relief theory
address
372, Ste-Catherine W St, #507 Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), QC H3B 1A2
> saturday, april 7<
> sunday, april 8 <
featuring
Alo Azimov
Kalale Dalton-Lutale
Be Heintzman Hope
Kaie Kellough
Sehar Manji
Sara Meleika
Tatyana Olal
Cason Sharpe
wyïśya
guest curator
Tatyana Olal
thank you
People's Potato
saturday schedule (noon to 8.30 PM)
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noon–1.30 PM
Saturday Brunch
Hosted by Sahar Te, Hera Chan and Thy Anne Chu Quang
Join us for brunch on Saturday and Sunday to discuss with artists and curators about the other half of Common Aliens, Whispers That Got Away! Food, coffee, and tea will be provided. With vegan and gluten-free options, and fresh bagels. Feel free to bring anything to add to the bounty, including your own dishes.
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2 PM–3.45 PM
Workshop– Open Mic
Hosted by Tatyana Olal
Rarely do we allow others to see our works-in-progress, nor do we see theirs. The objective of this workshop is to celebrate the process of the unfinished product. It is an opportunity to share creative work that isn’t ready or meant to see the light of day. Participants are asked to bring their projects that are un-finished/un-published/rejected/not intended for distribution. The space is primarily intended as an opportunity to present raw material. If desired, feedback will be available. If not, even better! We intend to celebrate the unbounded nature of our creative strategies. This workshop will begin with a discussion, and then space will be open to the participants to put forward their work.
Tatyana Olal is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist, performer, and producer whose work focuses on identity, labour, and Blackness, explored through the lens of comedic performance. She has performed and been featured at Montreal Monochrome Festival, OFF-JFL, Montreal SketchFest, MoMA PopRally, and has collaborated with numerous artists and organizations including Madelyne Beckles, Collective Culture Montreal, DJ Mauser, and Tranna Wintour. Tatyana also currently works in the arts as an administrator at Envision Management & Production and Arbutus Records.
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4 PM-5.45 PM
Panel–
Is This A Joke To You? Memes and Identification in the Black Diaspora
Kalale Dalton-Lutale and Cason Sharpe in conversation with Tatyana Olal
“Blackness is the living tissue of memes,” writes Laur M. Jackson.
Laughter reaches its most healing when it produces moments of identification. We laugh because we have found something that is true, and within that truth, a plethora of experiences and emotions are excavated which connect people to one another. Amongst the Black diaspora, the internet and more specifically memes act as a locus of identification. Memes become vessels that house language, which in turn house communities. This panel will look to map these communities, and consider who is entitled to access the culture and language that is birthed from them.
We will ask, is it worth drawing boundaries at all? What do we feel is owed when our communities are infiltrated, when our culture is co-opted? What do we feel entitled to? Who is laughing, and what do they find funny?
Kalale Dalton-Lutale is a writer, performer and playwright from Toronto. She has performed in Pervers/Cité, Montreal MonoChrome, Playwrights Workshop Montréal’s Young Creators Unit Showcase and KillJoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House in Toronto and Los Angeles. Her play Pinky Swear will be apart of the 2017/18 season of Geordie Productions. Follow her on Instagram @fwenchfwiez.
Cason Sharpe is a writer born and raised in Toronto and currently living in Montreal. His work has appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, and GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine, among others. His first collection of short stories, Our Lady of Perpetual Realness, was released by Metatron in 2017.
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Performances–
inter-being by wyïsya
inter-being is an interactive ritual involving chant, prayer, presence and embodiment in sculpture. Focused, slow-paced and robust physique-wise, chant ranging from gribble to animalesque to melodic loops to cathartic choruses. Verging with harmonies and dissonances.
We will invite the surrounding audience to join their voices in a collective drone force, encouraging intuition and honesty. By an act of grace and integrity, we continue to touch the ancient knots of oppression that are the karmic ripples of ignored suffering. We transmute shame into belonging.
Shahir Omar-Qrishnaswamy is a multidisciplinary artist currently facilitating meditation, dance, and singing workshops for newly arrived refugee youth. In this life, Shahir is a diasporic, queer trans person of South Asian descent who grew up between Mississauga and Malawi. She has an honours degree in Film and Cultural Studies from McGill University. Her creative philosophies are rooted in Dhamma, animism, and compassionate eco-social justice.
Wyï is an emerging and multidisciplinary artist who practices presence by meditation, dance, crochet sculpture and conscious breathing. Wyï’s philosophies are rooted in animist traditions that she touches by embodied rituals. Her practice is based on an ethics of kindness that motivates movement. In this life, Wyï is a pangender human, born in a colonial Franco-Quebecer cultural context. She descends from fluvial and sylvan ancestralities, as well as from western European, Iberian and Scandinavian ancestries. She was born on the banks north of Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), where she currently resides, on unceded Kanien'kehá:ka lands.
Jetsam by Kaie Kellough
Jetsam is an electronic narrative installation that oscillates between the Caribbean, South America, and Canada. It uses text, recorded voice, field recordings from the Caribbean, and electronic sound.
Kaie Kellough is a poet, novelist, and sound performer. His most recent novel is Accordéon, published in 2016. His writing and performances have appeared internationally, and he is currently at work on further poetry and fiction.