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Event Descriptions 

 

Saturday, April 7

 

12 – 1:30pm

Saturday Brunch

Hosted by Sahar Te, Hera Chan and Thy Anne Chu Quang

Offered by People’s Potato

 

Join us for brunch to discuss with artists and curators the other half of Common Aliens 2018, Whispers That Got Away, a group exhibition at SBC Gallery! Food, coffee, and tea will be provided. Feel free to bring anything to add to the bounty, including your own plates or tupperware.

 

 

 

2 - 3:45pm

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.

 

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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 and Production & Arbutus Records.

 

 

 

4 - 5:45pm

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, are 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?

 

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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.

 

 

 

6:30 - 8:30pm
Performances 

inter-being by wyïsya   

Jetsam by Kaie Kellough

 

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.

 

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.

 

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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.

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.

 

 

 

Sunday, April 8

 

12 – 1:30pm

Sunday Brunch

Hosted by Joeun Aatchim, Yen-Chao Lin and Kate Whiteway

Offered by People’s Potato

 

Join us for brunch to discuss with artists and curators the other half of Common Aliens 2018, Whispers That Got Away, a group exhibition at SBC Gallery! Food, coffee, and tea will be provided. Feel free to bring anything to add to the bounty, including your own dishes.

 

 

 

2 - 3:45pm

Workshop – Womb Cxre: Whispers

Facilitated by Be Heintzman Hope

 

In tandem with Common Aliens’ interest in Relief Theory and Atelier Céladon’s writings on whispers as a diasporic mode of communication, Be Heintzman Hope offers a workshop in breath and movement.

 

Breath happens without being asked, it simply is, and yet is changing all of the time. The breath carries laughter, words, screams, memory and much more. Womb Cxre works with the philosophy that the body carries many voices inside, the voices of one’s own and the voices that have landed on our bodies. Whispers offers an embodied approach to look at how these voices inhabit us.

 

Through breath, we will research how the body is influenced by others. This is an invitation to reflect upon the ripple effect of micro embodiments, keeping in mind the contextual macro effect of colonial and diasporic presence on Tio'tia:ke. Participants will first be guided through gentle breathing exercises before moving into partner work that will stimulate wider discussions on embodied history, ancestry and future imaginaries.

 

This workshop prioritises racialized people and has a limited capacity. Please register in advance by emailing info@atelierceladon.com.

 

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Be Heintzman Hope is a facilitation artist, community builder, dancer, dj and performer based in Tio'tia:ke. They are a descendant of the first Chinese immigrants to arrive in so-called “Canada” to work on the railroad, and hold German and Scottish blood as part of their ancestry and inherited occupancy of Indigenous land. For Be, creation is healing and inextricable from mental health. Their work is trauma informed, based in play, pleasure and the belief that laughing everyday is an achievable goal.

 

 

 

5 - 6pm
Comedy performance - Pressure Valves

Featuring Alo Azimov, Sehar Manji and Sara Meleika

 

Pressure Valves is a series of performances by comedians intended to dissect their practice. It is joke-telling about joke-making. Performers will explore how comedy serves both the comedian and the audience, how care is communicated through humour, and what it means to tell the same joke for the second, third, and hundredth time.

 

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Born and raised in Nairobi, Sehar Manji is now a Montreal-based improviser, actor, writer, teacher and comedienne. She was trained in short-form and long-form improv at the Montreal Improv Theatre for 6 years, where she was also a member of their house teams Night Bus and Helmüt. She performs regularly onstage around the city and is a core cast member of Colour Outside The Lines, an improv show celebrating diversity within Montreal’s improv community. She has appeared in local festivals (MPROV, Montreal Sketchfest, Ladyfest, Fringe, OFF-JFL) and has also performed in Toronto (The Big City Improv Festival and JFL42), New York (The Del Close Marathon) and was invited to be a part of the International Ensemble at the Vancouver International Improv Festival for the past two years!

 

Sara Meleika is an Egyptian improviser, storyteller, and high-school teacher. She produces and performs in Colour Outside the Lines – a show dedicated to uplifting diverse voices, which has been highlighted in the Montreal Gazette and Cult Montreal. Sara was also a co-producer of the 2017 edition of Ladyfest Montreal, a festival celebrating female & women centered comedy! She is now very enthused to be the English Inclusion Coordinator at Montreal Improv.

 

Alo Azimov is a comedian who loves sketch, improv, stand-up & storytelling, with props & puns never too far behind! Alo is non-binary & their pronouns are they/them. Alo lives in Montreal, and has performed in Montreal Sketchfest, Pride Montreal, Ladyfest, Off-Fringe, in Zoofest & OFF JFL. Alo hosts & co-produces "Stand-up Story Slam", a comedic storytelling show. Alo studied biology for years & now they focus on the arts!