JEAN-FRANÇOIS PROST: CHANTIER

 

Multidisciplinary

A project by Jean-François Prost with collaborators, presented by Skol

 

AUGUST 2022 – MARCH 2024

CHANTIER is an artistic, political and social investigation of the conceptualization and creation of a large display device situated on a vacant lot at 6919 Marconi in Montréal. For more than a year, this proposed structure will serve as a support for the realization of a series of collaborative, artistic and civic interventions.

 

Scheduled activities during the year 2023 – 2024:

  • Marie Sommer – Intervention 

          April 3 – May 19, 2023

          Finishing – date to be determined

  • Octavio Rüest  – Intervention 

          May 25 – July 18, 2023

  • Music eventand Presentation of the intervention of Octavio Rüest

          June 10, 2023

  • Martin Dufrasne – Intervention 

          July 27 – September 16, 2023

          Opening on August 3

  • Lynda Gaudreau and Pierre Tanguay – Sound

          Dates to be determined

  • ¡A MANO! – Intervention 

          September 28, 2023 to the end of March 2024

  • 40th anniversary of Skol on Marconi with musicians, performance and Inauguration of the intervention of ¡A MANO!

          September 30, 2023

 

 

The activities that took place during the year 2022:

  • Interventions by artists
  • Sound and text creations
  • Actions of a spontaneous nature

Participating artists confirmed during the year 2022:

  • ¡A MANO!
  • Martin Dufrasne
  • Martin Rodríguez

 

More information to come!

 

 

6919 Marconi, starting point of the CHANTIER project, is located in a hybrid urban zone (residential, industrial and commercial) along a train line. For many years now, Prost individually and collectively initiated on this 1 800 ft2 lot different types of occupations, such as workshops, projections, launches and urban camping. Today, many city dwellers are challenged and drawn to this vacant lot as a space-time of stopping, slowing down and spontaneity in an era of acceleration and increased control.

Unlike entertained-animated spaces that are overly programmed and codified, as we know nowadays, the vacant lot stays wide open for imagination (without dictating how we behave, move and travel). According to the theoretician Benjamin Delmotte, this allows “multiple never-ending beginnings.”

For the CHANTIER project, Jean-François Prost will initiate an intervention offering a support on which other individuals can act and contribute to define its character and specificity in transformation. This participation and (co)definition process suggests an eventual negotiation about the land, which is vital for democracy. As the urbanist Jane Jacobs said : “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”

The proposed actions will explore the theme of the vanished, existing and prospective urban diversity, as well as the vagueness of the place, and the unfinished aspect of the construction site as a vector for co-defining the city.

It is in this spirit that the CHANTIER project is being developed. More news will follow soon about the planned actions.

 

 

 

We thank Adaptive Actions (AA) by FEED and the audio consultant Nathalie LeBlanc for their contribution.

Photo: Paul Litherland and Jean-François Prost, 2022.