Intervention or contravention? On January 28th 2011, UOU presented Architectures précaires, created by Étienne Tremblay – Tardif, and invited the public to participate in the performance of disseminating and installing his poster series in Griffintown.
Until recently, it has been illegal to poster in Montreal and nowhere in the city’s policy on public art does it address the temporary installation of art works or the ephemeral life of art works that are inserted and, potentially, redistributed throughout the built environment. To many of the city’s cultural actors, posters and the act of postering are seen as forms of communication and expression.
The city administration’s 2007 ‘cleanliness campaign’, however, made it illegal to poster in Montreal and prohibited posters from being affixed to public street furniture. Individual artists, independent cultural actors and festival organizers alike have collectively received over $200,000 in fines since 2008. Reportedly, in July 2010, a Quebec Court of Appeal judge ruled that Montreal’s anti-postering bylaw violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Currently, it remains ambiguous as to whether the city of Montreal will implement a policy to legally accommodate posters on public property.
With Architectures précaires, a certain measure of transgression became a key precondition to our activity and our desire to create a rhetorical space. In the sense that Architectures précaires performed as a transgressive act, it empowered us – the actors – to subvert and challenge the established boundaries of institutional, civic and societal norms. Tremblay-Tardif’s posters evoke the existing vocabulary of objects and built spaces in Griffintown: a historical and geological layering of the half built, falling down, peeling and cracking surfaces in the neighbourhood. Tremblay -Tardif takes the billboards which advertise condo development as a point of inspiration. These temporary structures litter a number of street corners and are brought into more relief by all that collapses around them.
As snow fell lightly over the city, approximately fifteen people convened at Le Dalhousie, the cul de sac located between the CN viaduct and the New City Gas complex, to participate in the dissemination of Tremblay-Tardif’s posters. Derivatives of Griffintown’s current transitional and précarious state abound throughout Tremblay-Tardif’s poster series. The agit-prop posters were affixed to a number of pre-exsiting objects and architectural structures in the neighbourhood – transforming the ordinariness of some objects into extraordinary sites.
- Architectures précaires. Photo taken by Shauna Janssen
I first met Étienne while doing a residency in another historic neighbourhood in Montreal – St. Henri. We were participating in a two week collective residency called “D’un lieu à un autre” that took place at Atelier Rose de Lima – a nineteenth century warehouse and repair depot for trains. In recent years this former warehouse and repair depot has been reused for temporary art exhibitions and performances. At this time Étienne was working on a project about the ongoing crisis around the reconstruction of Montreal’s Turcot Interchange.
I was drawn to Étienne’s work because of his critical treatment of the transformation of urban spaces and the built environment. I met with Étienne again couple of weeks after the Architecture précaires intervention to talk about the project, his initial responses to Griffintown and the politics surrounding its revitalization. (Please note that the following text has been edited from the original dialogue. The publication of the full interview as well as a short video of the Architectures précaires intervention is forthcoming.)
UOU also wishes to thank especially the following individuals for their participation and support on the eve of this intervention: Kira Maros, Andrew de Freitas, Micheline Chevrier, Judith Bauer, and Harvey Lev.
Shauna (S): What were your first impressions of Griffintown?
Étienne (É): There were a lot of contrasts. Walking, from block to block, I would go through various atmospheres, where some things had been renovated recently, like the Cité du Multimédia, some new condos, new housing, and then very soon also I could see advertisements for upcoming [condo] developments, which was, in a way, my entry point regarding my previous knowledge or what I was hearing about the neighborhood. The presence of different spaces and many time periods, or many objects dating from different ages… You know, from the Cité du Multimédia to the industrial architecture, to the makeshift shelters under the Bonaventure highway, right next to the sort of dock that was renovated for the tourists, which was very beautiful, a very beautiful space, with a view of the silos and then the Five Roses building, and then the Lachine Canal where you have the old structures…Some parts [of this neighbourhood have been] rebuilt, steps repaired, the parks now well maintained, and then suddenly right next to [this kind of site there is] something completely abandoned, some sort of empty lot, abandoned.
S: So the diversity and fragmentary quality of the neighbourhood was inspiring for you.
É: It is one of the first things that I noticed and that lead me to make the piece that I made for UOU.
S: You are making a lot of print material right now. How do the sites you chose to work with inform what materials you will create a project with?
