously provided financial support. http://www.nailakeletamae.com/

TRAFFIK FEMME

To listen please click here

Artistic Director: Lynne Cooper; Actress: Nicole Lagarde; Playwright: Emma Haché; Translator: Michael Brunet; Light Designer: Yan Lee Chan; Music and Sound Designer: Roberto Lopez; Set Designer: Julie Measroch; Mentor: Lib Spry; Choreographer: Lucie-Carmen Gregoire; Technical Director: Pierre-Luc Brunet; Production Manager: Elizabeth Pouliot-Roberge

TRAFFIK FEMME is a one-woman theatre piece that deals with the challenging issues of human trafficking and modern slavery. In TRAFFIK FEMME we hear the story of a woman who tells her story of forced prostitution through shadow puppets, live music, physical theatre, black humor and dance. This character is a survivor of horrible abuse yet there is not a dose of victimization in her; she is harsh, yet she has a surprisingly nonchalant view on life and a very touching sense of humor. This monologue is raw, crude and rough, and the main character is naive yet streetwise, anarchic, funny and witty. Governor General’s Literary Award-winner Emma Haché has written this piece under a commission from Le Trunk Collectif. It is scheduled to première on April 14th, 2010 at the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) with a run of five shows in French and five shows in English.

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Photos by Geneviève Fortin

[Show as slideshow]

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Some facts taken from the documentation at the Historical Center of St-Armand (CHSA):

The “Nigger Rock”  is a cemetery in which black slaves were inhumed from 1794 onwards. It is located at the foot of a big, black rock in St-Armand, Quebec. The name was confirmed after an investigation conducted by the government of Quebec (Toponymie Society) in 1969.

According to the oral tradition of the region, the Nigger Rock is a cemetery of black slaves who arrived with the first Loyalist colonists in 1784. It is the only cemetery of slaves who died in a state of servitude that exists in Canada.

Today this site is still not protected. The Historical Centre of St-Armand is still not supported by the government and is working to protect this undocumented ruin.

For more information or to get involved in CHSA’s fight to preserve the contribution of these black pioneers in the history of Canada, please contact Dominic Soulié, co-founder of CHSA at chsa@progression.net

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The Roundtable of the day was about Narratives of Slavery and Colonialism: Telling Stories, Shaping Histories, Affecting Change

To listen to the presentation of the speakers, please click here

To listen to the exchange with the public, please click here Read more →

Picture by Serge Audet

Since Friday morning, André-Éric Letourneau has been interviewing passers-by in the Galeries du Parc - la Cité (3575, avenue du Parc), doing research on their buying habits in order to determine how many slaves each of them owns.

ANDRÉ-ÉRIC LETOURNEAU

The “I” that I use is determined in relation to the Other, the exterior, in a non-dualistic and research perspective. I believe in the sharing of knowledge and the decentralization of this sharing. I have worked since the 1980’s with artistic companies and corporations for the ongoing development of creation.

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It is a great pleasure to have the space of the MAI decorated by works from CLES for our event.

CLES (Concertation des luttes contre l’exploitation sexuelle) is a community-based organization comprised of groups and individuals that are critical of the sex industry. CLES brings together community group activists, people conscious of this problematic, feminists criticizing globalization, sociologists, etc. CLES exists so that women who have had experience with prostitution can be heard. Also, it wants to facilitate a reflection that will prevent trivialization and entry into this exploitative and oppressive industry. CLES wishes to create the necessary conditions to set up community, legal and social alternatives for a world without prostitution.

Vidéo par Marites Carino

Photos by Geneviève Fortin

The table was set yesterday evening at the MAI by Devora Neumark, co-director of Engrenage Noir / LEVIER, initiator of How Many Slaves Do You Own? and co-facilitator of the event, Johanne Chagnon, co-director of Engrenage Noir / LEVIER and Louise Lachapelle, guest co-facilitator of the event. They reminded us of this weekend’s theme: What roles do art and culture play in the exploitations economies?

The event started with the -very touching- REQUIEM performance by Jason Selman and Chimwemwe Miller.

To listen please click here

The performance entitled REQUIEM is a journey of music, drama and poetry through the past, in and into the present: a journey from hope to agony, from despair and through reconciliation back to hope. In poetic and dramatic fashion, within the context of four movements, the piece tells the tale of free blacks settling the land only to have their final resting place tarnished and uprooted after their passing. It speaks to the emotions of such a moment and how they can foreshadow the present for those who inhabit the land today, the ancestors of those who settled the land and the settlers themselves who have passed.

REQUIEM is a performance dedicated to those that have had to endure such a tragedy as having their graves destroyed. Its goal is to help us come to terms with the events of the past and to bring release and closure not just for those who are living through its repercussions in the present, but for those whose opportunity for peaceful rest, had been so abruptly taken away. This is our wish.

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The performance was followed by two keynotes. Charmaine Nelson talked about Thinking through Culture: Some Thoughts on the Specificity of Slavery in Canada.

To listen please click here

Kim Pate’s subject was intitled Prison Walls: Oppression or Protection?

To listen plese click here

Charmaine Nelson is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. Her interests include postcolonial and black feminist scholarship, critical theory, the visual culture of slavery, cultural production within the black diaspora, race and representation, nineteenth-century Neoclassical sculpture and historical landscape art. Her museum career is highlighted by the exhibition and catalogue Through An-Other’s Eyes: White Canadian Artists - Black Female Subjects (Oshawa: Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 1998). She is also the co-editor and a contributor to the anthology Racism Eh?: A Critical Inter-Disciplinary Anthology of Race and Racism in Canada (Captus Press, 2004) and the author of The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Two forthcoming books in 2010 include her edited volume Ebony Roots, Northern Soil: Perspectives on Blackness in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press) and the single-authored book Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art (New York: Routledge). She recently spent a year as the Caird Senior Research Fellow (2007-08) at the National Maritime Museum in London, where she embarked upon a new research project examining nineteenth-century landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica as colonial trade and slave ports through critical readings of geography, topography, colonial commerce and travel.

Kim Pate is mother to Michael and Madison. She is a lawyer and teacher by training and is currently completing post-graduate work in the area of forensic mental health. Kim is the Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS) and a part-time professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. CAEFS is a federation of autonomous societies, which work with, and on behalf of, marginalized, victimized, criminalized and institutionalized women and girls throughout Canada. Kim has also worked with youth and men during her 26 years of engagement in and around the legal and penal systems.

Discussion with the keynote speakers Kim Pate and Charmaine Nelson, the artist Jason Selman and the facilitators Lachapelle and Devora Neumark