Activism in Montréal

Today the plan was to go the the Infringement Festival cocktail party and dumpster dive art show, http://www.infringemontreal.org/infringement-cocktails-at-the-dumpster-dive-art-drive/

 

The crowd was thin but soon I realized we were at the beginning of something significant... the independence of art and artists from corporate takeover. The Infringement Festival was an offshoot of the Fringe Festival when "Fringe" was trademarked and began requiring higher registration fees.

 

"The infringement is a democratically run, non-hierarchical interdisciplinary arts festival open to all critical artists – theatre, music, film, street performance, visual arts, you name it."

 

The organizer Donavan King turns out to have been in tutelage with Stephen Duncombe (this was discovered via Facebooks mutual friends category.) Stephen Duncombe is an NYU professor and co-runs the Center for Artistic Activism.http://artisticactivism.org/people/about-the-founders/

 

We labeled pre-existing alley objects as objet d'art. Miss Maya also seized upon two paint cans for some fabulous platform shoes. The adults, having some of their creative selves with age, marveled at her invention and complimented me on my initiative to bring them to a dumpster diving art event. When dumpster diving (before it was called that) is so integrated into ones upbringing and arts initiation, it's hard to take credit for it.

 

Then we sauntered down Saint Laurent... too hesitant to join the Infringement Feast on Prince Andrews, and ended up at The Anarchists Bookstore, Librarie Insoumise:http://insoumise.wordpress.com/ Where we found fabulous activist cloths to sew onto t-shirts and dresses and we found cool posters and classics for $1. I never thought of myself as an anarchist so I didn't think I'd find anything of interest. It turns out that there's a lot of activist literature that I could enjoy. The punk-rockers from the fringe art party came in and said a very outgoing hello. Earlier I eavesdropped as the guy explained that true hippies were good at making things and living off the land not pot smoking dullards. I couldn't agree more.

 

We ended our evening with a stop at the thrift store across the street, Eva B.s.