ABOUT
Art Souterrain is proud to present, for its 13th consecutive year, the Art Souterrain Festival from February 20th to April 30th, 2021. This year the festival is reinventing itself by offering a digital component (February 20th to April 30rd) and an urban component (April 10th to 30rd).
Several digital activities will be accessible throughout the festival on our platforms. It is in the heart of Montreal that some thirty artists and performers will present, for 7 weeks, contemporary artworks and performances on the theme of Chronometry. The works selected by the 2 curators, Nathalie Bachand (Canada) and Dulce Pinzon (Mexico) will be accessible in the safe public spaces of the underground city of Montreal at all times and free of charge from April 10th to 30th, even if the city is still in the red zone!
Stay updated on our programmation !
PROUD PARTNERS
DIGITAL SHUTTER
In this component, we offer new digital experiences through exclusive online activities, from the comfort of the viewer’s home. This engaging and easily-accessible content creates interactions between the public and the artists. Without a doubt, this virtual component will allow an expanded digital access to art in these more difficult times.
Our digital activities, which take place over a period of 9 weeks, are highly diversified: official launch party, artist portraits, performance meetings, round tables, performances, artist visions, focus visions, influences, and more!
URBAN SHUTTER
The artists will present their works in the heart of Montreal through an underground urban route that will start at the Palais des congrès de Montréal and continue at the Centre de Commerce Mondial de Montréal, Place Victoria and the Jacques-Parizeau building.
From April 10, we are pairing the virtual with the physical: an interior circuit of 4 km (East and West), involving 4 buildings of the underground network with the participation of the Palais des congrès de Montréal, the Centre de Commerce Mondial de Montréal, the Jacques Parizeau building and Place Victoria.lace Victoria.
THEME
CHRONOMETRY
Are we at the dawn of a new era bringing into play the temporality of our time?
A collective reflection seems to be taking place and provokes an awareness of our limits. Could this be the reason for the multiplicity of shortcuts in our daily lives?
These temporal alternatives lead us to consider fleeting or unfinished activities as a new norm.
These changes then raise several questions. Has the long-term vision of time become a luxury or a weakness? Would the constant quantification of time, by its representation, and its transfer into monetary value, transform it into a tangible resource?
Superfluous interactions are multiplied and time must be saved at all costs for the benefit of immediate social interactions. The result: the creation of new behavioral reflexes resulting in ephemeral relationships.
Is time a new obstacle to human relationships or is it an inevitable development that we need to embrace?
In addition, the deadline of humanity announced by the scientific community is reminded daily and forces us to rethink the satisfaction of instant rewards. This observation brings us to consider a return to traditions.
The duality between the balance of man in his ecosystem and the pressure of our time consumption is an issue to which the artists of the 13th edition of the Art Souterrain festival will try to respond.
COMMISSAIRES
Dulce Pinzón
GUEST CURATOR
Dulce Pinzón was born in Mexico City in 1974. She studied Mass Media Communications at the Universidad de Las Américas Puebla and Photography at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She moved to New York in 1995 and studied at the International Center of Photography. She lives and works in Puebla, Mexico city and New York.
Her work is influenced by feelings of nostalgia, questions of identity, and political and cultural frustrations. The goal that she pursues through her art activism is cultural consumption, customization, and intervention. Some of her projects are: “Viviendo En El Gabacho”, “Loteria”, “Multiracial”, and “Real Stories of Superheroes.” Her work has been published and exhibited in Mexico, the United States, Australia, Argentina, and Europe.
Nathalie Bachand
She is interested in digital issues and its emergence conditions in contemporary art. Among her commissioner mandates, she’s worked on the Résau Accès Culture’s UN MILLION D’HORIZONS, a project presenting 32 exhibitions and regrouping over 50 artists in the heart of the Montreal’s 375th anniversary celebrations in 2017; as well as the interactive piece, Seuils, by the Montreal based artist, Michel de Broin, presented in the Canada Council for the arts Âjagemô space in the winter of 2019. More recently, her exhibition The Dead Web – The end, initially presented at Eastern Bloc in Montreal, has been co-produced by Molior in Europe: at the Mirage Festival in Lyon, at the Mapping Festival in Geneva and at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, co-commissioned with Béla Tamás Kónya. She is also co-commissioner for the EIM Triennal and project manager for Sporobole, a current art center.
ARTISTS
Photography/
Print
Audio/
Video
Installation/
Sculpture
Performance
PROGRAMMATION
UNDERGROUND MAP
A - PALAIS DES CONGRÈS
The Palais des congrès de Montréal contributes to Montréal’s international reputation and generates important intellectual and economic spinoffs for Québec by making the city and the Palais premium destinations for major international events.
The mission of the Palais des congrès de Montréal is to attract and host conventions, exhibitions, consumer/trade shows, conferences, meetings and other events. A public institution with a commercial vocation, the Palais generates important economic and intellectual spin-offs for Québec and contributes to enhancing Montréal’s international reputation as a first-class destination.
Adress | 1000 St-Urbain
B - MONTREAL WORLD TRADE CENTER
Inaugurated in 1992, World Trade Centre Montréal is a complex spanning an entire city block in Old Montreal, in the heart of the Quartier international. It consists of several restored historic buildings under a magnificent glass roof. The property is known for its spectacular, one-of-a-kind architecture, admired by thousands of tourists every year.
The centre actively participates in the Quartier international and Old Montreal communities, by hosting a variety of events and exhibitions that are an integral part of the urban experience.
Adress | 750 St-Pierre
C - PLACE VICTORIA
The Tour de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Tower) is a 48-storey skyscraper in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at the intersection of Victoria Square and Saint Jacques Street in the International Quarter. It is connected by the underground city to the Square-Victoria-OACI Metro Station.
Adress | 800 Square Victoria
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