Talk By Nancy Tobin At Darling Foundry Thursday

Nancy Tobin, Expire, 2011
Phoro: Guy L’Heureux

Talk with Nancy Tobin

Thursday April 28, 2011 from 6pm to 7pm
Presentation in French
Free
Fonderie Darling, 745 Ottawa Street

Nancy Tobin invites you to take part in a discussion of her installation Expire.

Nancy Tobin is an audio artist based in Montreal. Her sound designs for dance and theatre productions have been part of the Festival TransAmériques, the World Stage Festival, the Festival d’Avignon and the Edinburgh International Festival.

Expire is part of a series called Le Son a des Jambes curated by Eric Mattson.

mmebutterfly.com/art/

Expire
Until May 1 2011

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Griffintown Cultural Corridor

Here’s a video by Adam Bemma that got lost in my email and I am posting it now because it is very important for Montrealers to fully understand that Griffintown is lively neighborhood where interesting things are happening all year round!

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Griffintown Nuit Blanche = Awesome!

Another great edition of the Griffintown Nuit Blanche, brought to you by all the good folks at the Griffintown Cultural Corridor, went down on Saturday. Around 1700 passed through the main building at New City Gas on Ann street, so it’s safe to say over 2000 people attended this wonderful event in Griffintown. Here are some pictures and please excuse the blurry as my old trusty point and shoot is being a little moody there days.

G. Scott MacLeod


Anna Nixon

Laura Duval

Kelly Thompson

Shawn Macniak

Nadine Hennely

Jeremy Gordaneer
Poet’s Corner

In the building next door was this incredible installation. Trust me, this was amazing in person as your eyes adjusted to the dark.

Urban Nerds Collective were painting these garage doors.

Les Gisèle Uppercut with Cheesecake Ninja

Ongoing art project.

Bare Bones Dance






Musicians Of The World Symphony Orchestra

Soprano Chantal Parent

When it comes to context I don’t know if I will ever see a better concert than that orchestra in New City Gas, remarkable!

Of course, there was much, much, more but I can only be in one place at a time and the ‘ol legs can’t do 12 hour shifts like they once did

So how did this year stack up against last year’s inaugural event? Impossible to compare with so much incredible stuff going on all the time. You can only wonder how they will be able to maintain the standard – the bar seems to keep getting higher, and I look forward already to next year’s edition.

Will the City of Montreal ever realize that there is already life in Griffintown? Not likely, they have too much in the way of idiotic investments to be concerned, and certainly no shame when it comes to very shoddy, not to mention suspicious, ideas about urban development. Heritage is not important at Montreal City Hall, and Mr. Payola likes it that way. Griffintown, the Griffintown of now, not some sterilized designer blight of the future, teaches us more about how cities can breathe and grow, and become, than all the pre-torchered bleckmodern condo projects on the island put together.

Thanks to all the poets who filled the rooms with their words non stop again. Special kudos to the people working the kitchen who work, work, work and serve great food with a smile! All the volunteers can take a bow. I want express a lot of gratitude to Harvey and Esther who enable this wonderful event to happen and play such an important role in the vision and creating an atmosphere that is warm and inspiring. And special thanks to Judith Bauer, who is something of a miracle worker in putting it all together, and actually makes a lot of it look easy, Thank You!

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Nuit Blanche Griffintown 2011

Last year over 1600 people came out for what proved to be one of the greatest neighborhood art and culture events in the history of Montreal. This year promises to be just as exciting, if not even better. So get yourself down to Griffintown this Saturday! See you there!

For more info see Griffintown Cultural Corridor.
And here is my brief review of last year’s show.

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Griffintown Architecture Walk Friday

Sorry for a such a late posting but been very distracted lately. I can’t make it myself but this one looks like it will be really interesting!
English version follows

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Performance in Griffintown On Friday

Urban Occupations Urbaines, in collaboration with Playwrights’
Workshop Montreal and Le Corridor Culturel de Griffintown, presents
New City Happening
a 24 hour performance installation created by S.Q.U.A.T, Chad
Dembski, Joanna Donehower, Greg MacArthur and Alan Reed.
Four strangers come together in the loft above a paper factory and the remains of a
nineteenth century power plant to discover and experience what it means for four
strangers to dwell together and meditate on ways of living in what Griffintown is
becoming.
Friday, December 3rd 2010
19h00
New City Gas, 141 Ann Street (Bonaventure Metro)
The event is free.
Urban Occupations Urbaines (UOU) is a creative platform with the aim of
promoting the cultural fertility of Griffintown by inviting artists to engage with the traces
of Griffintown’s built, social and spatial history.
For directions to New City Gas and more information about UOU, the artists and
programming please visit the website: http://www.urbanoccupationsurbaines.org
Contact: info@urbanoccupationsurbaines.org

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Invitation To Volunteers, Artists, Musicians, Actors, Poets, Urbanists, Architects, Citizens…

To all those interested in participating or learning more the second edition of Griffintown: Developing Culture that will take place at the end of February 2011….
Pour toutes personnes intéressées à participer ou à en apprendre davantage sur la 2ième édition de l’événement Griffintown- Développement culturel qui aura lieu à la fin du février 2011….

