Chris Wildrick (New York) - www.chriswildrick.com

Chris wants to make art for animals: art that they can enjoy and appreciate just as we humans enjoy and appreciate the art that is made for us. You can help him to do this by participating in several projects that let you experience the world from a four-legged point of view.

Bio Chris is a conceptual, performance and systems artist. He teaches at the School of Art and Design of the Syracuse University. Chris makes experimental work that is friendly and accessible because he believes that art can be both deep and entertaining.

Lyndsay Ladobruk (Manitoba)

“Touching is a gesture of embrace and acceptance of the other’s body. I see the act of spooning as a pure acceptance of ones anatomy. I will share the acceptance of my obesity with you. Now is your chance for four days to hold, caress and talk to a fat girl .”

Bio Lyndsay Ladobruk is full of stories and images about her life as an obese woman in an obese family: lack of respect, loss of sexuality and prejudices are subjects that she feels strongly about. Coming from a low income family, she presents her work in public places with the belief that art and ideas should be for all.

Ali El-Darsa (Québec) - www.alieldarsa.com

Using performance and replication to raise issues of duality in the psyche, the artist creates a dialogue between multiple versions of himself in an attempt to overcome an internal self-conflict. When confronted with external surroundings that are often at odds with an individual’s social needs, the internal mind spills out in order to bring familiar context to an unfamiliar world.

Bio Born in Beirut, Lebanon (1983), Ali El-Darsa holds a BFA from Concordia University and works in video, performance, installation and printmaking. Through his interdisciplinary artworks, he explores the self and its duality in relationship with space and multifaceted environments. He also uses replication and intervention to defy behavioural patterns that have been prevalent for the many years he has tried to define a sense of home, one of social, cultural and historical values.

SUSPECT
JULY 2 & 4 / 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Ikbal Singh (Colombie-Britannique)

“Love thy neighbour. Suspect thy neighbour. Report any unattended bags or suspicious behaviour. The word on the street is: live your lives, spend your money, but be on guard, they could be anyone…so my assistants and I will help seek out the suspicious ones for you.”

Approach Mostly her curiosity, and sometimes her confusion, is what motivates Ikbal Singh’s work. Why traditions exist in the form they do? Why people accept the power that words hold? Are we aware of cultural assimilation? While examining behaviour involving notions of acceptability and expectations, social and cultural belief systems, and experiences of being othered, Singh explores ways of communicating with the unsuspecting public.

Ps4 - installation with modified PS2 game play
JULY 8, 9, 10, 11 / variable times

Mark Cooley (Washington D.C.) - www.flawedart.net

Ps4 is an interactive video mash-up that juxtaposes documentary video footage with live video game play. Though initially conceived in response to reports of Sony’s large stake in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s bloody coltan trade, Ps4’s has since expanded to a variety of issues. The installation explores the potentially alienating effects of gaming.

Bio Mark Cooley is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of art, activism and popular culture. Subjects of particular interest are U.S. foreign policy, the fine art culture industry and the political economy of new technologies. He is currently a professor in the School of Art of the George Mason University, located in the suburbs of Washington D.C.

Angel Food Cake: Altar 1 star – angelical installation and performance
JULY 8 / 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm

Roxane Chamberland (Québec) - www.flawedart.net

In a surgical ritual preparing for death or a feast, Roxy lady delicately weaves strings between her own embalming and a culinary artwork filled with feelings and souvenirs. Her body shines with sacred liquids and angelical ingredients. There will be preparation, execution and exhibition. The egg hunt is on! Collaborator: Marie-Jo Côté (aka Lili Coco, cook’s helper).

Bio Trained in dance, mime and costume making, Roxane Chamberland, aka Roxy Lady, is a teacher and a multidisciplinary artist creating shows, installations and performances. Since 2005, she has been concocting a kitsch and horrific trilogy that she presents in separate parts, among which Angel Food Cake.

Without title
JULY 9 / 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
JULY 10 - 11 / 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Léa LeBricomte (France)

“My performances transform my body into a live landscape for sticky tumour-snails, coagulated and shiny. This new perspective reveals the snail’s real speed. I want to show a new reality that I claim as the accurate time.”

Bio Born in 1987 in France, Léa Lebricomte is a video artist, photographer, sculptor and performance artist. She creates images and landscapes which provoke both repulsion and desire for the body. Her fictitious world questions norms of functionality and rationality.

Ste-Catherine / St-Hubert
A series of site-specific endurance performances
July 9 – 10 / 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm & 5:00 to 6:00 pm

Ali El-Darsa (Québec)

Placing a chair in the middle of Sainte-Catherine Street occupied by passing pedestrians, the artist sits, blindfolded, drinking coffee. This simple yet unfamiliar action repeats in a seemingly endless intervention, making a common, every-day activity into a foreign ritual.

Bio Born in Beirut, Lebanon (1983), Ali El-Darsa holds a BFA from Concordia University and works in video, performance, installation and printmaking. Through his interdisciplinary artworks, he explores the self and its duality in relationship with space and multifaceted environments. He also uses replication and intervention to defy behavioural patterns that have been prevalent for the many years he has tried to define a sense of home, one of social, cultural and historical values.

Que nadie sepa mi sufrir
JULY 10 July / 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm
JULY 11 July / 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Émilie Franceschin (France)

“Dancing a traditional Mexican dance, the cambia, while breaking the ice with fantasized partners... Finding these men at my feet being a dance floor for a lonely dance that’s becoming a struggle endlessly on the verge of collapse. Then, in a glance, to sweep everything that’s in the way...”

Approach “I try to maintain and intensify verticality. With a rhythm that is quite obsessive, I bring forward my highness and worth as a woman. Taking one step to many into reality, to see it in a different way that may be crueller but funnier.