Joceline Chabot / Denis Lessard: Under the Radar Practices

Denis Lessard lives and works in Montreal. Since 1982, he has presented his performances and visual works in Canada, the United States, France and the Netherlands. He has an art history master’s degree from Université de Montréal (1985). He has also worked as an art critic, translator, guest curator and art history lecturer.  Through his interdisciplinary practice, he has adressed issues about collecting, male identity, spirituality and the relationship between literature, music and the visual arts.  He has participated in a number of residencies since 1987 developing themes of memory, history and communities in relation to the cities and places he explores.

Joceline Chabot: “I was born north of the 48th parallel and have been adapting to Montréal life for the last 30 years. I have learned here many things and met many people which have all contributed to my thinking about what it means to be an artist in the 21st century and how to function within this shifting reality. I love writing, reading and concocting ideas that lead to the production of things that at first appear useless but that turn out to be very effective in calming anxieties… or in provoking them. Dare-Dare, Occurence, Skol, la Centrale, B-312, Circa, the network of Maisons de la culture in Montréal, France and Brussels, Kunst Raum de Riehen (Switzerland) and many others have all warmly hosted my modest yet wild imaginings. I continue to wait impatiently for new challenges while slightly regretting that I was not born with the voice of Violetta Paras.”

karen elaine spencer is an artist who maintains a studio practice, performs, curates and writes. her work questions the hierarchy inherent in use values and investigates how we, as transient beings, occupy the world we live in. the belief in a linear movement forward, or progress, is confronted through the repetition of an action that leads nowhere. rambling, dreaming, loitering and riding the metro are all activities karen has undertaken as part of her practice. an action is sustained over time (often a year) enabling a process whereby karen’s artistic practice is indistinguishable from her daily life. she works with what is near at hand, materials that speak of our day-to-day existence: cardboard, oranges, bread, chalk. through a détournement of materials or intentions karen intervenes into spaces; hoping to shift, ever so slightly, perceptions of what is possible.

Critic and art historian Patrice Loubier holds a PhD in art history from Université de Montréal (2008). He has authored many texts published in periodicals, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues with a focus on intervention art. Together with Anne-Marie Ninacs, he is responsible for Les Commensaux, a year of special programming dedicated to these practices at Centre des arts actuels Skol (Montréal, 2000-2001). As a curator, he has contributed to different events including Orange (centre Expression, Saint-Hyacinthe, 2003), Manif d’art 3 (Québec, 2005) and Espace mobile (VOX, Montréal, 2008). He was on the editorial committee of ESSE and Inter and a member of the experts committee steering the public art database at Artexte. As a lecturer, Patrice Loubier taught art history at the University of Ottawa and Université de Montréal and, since 2005, has joined the UQAM faculty.

After completing studies in both art and literature, Anne Bérubé continues to work in both areas as a researcher and practicioner. Lecturer, facilitator and author, she has written texts about local artists for many exhibition catalogues and in 1995, co-edited an important reference work on installation practice in Québec with Sylvie Cotton. Since 2007, she’s a member of TouVa, a performance based collective with Sylvie Tourangeau and Victoria Stanton. Together, they create opportunities for the investigation of performance in a variety of contexts and conditions. Based on dialogue and exchange, the trio’s activities include workhops, dynamic conferences, coaching, performances and writing. For the past ten years, Anne has integrated performance in her teaching practice of French literature at the Cégep level.