Koby Rogers Hall and Frédéric Biron Carmel’s
[p(re)]occupations: The “Living” archives of Occupy Montreal
This summer, the [p(re)]occupations: The “Living” archives of Occupy Montreal research residency at Centre des arts actuels Skol will create a people’s history…of sorts. Marked by the spontaneous, non-hierarchical self-organising that distinguished last falls’ Occupy movement, residents Koby Rogers Hall and Frédéric Biron Carmel are applying that same spirit to the creation of a living record of the movement.
Their first steps were to transform the Skol environment into a place conducive to exchange. Articles, scrawled testimonials and brainstorms and are tacked to the walls. A rough diagram of the Victoria Square encampment faces two perpendicular sofa chairs. From lengths of string stretched mid air between a wall and a post hang different sized notes. A row of chairs nearby awaits an ad-hoc presentation. At a round table, amidst a pile of pens, pencils and blank paper, I sit with the artists to conduct interview that ends, quite literally, in a round-table discussion. Our conversation touches on power, resistance, cyber networks, information, people’s histories, accessibility and ephemerality.
The collaborative aspects of community art, as well as the emancipatory characteristic of (well done) social documentary emerge as the foundations upon which the project aims to build a participatory, bottom- up archive. Hopefully, by the time Koby and Fred present the work in October, the strategies of the living archive will have developed sufficiently to provide a challenge the systemic biases of dominant archiving institutions. The pair will continue their research online, and in workshops and participatory dialogues until August 10th.
Centre des arts actuels Skol, space 314
Koby Rogers Hall and Frédéric Biron Carmel
[p(re)]occupations: The “Living” archives of Occupy Montreal
June 6-August 10, 2012-07-14
www.skol.ca
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