É: I use different mediums. I use video, I use drawing (even if I don’t draw a as much these days), but I use sculpture with all sorts of found objects, and there are always a lot of prints, of printed media. Whether it’s something hand made or in a more… fine arts fashion or with a good technique or something that is made in a photocopy shop. It’s a pretty organic mixture of what I feel like doing. Sometimes, depending on the project, something will impose itself, like in the case of Architectures précaires in Griffintown. The first things I thought of were more in the realm of drawings, and then murals. But finally the available slot for the project was in winter (January), so then it changed the project a little. So for me it was turning into an interesting challenge, to stay outside, because it’s something you don’t really see… the season doesn’t invite one to go outside as much and all. But nevertheless, reality continues to exist, the street is still there and different things happen and there’s a whole landscape where there is ‘slush’ and calcium and all that, that is interesting to me. I began thinking about the idea of the poster, how to do a quick intervention, efficiently, without getting caught but still having fun and not stressing out. And from there we came up with the idea of involving the public, or having people contribute to the installation. Finally, the idea came to just make mobile objects. Instead of pasting posters on the’ immobilier’, on the architecture, it was to paste them on other objects, on ‘mobilier’ made of all sorts of objects that I was already collecting, like cardboard, pieces of wood, rope, all kinds of found objects that come from the urban environment of the city, and then that worked a bit like, to me, in the same way as the architecture. For me it was the same kind of shapes, but on a smaller scale, that oscillates between the scale model or a sculpture installation, a piece of architecture which would be considered on its own scale, on a 1:1 scale. [The scale of the project] was also a response to the signs and the billboards that had struck me during our first walk. They continued to strike me when I walked later by myself… that they are absolutely linked to the advertisements for real estate development in the neighborhood…
So for me it became a way of creating an architecture that would be anchored in that and that would work more or less on the same scale, and then that had the double status of being an object per se (the wooden architecture that supports the billboard is there as architecture), but at the same time it’s also a model, a representation of something much bigger.
S: In the beginning of the evening, when we were making short introductions about what we were doing and what you were going to be doing and what we were inviting the public to do with us, you spoke a bit about this idea of the objects, the posters, as a kind of ‘agit prop.” Could speak a little more about this?
É: My reference for the ‘agit prop’ is the art of constructivists, the Russian constructivists, and I think that they are the ones who (either them or somebody during the Russian revolution) came up with the term, which is a diminutive version of agitation and propaganda. And I’m not aware or I wasn’t aware of the reference, for instance. But I think that in the idea of the constructivists, the ‘agit prop’ is always something that’s mobile in a way, it’s something that moves. The ‘agit props’ I’m thinking about are the mural paintings that were made on trains, to advertise the new government in the revolution throughout the big territory of Russia. So they would make paintings, but they would make them on trains, so they become mobile. Hence, the idea of either the mobile sculpture, or a specific architectural intervention. But I think the most interesting examples for me are the mobile pieces. And that’s what we were doing. I was saying a little earlier that, precisely, they’re not posters that go on ‘immobilier’, they’re posters that go on ‘mobilier’. And we moved them, we displaced them, we carried them with us in the evening. We installed them, but due to the nature of the cardboard and the various materials they were probably moved either by the wind very quickly or by the snow or by the garbage men (laughs) the following morning or by the work men in some instances depending on where they were installed. I think some got removed, probably, right away the following morning. Some might have stayed a couple days… So for me it was interesting in that they would continue to move.
I am curious too about what you discovered by curating and participating in this intervention… because I think you have a good knowledge and a different point of view than most people in the neighbourhood.
S: Right. (pause) Well I have two thoughts. As things move along in the UOU series, I really do start to see so much more agency in the landscape than I did before. It is not empty… it is not really abandoned. And what I mean by that is some of the agency has to be dug up a little bit… and I feel like in a way, the artists that I’m working with are doing that, such as yourself – by recognizing a billboard as a piece of architecture in and of itself. As an artist you are drawing our attention to the fact that the construction of billboard advertisements for condo real-estate is a particular gesture and that particular gesture is itself one of the many agents in the construction – the potential construction – of what this neighborhood will become. But so is the gathering of 15 people to intervene with these objects by temporarily affixing another object to the site… there are many agents here, and there’s kind of a contagion between many actors involved in how we actually see what we see or hear, what we hear or see in a neighborhood like that. There’s a fluidity, some actors come and go sooner than others, some stay longer…But ultimately, I really do feel like (pause) in a very very slight way that Architectures précaires, in its kind of ephemerality, leaves a mark in the landscape. I’m interested in the traces left by the projects created for UOU. I am interested in the moment of the act, in the performance of disseminating the posters, what new path was created, that isn’t on any institutional and representational map of the neighborhood. So, how many new and different paths are being made because of the invitation to come down to the neighborhood and participate or engage with a cultural event. So again it’s this idea of what narratives, new narratives, are starting to mark the neighbourhood… the entry into the neighborhood, exits out of the neighborhood, and how those are determined because of whatever boundaries or peripheries are in the way or underneath or you have to go around… So I think part of what was so effective about the performance of Architectures précaires was that it also leaves, what Bruno Latour would call, a “material semiotic trace.”
