First Intervention
“Change is, and should be, ultimately collaborative. It affects everyone. I really enjoyed hearing about current and past ideas for development in Griffintown, about discourses about the area, and about perspectives from people living and working there. By photographing the area through the lenses, we were also quite literally able to see it from a different perspective, intervene and explore other possibilities of what it could look like.”
Lea Elina Hofer
Photography workshop: Personal narratives and the urban
Thanks to the support of the Elspeth McConnel internship award and the support of my host institution Fonderie Darling I did an internship at this institution during fall of 2022. My proposed plan for the internship was to do outreach community art activities. My first intervention of my PhD research proposal was part of the proposed internship plan. The activities proposed was photography workshop.
Fonderie Darling is a visual-arts venue, a non-profit organization with the mandate of supporting contemporary art creation, production, and dissemination. From its foundation in 2002 at the edge of Griffintown, Fondarie Darling has been an influential leader in saving the industrial and architectural heritage, supporting the artists, and offering dynamic programming of cultural activities.
I started at the 20TH-anniversary exhibition TU M'ENVELOPPES ET JE TE CONTIENS. Then I took the participants to significant sites around the Fonderie Darling area to explore the site's sensoriality, material, historical, political, and social significance.
My research proposal argues that learning about the neighbourhood may bring a sense of belonging, connecting to the material and social significance of the site, and sharing stories can lead to a social connection and a sense of community.
I asked participants to document their thoughts and experiences through note-taking and photography. I invited them to share their photography and comments in an online exhibition, in person, and with research publications.
On this site, I share the results of the workshop. Welcome to our online exhibition.
Virtual Gallery
.jpg)
.jpg)
URBAN SENSORIUM
"Exploring this part of the city through someone else's eyes was amazing. I was able to observe things I may have otherwise overlooked and not cared to know about. This brought meaning to the experience as a whole." Denise Olivares
photo: Denise Olivares
CONECTING_ SHARING_ENGAGING
"I find it beautiful and really eloquent that the community joins in that silence that speaks so much of what is and was Montreal in those areas, that the need to preserve the history and its meaning for all of us who love the beauty of the space and its memory is manifested". Beatriz Lopez
photo: Beatriz Lopez
EXPLORING_CHANGING PERPECTIVES
Art can transform spaces and give them a different feel and meaning while reflecting the history of a place and tell its story" Shannaz Muneni
photo: Shannaz Mumeni
IMAGING ALTERNATIVES FUTURES
photo: Stefania Hernandez
Awaking our gaze
"...we find ourselves thinking about things that sleep, Guillaume says they wake up with our gaze” EZ.
At the Fonderie Darling. for the exhibition entitled: TU M'ENVELOPPES ET JE TE CONTIENS, curated by Milly-Alexandra Dery, ten artists were invited to create works for this occasion, developing themes related to the history of the place, the art and the institution. GUILLAUME ADJUTOR PROVOST, one of the invited artists, created an installation in the basement with works by artists from the collection. The artist's proposal included the protocol for the guided basement tour. At the end of our journey around Griffntown, I made the guide tour for the basement.
The entire experience allowed me to awaken glances, discover subjectivities, and articulate narratives.
.jpg)
photo: Beatriz Lopez
photo: Lea Elina Hofer
photo: Stefania Hernandez
photo: Shannaz Mumeni
Imaging a sense of place and community
photo: Gustavo Galue
In this first intervention, I invited the community to share a collective experience toward engaging with the urban environment and the Fonderie Darling. in the process; I examined notions of SEA and pedagogy, urban sensorial, sense of place and built environment, imaginaries, material culture, sense of community, critical spatial practices, collaborative practices, and communities of practice.
What can we learn from this experience? A first approximation of the images captured by participants and their comments shows a renewed gaze and reflection toward the urban environment. The experience contributed to the sense of rootedness, as Basso (1960: 11) argued, contributing to an “experiential and expressive way place-know, imagined, yearn for (…)”.
"Search deeply in what is the meaning of a place beyond your personal lens"
Lucine Serhan
"We need to know more about our neighborhood And how lovely it is"
Maria Virginia Rivera
" Perhaps sharing some of this history of the neighborhood through public art interventions that are participatory and community-oriented for example like the cite memoir project. Different stations can be mounted in Ottawa street taking us back to different eras of the neighborhood. It could be an interesting research project that the Fonderie can also contribute to.“
Patil Tchilinguirian
photo: Gustavo Galue