This month, Caroline Dubois and Julie Favreau, have taken over a storefront at 280 Beaubien St. East for an artistic intervention organized, in part, by the multidisciplinary arts centre Dare-Dare. Every day, the two artists will engage in a perpetual construction and deconstruction project. I wrote an article about it for this week’s Mirror. Here’s an excerpt:
Admit it: at least once, while walking past a big construction site, you’ve stopped to gaze down at the workers below, scurrying like safety-vested ants as they pour concrete and install girders. You probably weren’t alone. Chances are, others joined you, equally transfixed.
Julie Favreau and Caroline Dubois hope to capture that kind of attention with their new artistic intervention, Plan d’aménagement, which runs every day this month until Monday, Nov. 26. Favreau and Dubois have occupied a vacant storefront on Beaubien, where they, with the help of a small cast of dancers and artists and a whole pile of junk, will create a performance of perpetual construction and destruction.
The goal, explains Favreau, is to explore the public’s curiosity with “space in the making.” Passers-by watch their activities through the store’s large picture window or enter to ask questions and talk with the artists.
“Some people just watch outside, others have come in,” she says. “Earlier, there was a man who wanted us to buy the building and stay here permanently. He said, ‘You can’t go, there’s nothing like this in the neighbourhood, it’s so nice to see you here.’”
Part of Dubois and Favreau’s goal is to let people experience the process of creating art rather than just the finished product. By working in a retail space on Beaubien, they are also working in an area that is often left out of Montreal’s cultural activities. Out of the gallery and into the streets: that’s the motive behind Plan d’aménagement and other projects sponsored by Dare-Dare.
Each week, Dubrois and Favreau work according to a theme: last week was “comfort,” this week is “risk” and next week is “filth.” Their daily activities culminate in a weekly performance. The next one will take place tomorrow at midnight; the next one after that will be on Saturday, November 24th at 3pm. Check it all out at 280 Beaubien East and visit the Dare-Dare website for more details.