Citywide exhibition explores stillness through walking

November 17 to December 11, 2006
Vernissage on Friday November 17th 2006 at 7:00 pm
Vernissage is preceded by Japanese Tea Ceremony from 7-8 pm

The Montreal public is invited to participate in Through to Silence, a sensorial exhibition which explores our direct physical connection to the city through the act of walking. It functions by framing specific sites in the city where nature, art or architecture function in such a way as to create experiences of stillness. In a city where a fast-moving pace of life seems constant, this exhibition offers an opportunity to pause. The exhibition opens on Friday, November 17, with the release of a map of the city in which nine such sites are identified.

The exhibition, created and coordinated by curatorial studies students from the M.F.A. program of Concordia University, encourages participants to explore and experience directly these areas of repose, through the activity of walking in the city. Maps of the exhibition can be downloaded from the website and will be distributed throughout the city at art galleries, artist-run centers and Concordia’s Bourget Gallery from Nov. 17 to Dec 11.

Participants are invited to interact yet further with the exhibition by using the concept as a starting place to discover and relay their own public sites of stillness. The exhibition website, the address of which is listed on the map, includes a link to blog reserved for viewers to send in comments or images about their experiences and to propose new locations of calm and quiet within the city bustle. The website will remain active until May 2007.

The map for Through to Silence also lists three artists’ projects included within the exhibition framework. Douglas Moffat will explore how we view the city through a series of videos collected from YouTube.com to be presented as part of the exhibition website. From Dec. 4-11 Patrice Loubier will perform Launching Balls-Corporate Hall Series within Montreal. On Nov. 30, Osvaldo Che Ramirez will create a sculptural installation on the third floor of the Bourget building, on view from 2 p.m. - 8 p.m.

On Friday, Nov. 17, in keeping with the exhibition’s exploration of stillness, the public is invited to participate in a Japanese tea ceremony from 7 p.m. - 8 p.m. in the Bourget building, 1230 rue de la Montagne. This event is followed from 8 p.m. - 11 p.m. by a joint vernissage of Through to Silence and the exhibition, In Contrast: New Illustration, another curatorial project of the M.F.A. program, on display in the Bourget Gallery until Nov. 25.

For information, e-mail press agent Sarah Badran at ene_49 @ hotmail.com, call (514) 845-3346 or visit the project website at http://hybrid.concordia.ca/~through2silence/dots/index_html.htm