"Scaffolding wrap" corporate eyesore intrudes on the Main

Reclaim the Main is preparing to deal with the latest violation of our historic site: "scaffolding wrap".

Late spring, scaffolding went up around the building on the southwest corner of the Main and Sherbrooke Street...

To read this article, please visit the Recalim the Main website: www.optative.net/reclaimthemain/news.html

Please feel free to comment below

Buffalo Infringement: An outsider's perspective

by Jason C. McLean, The Talking Stick
originally published on Outside The Box (http://jasoncmclean.blogspot.com)

With over 300 projects in over 50 venues, the fourth-annual Buffalo Infringement Festival, opening this Thursday, promises to be the biggest infringement yet. We now present a look back to last year's event, from the point of view of a Montreal infringer...

For the third year in a row, Car Stories played the Buffalo infringement Festival, for the third year in a row, I made it down and for the first time, I found a bit of time to write about it.

Now entering it's third year, the Buffalo festival is, without a doubt, the largest in the International infringement circuit (so far). While the Montreal infringement improved audiences and developed the local infringement community this year by pulling itself back and focusing on less shows centered around the Plateau neighborhood, Buffalo's event keeps getting bigger and better.

With over 140 acts this year (up from last year and almost quadruple the number of acts in the original 2005 Buffalo event), the growth in the festival's size is matched by it's growth in intimate community feeling and original, spontaneous ideas.

That's not to say that the festival doesn't have it's critics, or should I say critic. Among all the praise and in-depth coverage found in Buffalo's media, there was one editorial (um, "survival guide") in the Artvoice urging the festival to drop it's claim to support and represent underground artists with something to say by giving them a place to say it.

I'm not sure if anyone took that advice to heart, but it sure didn't look like it on the streets of Allentown (the festival's epicenter) during the festival's opening weekend and the subsequent few days we were in town.

As people were busy completing their "self-infringement" assignments, pulled out of a box at Rust Belt Books, four separate public performances turned Allen Street into a spontaneous artistic celebration. On Monday night alone, three of them co-existed simultaneously.

The surreal experience started when Subversive Theatre's fantastic street-theatre version of Berthold Brecht's The Exception and the Rule (which I had the chance to catch a day earlier) made it's way down Allen parade-style past MC Vendetta's Open-Lot (a musical open-mike in a parking lot) to Day's Park.



We started preparing for Car Stories, while taking in some of what was happening around us. Just before our first showtime of the evening (with a new show every 30 minutes, Car Stories has several), The Exception and the Rule made it's way back to Allen Street and took over the parking lot next to Nietzsche's, briefly trapping one of our actors behind the scene. It moved on to the parking lot where Open-Lot was taking place, just as they went on break.

In the middle of their scene, Car Stories started half a block down outside of Mulligan's Brick Bar. Our actor, who was watching the show, made it to Mulligan's in time for her cue and brought the audience back, past the now-resumed Open-Lot and into our car parked in the now theatrically vacated lot next to Nietzsche's as The Exception and The Rule continued up College Street.

Three street theatre productions all happening at the same time in the same two-block stretch of the same street, with no problems. Truly a great example of what infringing is all about.

What I really found refreshing was that the festival didn't have to compete with corporate reality ads running up and down the street as we do in Montreal.

This probably isn't the case all the time in Allentown (I was told that there were some other, more commercial festivals), and quite possibly not the case in other Buffalo districts, but for the few days we were there, it was really nice (and possibly hints at why the festival doesn't have a Ministry of Culture Jamming).

For the past three visits, our troupe has been housed by the good people at the Nickel City Co-Op. They had taken over a four-story turn-of-the-century mansion (with gargoyles!) and turned it into their home.

This reclaiming of the city is evident all over Buffalo. It's a community breathing new life into the relics of an older, much more financially prosperous time (Buffalo was once a city of millionaires, not so anymore) and celebrating while doing it. It's one of the most unique, vibrant artistic communities I've encountered and it's the perfect match for both the infringement and Car Stories.

Since Car Stories takes place in streets, alleys, parks and parking lots that already exist, a big part of the show is finding new use for what's already there which is why, I feel, we had no problem putting together a show with mostly Buffalo actors in hardly any time.

We came up with the theme and worked out characters and scenes that fit it the day of our first performance. We don't always do things this spur-of-the-moment, but this time we did, and it worked very well.

