Friday, February 8, 2008

Community artist Diane Trépanière hosts members of Herstreet/La rue des Femmes de Montréal and l’Arrêt-Source, who will be showing their writing and photographs.

Women at risk need dreams and beauty too. There are numerous organizations well placed to meet their physical and psychological needs, so Les Filles électriques wanted to complement the existing services with opportunities to create art. For three years, we have been working towards that goal with Diane Trépanière. Thanks to her commitment of time and generosity we have been able to publish two wonderful books in partnership with women’s shelters. The books are Écrire et sans pitié (Éditions du Passage, 2006) with l’Arrêt-source, and ABCd’art de La rue des Femmes (Remue-ménage, 2007), with Herstreet/La rue des Femmes de Montréal.

Diane Trépanière is a multidisciplinary artist. Trained in photography, she has exhibited in numerous collective shows, as well as mounting four solo exhibitions. In 1999, she created a photographic installation in memory of the fourteen victims of the Polytechnique tragedy, and in 2000, for the World March of Women, she created another memorial in Montreal’s Émilie-Gamelin park. She has published Des pas sur l’ombre (Remue-ménage, 2004), a collection of texts by community shelter workers. Her work has been shown in artist-run centres, galleries and Maisons de la culture in Quebec. For several years, she has been conducting photography and writing workshops at Herstreet/La rue des Femmes de Montréal and writing workshops at l’Arrêt —Source.

Since its founding in 1994, Herstreet/La rue des Femmes de Montréal has been welcoming homeless women at risk, and helping them through the process of healing and regaining power over their lives. The organization privileges creative expression as a means of social reconstruction and inclusion.

Besides offering a bed, food and physical security to young women between the ages of 18 and 30, L’Arrêt-Source provides coaching and support for up to two years.

In French. Magnolia is Mélanie Auclair’s group, the same Mélanie Auclair who has played cello with names like Michel Rivard, Robert Charlebois, Chloé Ste-Marie and Lhasa De Sela. This more personal project lets her present some gems of folk music tinged with a sweet melancholy. Mélanie is also an amazing improv musician, one of the rare women working in the Ligue d’Improvisation Musicale. She agreed to be part of this series because she wanted to work with D. Kimm — who is always hesitant to book herself into her own festival. They tried to find another way to do it and nothing worked, so D. Kimm gave in (anyway, she really wanted to, and who cares what people say!)

Bilingual + invented languages. From 1916 to 1925, the Dadaists challenged the conventional limits of ideology, fine arts and politics — like us. They rejected propriety, reason and logic — like us. They loved extravagance and the freedom to create — like us. Most of all, they were looking for freedom in language, which they preferred poetic and oddly assorted. Like us!!!

Our Closing Night Show will take the form of a DADA Cabaret worthy of our dadaist precursors. Indeed, this 7th FVA has a particular soft spot for history. We began with John Giorno, who’s been doing performance poetry for 50 years. We end with a tribute to those fathers and mothers of performance, a show in purest dada style. We trolled Montreal for the strangest fish we could find and told them anything goes, text to costumes. The resulting cast is outrageous (not to say hysteric queer insolent extreme improbable). Down with reason, up with extravagance! In a moment of typical dada folly, we’ve held the ticket price down to $15 for this madly historical show.

Featuring 2boys.tv, Nathalie Claude, Stéphane Crête, Pascal Angelo Fioramore, Miriam Ginestier, Marcelle Hudon, Dayna McLeod, Carole Nadeau, Dominique Pétrin, Alexandre St-Onge and Simon Brown. Our host for the evening will be the always surprising Alexis O’Hara, and we’ve hired the prettiest and tallest cigarette girl in the world, Lucas Jolly. With the silent, black-and-white queer(!) projections of Miriam Ginestier, starring adventuress Fannie Nipplebottom, and the dadaistic videos of Mike Stecky.

Open mic, bilingual.

One last Night Shift. You may be up a bit late!