Initial thoughts

Arriving in Montreal has been both a massive culture shock, but also a wonderful experience at the same time. Most surprisingly is that French is very much seen as the primary language here. Even if they respond in English, the enquirant must first ask in French, as if they are asking permission to speak English.

That aside, it is also an extremely beautiful city that embraces its constant duality. Between French and English, Canadian and European and culture and sleaze this city lives and breathes both of it in a way that perhaps I am not used to. In London we tuck away the bits we don't want to see in a very British way.

Today was the first day I met Alexis, and I feel that it has very much been a crash course. I have arrived midway through her series of workshops entitled 'The Blender', and today the participants were filming a documentary about themselves to get to know themselves and their practice. A very interesting method of finding these things out, the video forces them to ask questions to themselves as well as giving them a purpose to explain it; the video is watched by the rest of the class and it must therefore be clear what their purposes and intentions are in their work. The videos took on different forms, from being a faux-papparazzi question session to a serious and existential look at someone's practice, it traverses the participants' styles as much as their work.

Alexis has been very willing to answer my questions about her, her practice and the city of Montreal in general. Today she expressed when introducing me that live art is more popular in the UK and Europe than it is in Canada which surprised me somewhat given it's marginalisation in the UK. When I quizzed her, she said that Canadian government are more concerned with defining 'inter-arts' rather than terming it 'live art' as a bracket for many different practices, performances and cross disciplines. This, in turn, makes funding extremely difficult for anything that falls outside the 'inter-arts' category as the government has such strict guidelines on this.  

On her recent performance pieces, like the 'Sorrow Sponge' (performed at the National Review of Live Art) and 'Confessions' (these are both pieces where Alexis recorded people's voices via installation and then replayed and remixed them during live performance), she told me that she wanted to add more 'art' to her work and step outside the confines of the strict 'song and dance' relationship often associated with music and creation (a feeling I strongly share with her), and that she was very often pigeon holed in the spoken word scene. This was her way of 'breaking out' of this and trying to add a sense of liveness. I was somewhat surprised as I have often used her work as an example of 'liveness' (creating live, spontaneous soundscapes), that she did not see the framework she works outside of. In a sense, this made me realise that no matter how far you get or how much you do, there will always be something you're not happy with, something you want to change and something you can improve on. This 'artistic insecurity' is, I guess, what keeps artists creating new and innovative work.

Tonight I am meeting with her and D. Kimm to talk more about her London show, and what she wants/ expects me to stage.