We even played on the Artvoice article, telling the audience that we had to make more money, so we were going to do musical theatre and were sending them to an audition with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Back in Montreal, I can only hope that what's happening in Buffalo will rub off on the rest of the circuit, because when it comes to infringing, they get it.

The 2008 Buffalo Infringement Festival runs July 24th through August 3rd. For more information, including the schedule, please visit www.infringebuffalo.org

Le 400e: Missing History in Québec's year-long "celebrations"

by Donovan King, Optative Theatrical Laboratories Radical Dramaturgy Unit

An analysis of Quebec's 400e Celebrations from a post-colonial viewpoint, related to the subject matter of OTL's Sinking Neptune.

It can be read online in PDF format here:

http://optative.net/library/kings400eanalysis.pdf

Sinking Neptune runs tonight at 11pm at La Maison de l'amitiee, 120 Duluth East, no cover, voluntary contribution

Artivism infiltrates Montreal during the Infringement Festival!

by Maria-Hélèna Pacelli, The Talking Stick

When I sat down to write this article, I had a series of brilliant punchlines that I knew were only interesting to myself. But this article really isn’t about punchlines. It’s about how we construct and deconstruct ideas surrounding activism and art and all the intersectionalities that convergence entails.

The evening kicks off with La toune a Landriault playing in the background.

In the midst of an exhibition of political works of art entitled Non à la paix, ça ferait trop de chômeurs, the debate begins.

If art can be loosely defined as creative production and activism can be loosely understood as intentional actions that are meant to raise awareness or bring about social or political change, what happens when you combine the two? The convergence of art and activism raises a number of questions in terms of how we think about art and activism on their own.

The debate hinges on four themes, including legality/illegality, public/private spheres, sponsorship and communications. But of course, it goes on to include much more.

Some would argue that art has always had a subversive component at its heart, and though the expression artist-activism may seem redundant in this optic, it also reminds us of the radical spaces where art comes from. Indeed, there are so many definitions of art and activism surrounding the pseudo-conferences table pieced together from café tables at Le Maître Chanteur, that is becomes almost overwhelming and yet somehow exciting to navigate the different ways that activists envision the practices they share so seamlessly.

Several important questions are raised about the future of these subversive practices and about the ethics involved in building this movement. There is a looming danger of emulating the very structures that we aim to disrupt in our organized efforts to dismantle them. Power differentials remain. The inability to reach the mainstream population through traditional channels seems both challenging and yet almost undesirable. As one panelist explained, “When we don’t participate in the fight, we maintain.”

There is a necessity within activist circles, to recognize that there are fundamentally conflicting visions of the world at odds here. When working on the front of cultural resistance, we must ask ourselves, as another panelist expressed so pointedly, if our goal is create a parallel (alternative) culture, or to deconstruct what is already in place.

As most artists know, empowerment begins from within. We all have the power to change things and reappropriating this power will come from the use of many different methods and practices on a local scale and then sharing our stories and experiences on a larger scale. It’s something that we all carry and share with those around us; it can’t be forced or indoctrinated – and it’s up to us to take it back!

URGENT: Appeal to everyone in support of First Peoples' Festival

Canada Economic Development, a Federal Ministry, has decided to cut the grant annually awarded to First Peoples' Festival. There was no forewarning of this cutback, announced less than four weeks prior to the event. It will have a destabilising impact on the event's activities and is a serious blow for the continuation of the only annual event of international scope devoted to the First Nations in Quebec's major city.

As First Peoples' Festival has a proven record of excellent performance, this decision is very difficult to understand, while other events with greater access to budgets and funding have seen millions pour into their already deep pockets.

Political repression? Influence peddling? A fit of pique on minister Blackburn's part after AFNQL's testimony at the UN? We can only conjecture on the motivations lurking behind this brutal cutback. It seems obvious that the timing and approach chosen are intended to inflict the greatest possible damage on the festival's prospects for survival.

As a first step, we call upon partners and friends of First Peoples' Festival to support our appeal, demanding that the Ministry rescind this unacceptable decision.

Here is a form letter we are asking you to send to the minister concerned, Jean-Pierre Blackburn blackburn.j@parl.gc.ca, with a copy to the Prime Minister's office pm@pm.gc.ca. Feel free to add any personal statements and comments, but at this stage, please remember that the tone must remain polite.

Thank you for supporting First Peoples' Festival

André Dudemaine

Director, Land InSights