English Follows…
Vous êtes invités à venir au complexe New City Gas à 141, rue Ann, 3e étage, le mercredi 24 novembre à 17h30 pour voir le site et discuter la possibilité de votre participation. Si vous ne pouvez pas assister à cette réunion, il nous fera plaisir de vous accueillir sur rendez-vous. Pour fixer une autre heure ou de confirmer votre intention de nous rejoindre, s’il vous plaît appelez Harvey Lev au 514-878-9708 ou Judith Bauer au 514.979.3978….

Cet événement est organiser par des citoyen/nes sans politique partisane. Notre objectif est de créer une prise de conscience de la qualité de notre voisinage et de contribuer à la direction future de développement dans le quartier et environs.

Pour plus d’informations sur cet événement, s’il vous plaît visitez http://corridorculturel.co/?page_id=517 & http://www.griffintown.org/corridorculturel/nuitblanche/

RSVP

NB… Si vous souhaitez contribuer temps, de matériel, d’argent ou autres dons pour aider à la réalisation de cet événement, s’il vous plaît contacter Judith Bauer: corridorculturel@gmail.com, 514.979.3978.

**********

You are invited to come to the New City Gas complex at 141, rue Ann, 3rd floor, on Wednesday, November 24th 5:30 pm to see the site introduce yourselves and discuss the possibility of your involvement. If you are unable to attend this meeting, we would be pleased to meet with you by appointment. To arrange an alternate time or confirm your intention to join us, please call Harvey Lev at 514.878.9708 or Judith Bauer at 514.979.3978….
This is a citizen driven event without any partisan politics. Our aim is to create an awareness of the quality of our neighbourhood and contribute to the future direction of development in the neighborhood and surrounding areas.

For more information about this event, please visit http://corridorculturel.co/?page_id=517 & http://www.griffintown.org/corridorculturel/nuitblanche/

RSVP
PS…If you would like to contribute time, equipment, money or other donations to assist with the realization of this event, please contact Judith Bauer: corridorculturel@gmail.com, 514.979.3978

And a look back at a small part of last year’s event.

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Catherine Kidd Solo @ New City Gas – Free! One Night Only

This November 27th an enchanting experience awaits audiences as two Montreal originals combine for one special evening of performance poetry in situ.

Beneath the rafters of New City Gas’s Dalhousie Hall, Catherine Kidd will preview works from her upcoming solo show ‘Hyena Subpoena’ (to be launched in 2011) alongside road-tested favourites from previous works ‘Sea Peach’ and ‘Bipolar Bear’. The pieces will feature original soundsc…apes by DJ Jacky Murda (Barcelona) and video environments by Kidd and Geoff Agombar.

This performance marks a return to source for Catherine, following an extended absence from Montreal stages to work on the Hyena Subpoena manuscript – a series of stories that interweave the personal traumas in the life of narrator Ramona Morse with experiences and wildlife footage collected by Kidd and Agombar during a 2007 tour of South Africa.

**********************************************
NEW CITY GAS
Built in 1859-61, New City Gas was a key player during the industrialization of Montreal, producing and distributing gas which lit the city’s streets, homes and factories. The buildings’ stone masonry, vaulted spaces and stout, open rafters stand in testament to the ambitions of a bygone era of social upheaval and energy revolution. Today this industrial heritage lives on as the complex still houses a paper warehouse, even as various sections are converted to fresh uses as galleries and ad hoc performance spaces.
• More information available at http://www.heritagemontreal.org/en/new-city-gas or http://www.griffintown.org/corridorculturel/nuitblanche.

**********************************************
CATHERINE KIDD
An ‘incontournable’ of Montreal’s spoken word scene since the early ’90s, Cat Kidd has forged a reputation as one of the nation’s most surprising and inspiring voices for page and stage. Her award-winning multimedia poetic creations have toured Europe, Asia, Africa, UK, US and Canada.

