2010/05 Montréal Aether9 Presentation

english

Date: May 25th, 2010

19:30 Montréal time Wednesday, the 26th of May 2010
1195 Boulevard Saint-Laurent,
Montréal, QC H2X 2S6, Canada
Société des arts technologiques [S.A.T.]

CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND for this AETHER9 presentation:

Quartier des Spectacles / Café Cléopâtre / SAT

Montréal’s downtown «entertainment district» (Quartier des Spactacles), has over the last 4 years taken on the proportions of gigantic project for urban spatial control. Site of numerous state-funded mega-festivals for over 30 years, the downtown area around Place des Arts is a constant site of tension between Montréal’s famed Red Light district, Chinatown, space-hungry UQÀM, and the downtown core. The Société des arts technologiques (the SAT), site of our performance on May 26th, is a new kid on the block, holding less sway and way less funding than others. Since the Ville de Montréal decided to bulldoze many of the parks, empty lots, and underused green spaces to remake the zone (between St-Laurent and Bleury, Ste-Catherine and de Maisonneuve) into a kind of Modernist
«KulturPlatz», numerous changes have occurred on the urban landscape. As with the 1976 Olympics, removal of spaces for the homeless (and hence removal of the homeless), «sanitation» and general «moral clean-up» has taken place, threatening many less institutional places of cultural production with closure, extortion, arson, or expropriation. One such place is the storied Café Cléopâtre, a cabaret bar featuring drag and transsexual artists and performers for decades. Cléopâtre asked to be part of the Council that will oversee the Quartier des Spactacles, but was refused entry since its programming did not reflect the desired PR of the City’s renewal plan. Now, the Quartier des Spactacles is overseen by a group of institutional cultural organizations which decide on the use, appearance, and future of this entire area of Montréal as a place whose sole intention is
SPECTATORSHIP, CONSUMPTION, and the ever-tightening control of the citizen as consumer.

I found interesting this presentation in this place because those days wa the oppening of a guge horrible comercial center in my city, Medellín. People here movilize for that kind of things. Again a place for comsumption. But when there are tragedies like massive kills in the country, in the periferical neibourghoods no body reacts. Nothing happens, like if all that kind of thing still unreality for them like things on TV.

I want to protest about all the buildings they are rising everywhere in my city and no enough places for culture, only sistematic comercial places.

So it is very interesting that Audrey and Chris developped the patch for PD and for mobil devices. It is still for ameliorations but it worked!

A technical demonstration of Aether9 and its new PD Patch and Wiimote control options.

Update: A screen capture recorded by Cym has been published:

Duration: 34 min.

–>Performers: Christiaan Cruz, cym, ideacritik, Manuel Schmalstieg, Mari Keski-Korsu, Paula Vélez, Vinny Bhagat

Note: For Colombia location the fullscreen correspond to centro comercial santa fé in Medellín, and the transmission place was in centro comercial san fernando plaza. I had to drink a lot of coffee to use the internet connection.