É: Yes. From the multiple voices of the collaboration, and in a lot of instances throughout the intervention, I found that they were successfully formal works too, even if they were maybe not as calculated, in the sense that they were working as almost found installations… In some instances, it might have a been a pile or garbage, or cardboard and garbage posters, lying on the street that the wind blew, in a metal or wooden structure, and they were kind of stuck there so for me it was interesting… For me there was like a double abandon of control.
S: ‘Abandon of control’… I’m curious… do you see your work as a reflection of an activist that’s somewhere in you?
É: I think there’s always a preoccupation or a spark of activism, or polemic maybe, mostly… or a will for a political discourse that is at the origin of my work. I think that in the end it’s one of the main things that underlines my work. It’s a political discourse, not a discourse about art or art’s situation… for me it’s the political discourse, whether it’s about identity or about the city’s environment.
- Étienne Tremblay-Tardif in St. Henri. Turcot Interchange Intervention, 2010. Photo taken by Shauna Janssen.
I consider myself more as an intellectual or a polemicist than an activist. Sometimes I will take a protest sign and go to a demonstration, but that’s not something that’s really in my lifestyle so much. And then on the notion of performance also, and that’s where I think there’s an interesting shift, even when I’m physically involved in the works that I make, to me, I don’t see myself as a performer, or at least not for now. I am rarely participating as a character… I see it more in the idea of an action or an intervention. So yes I am in representation, but I am myself… (laughs) I am myself as an artist who is doing his work. But in the case of Architectures précaires, to me there was a little shift where it became a performance because of our occupation of somewhat undetermined or interstitial spaces, when we made that walk.
One other thing that I was very interested in, was what connections between the sites existed for me. How could I make that visible for other people? That’s what the posters were about, they were working from imagery from all these sites and combining them on the page… and then having them move… So when you are at the make-shift shelter, you also [experience] images of the billboards with the train tracks… So there was this kind of displacement, mixing of sites, somehow.
All urban spaces are difficult spaces to work with, because they’re already noisy and, brash, and…
S : … uncontrolled, you can’t control, it’s not a studio…
É : … it’s hard to compete. I think the minimalist strategy is very often the best thing to do, because it’s impossible to compete on the level of scale or noise or visual noise or all that (laughs). So, I think that often the more interesting works are the ones that are either subdued or hidden or subtle or that work against spectacle, against big scale. So the idea is to make a precise… something restrained and precise like a tai chi move (both laugh)…
S : It’s like acupuncture… in reference to Architectures précaires you wanted to press on the right…
É : … the right button, the right nerve…
S : … the right nerve of the space. In this context, of urban space and the built environment, and Griffintown, your work also reflects back to me what I may not have seen otherwise… different connections that you make about the neighborhood and the spaces. I see something new that I hadn’t seen before. And I was talking about how for me your posters kind of function as a new narrative, an Other narrative of the neighborhood. And so… the idea of inviting artists to come to this neighborhood to contend with that urban landscape (which is very complicated as you’ve said, you know, it’s a real and ready ‘mix’ of different things, so it speaks in different ways)… and how contending with that, artists are able to reveal things that we don’t see everyday. So, for me, your work brings to light and intensifies different aspects of the neighborhood’s material culture and its spatial history.
É: For me it’s an interesting strategy, to work everywhere I can, and use the limitations of [the gallery or urban space] as a fuel for the work. And I’m also especially interested in the interactions between the two, and I think that’s something that I will explore probably more and more. How the residue and the found objects from the cityscape work in the gallery. How is the cleaner, more polished work that’s made for official institutionalized museum space, working outside? How the ephemeral or the more permanent bronze sculpture, for example, works against this cardboard sculpture… I think they can be both interesting.
S : It becomes different, obviously, in terms of spectatorship, in terms of the public’s engagement in a more uncontrolled environment than in the gallery.
É : But I think the site is always a frame for the work. The gallery situation offers you interesting support in terms of staff support and curating and framing the work in a specific way. But I think the outdoors environment and the urbanscape and cityscape also offer very interesting framing devices that don’t, or couldn’t, happen in the gallery… like mobile architecture, or found objects, or even the dirty snow on the sidewalk…
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