Samples of Kidd’s work are available at
http://www.catkidd.com
http://www.youtube.com/catkidddotcom
or http://www.myspace.com/catherinekidd

New City Gas (Griffintown – built circa1860)
950 Ottawa (Métro Bonaventure)
Montreal, QC

Facebook Page

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City’s ‘Cultural Corridor’ Takes Shape in Griffintown

City’s ‘Cultural Corridor’ takes shape

From The Suburban

By P.A. Sévigny

It’s been only a year since architect Juliette Patterson opened her Griffintown Horse Palace Foundation and now a lot of people, including a full house of local politicos, are beginning to think it’s more than just a good idea. It’s been a long, hard year since last year’s fundraising party when Patterson first announced the creation of the Foundation, but this year’s party at the Darling Foundry proves her project is beginning to find some heavy support in the city’s business community as well as among its leading politicians. Federal MP Thierry St. Cyr, Liberal MNA Marguerite Blais and local Sud Ouest Mayor Benoit Dorais were all having a good time as waiters bearing plates piled high with some of the Cluny restaurant’s best hors d’oeuvres made their way through the crowd. As mentioned during a previous interview, Griffintown resident Judith Bauer (and others) all believe the district’s new cultural corridor could spark a post-modern cultural renaissance by which Montreal could easily place itself on the cutting-edge of 21st century urban design.

Stretching along an east-west axis through the south-west sector of the city from Old Montreal to the newly developed areas around the Lachine Canal near the St. Ambroise Center, the corridor could redefine large parts of the city including the Griffintown wastelands along with residential areas in both St. Henri and Little Burgundy. More than anything else, Bauer and her colleagues are beginning to notice how new business opportunities are beginning to brand the sector’s potential as a future urban ‘hot-spot’ as opposed to its usual status as an inner city wasteland.

“Conceptually,” writes Bauer, “the cultural corridor defines what the future of this area could be in the best of all possible worlds.”

Patterson, Bauer and the rest of the Griffintown community all believe the future development of this area should be open to cultural, heritage and assorted community projects which help provide the glue which defines neighborhoods and future communities. However, even as Bauer and others continue to do what they can to improve their immediate urban environment, they are still concerned about the Tremblay administration’s intention to maintain their Mondo Condo approach to the district’s immediate urban development. But apart from a new high rise condominium development project scheduled for the district on the southern side of Wellington Street, Bauer and her colleagues hope local politicians will provide the kind of muscle local residents need to face down the city’s omnivorous real estate developers. Inspired by a combination of powerful local politicians offset by a slow if not momentarily stalled real estate market, Bauer and her colleagues also hope it’s just a question of time before Griffintown and the rest of the Sud Ouest begin to manage and enjoy its new status as an inner city landmark.

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Nuit Blanche à Montréal 2011 Griffintown

Last year’s event was a raging success with over 1600 visitors so if you want to get involved now is the time to sign up!

[english follows]
Bonjour,
J’espère que tout le monde avait eu un bon été.
C’est le moment pour envoyer le formulaire pour participer à la 8ème Nuit blanche à Montréal aux organisateurs du Festival MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE.
S’il vous plaît laissez-nous savoir par e-mail dès que possible si vous êtes intéressés à participer au 2ème édition du corridor culturel de Griffintown: Développement culturel le samedi, 26 février 2011
Pour voir les détails de l’événement 2010, Griffintown: Développement culturel, visite
Svp noter que pour 2011, nous essaierons d’être plus dans l’esprit du Festival MONTRÉAL EN LUMIÈRE, c’est à dire que nous aimerions avoir plus de choses à l’extérieur afin d’encourager les gens à profiter de l’hiver …
Mais il fait froid en février, vous dites !
… Je sais, je sais, donc porter un chandail supplémentaire et traiter les météos comme un défi, une opportunité à faire quelquechose de différente … et ne vous inquiétez pas, il n’est pas nécessaire que tous les offres sont dehors, mais si vous avez un projet qui puisse fonctionner à l’extérieur, à Montréal, à la fin de Février, et bien, ce serait tellement bonne!

Cheers,
Judith Bauer
corridorculturel@gmail.com
NB Visitez le nouveau site web du Corridor culturel http://corridorculturel.co/

Hello,
I hope everyone had a good summer. It is the time of year to sign up for participation in Nuit blanche à Montréal and I am preparing to send off the participation package to the MONTREAL HIGHLIGHTS Festival organizers.
This 8th Nuit blanche à Montréal will occur on Saturday, February 26th, 2011.
Please let us know by email as soon as possible if you are interested in participating in the Cultural corridor’s 2nd edition of Griffintown: Developing Culture.
To see details of the 2010 event, visit Griffintown: Developing Culture.
Please note that this year’s event will attempt to be more in the spirit of the HIGHLIGHTS Festival, which means encouraging people to get outside and enjoy the winter… this means we’d like to have more going on outdoors…
But it’s February! you say…
…I know, I know, so wear an extra sweater and think of it as a challenge… and no, it is not necessary that everything happen outside but if you have a project that would work outside in Montreal, at the end of February, well, that would be really swell!

Cheers,

Judith Bauer
corridorculturel@gmail.com
PS Be sure to visit the new Cultural Corridor website http://corridorculturel.

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