Black History Month 2024 @ Centre Phi

Poster created by Garfield Morgan

FRANÇAIS app de traduction à gauche
Colored: The Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin @ Centre Phi February 7 → April 28

Detail from Colored: The Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin @ Centre Phi February 7 → April 28
/ Owned by Pierre-Olivier Marinier Leseize

FRANÇAIS app de traduction à gauche

Creators Pierre-Alain Giraud and Stéphane Foenkinos
Photo  © LENA GHIO   2024

HAVE YOU EVER wondered how it would be to experience a holodeck like in the Star Trek series? I swear this is as close as you will get to it at this moment.

The first experience is Colored: The Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin, a piece inspired by the bold action of a teenaged black girl in Montgomery Alabama who was arrested on March 2 1955 for refusing to give up her seat in a bus.

It is hard for me to imagine the absurd level of racism that can exist in the world. Black people were denied water!!! They had to use separate doors and couldn't just walk into a store. Her actions preceded those of Rosa Parks by a few months, but whereas Rosa became an iconic activist, Claudette suffered many setbacks in the shadow of the Civil rights movement. 

Tania de Montaigne is a French writer who wrote the best seller Noire, la vie méconnue de Claudette Colvin. She is also a long time collaborator with Stéphane Foenkinos who has worked in the movie business on many jobs from casting director to director in film and theatre. One day, they decided to work on transforming her book into an immersive augmented reality experience with the collaboration of Pierre-Alain Giraud, who has evolved as a producer of immersive works, documentaries, films and more.

In this experience, we are in a dreamy ghost dimension where the characters appear sometimes transparent sometimes more lifelike to give us a sense of how it must have been for the black Americans in the south in the 1950s. 

I WAS BLOWN AWAY!!!!

I hope you won't miss this experience, I never saw anything like this! I also highly recommend that you walk through the space to be awed by the three dimensionality of the performers. 

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats @ Centre Phi February 7 → April 28

Bedroom from In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats / Owned by Pierre-Olivier Marinier Leseize

Creator Darren Emerson  Photo  © LENA GHIO   2024

THEN THERE IS In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats  by Darren Emerson. He explained to us that he had always dreamed of living the illicit Rave experience of the 1980s and 90s where young people would wait for clues, messages from friends,  gather in one car, drive from one pay phone to the next until they finally arrived at the party at Acid House.

I never experienced a rave either! 

The experience is very well staged. As you walk up to the VR room, that looks like a holodeck, it looks like a trashy street. Once there, technicians will set you up to go on an astonishing journey into a literal other realm. 

What impressed me the most were the attention to details from the concepter and the speed at which I adapted to the rules of this new reality.

For example, while in the bedroom with three friends you can walk around, observe them from any angle, you can look out the window and see a sunny sky, a neighborhood. I loved it. 

The film evolves between realistic environment and abstract environments as you are on your way to the rave. I had a penchant for the realistic ones. I recognized in these scenes a comment I have tried hard to find the source but it was from a Japanese porcelain craftsman, he said:"People love to recognize things they observe in reality in our work." That is what I experienced in those spaces that recreated in great details ordinary scenes. You can actually walk on a strange desolate highway where there is a pay phone. PS if you are too young to know what a pay phone is, you will get to experience that.

I hope you will get the chance to see it.

The spaces are limited so you will have to schedule your time slot : Centre Phi February 7 → April 28

GET READY FOR NUIT BLANCHE MARCH 2, 2024

March 2 Foire fantastique: Nuit blanche at the PHI Centre Join us at the PHI Centre on March 2, for a whimsical evening featuring roving performances, immersive experiences, and haunting music. All free of charge to celebrate the 21st edition of this iconic event in Montreal.

The free programming will take you on a quest. If you're lucky, you'll get a chance to try your hand at fortune-telling. Stay tuned! A guide will be on hand to show you the way. The complete programming Ground Floor The ground floor of the PHI Centre will be filled with wandering artistic performances, including a trio of wind musicians, ambient music and visual installations, in a hushed atmosphere decorated with textiles, fabrics and a variety of lighting fixtures. Below is an overview of the various artists: Alex Tibbitts (The Bionic Harpist): Born in California and based in Montréal, Alex is a harpist and researcher in the field of new gestural and computer-based approaches to harp performance. Raphë: Raphë is a queer visual artist and filmmaker, working primarily in performance and video art. Through complex transformative processes, Raphë exposes and distorts their queer identity through elaborate and charged visual works. Ida Toniato: Saxophonist and composer Ida Toninato continues to refine her artistic practice, combining experimental and acoustic explorations, the use of resonant spaces and the creation of hybrid soundscapes. Special guests will accompany Ida on a fanfare-style stroll throughout the evening. Throughout the evening, Antipode restaurant will be on site with a pop-up shop. A selection of tapas will be available for purchase. Espace 1 - First floor Our concert hall will host three DJs from Laylit, a platform and collective celebrating music and artists from the Arab/SWANA region and its diaspora: C Lia, Cheba Iman and Crissemarqueur. Giotto will be the VJ for the evening. The program is presented by PHI and Laylit. Galleries 2 and 3 - Second floor Our two immersive experiences, Colored: The Unknown Life of Claudette Colvin and In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats, will be kept specially open until the early hours of the morning. The experiences will be presented on a first-come, first-served basis. Basement - Habitat Sonore Habitat Sonore, our immersive sound room, invites audiences to sit back under the hypnotic lights of modular synthesizers for a performance of generative, specialized electronic music by V.ictor and his guests. Additional information Free admission (315, St-Paul Street W); From 9 PM to 3 AM; Cash bar; Tapas ($). For more information, visit our Website. Partners The PHI Centre would like to thank Montréal en Lumière, Nuit Blanche de Montréal, Cult MTL and Antipode.

LENA GHIO   

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