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FOUR MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

Issue Twelve November 2011

FOUR MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT: ISSUE XII

conceived and composed by Kevin Lo and John W. Stuart

editorial assistance: Jessica Alley, Sophie Le Phat Ho, Sara McCulloch, and Heather Stewart

Expozine photos by Camille McCouat ( 2, 42, 44, 124, 126 ) and Denis-Carl Robidoux ( 10, 40 )

cover illustration by Billy Mavreas

in collaboration with Archive Montreal

printed by Imprimerie Kata Soho

Première question Pourquoi faire un fanzine ? Oui Pourquoi ? Pourquoi ! RentRons dans le vif du sujet, dans le flan aux œufs de la question. Je dirais que tu dois faire un zine paRce que tu es un être de fantasme oPpressé par la société. qu’est-ce que ça veut dire ? qu’on vole ta vOix sur-aiguë cOntinuellement. qu’on te met des mots dans la bouche et qu’apRès On te convainc que t’as vraiment dis ça. que les mêmes truies qui écrivent les magazines débiles que tu lies sont celles qui se Plaignent de ton mode de vie sOus pRétexte que c’était écrit dedans le magazine. tu vOis la crosse ?

deuxième question Comment faire un fanzine ? c’est pas compliqué. le pire, C’est de mettre dans l’état de Choc-toxique. tu te soûles la gueule d’ineurgidrinque. tu te gaves de haine envers tes aïeuls et tu éCris. dans le fOnd un zone, C’est juste une feuille, des mots et des décoRations.

Vincent Couture Clémentine, Numéro 5

Ten years is a short, long time. A moment, an eternity.

Ten years ago I was quitting my first ‘real’ job in Toronto and moving back to Montréal. The FTAA protest in Québec City was a fresh scar in my mind and body, a permanent reminder of the world that exists outside of my relative priviledge. It was also my first glimpse into the world of possibilities that emerges when we finally say no and do it ourselves.

We met on the front lawn of the VA building, smoking cigarettes and fuming at the world, trying to find the place, our place, where graphic design might contribute to the struggle. Trying to learn how to do it ourselves. It would eventually lead to this zine, and many other projects, some doomed to failure, others still growing. At the time though, all we had were a few ideas and a new city splayed in front of us. Then those towers fell, and shit got uglier, meaner, more dangerous.

Ten years on, and things are still pretty ugly out there. I think of Troy Davis murdered last month. I think of Palestine. I think of the austerity and

poverty we are promised. I think of the screens we stare at and the words and gestures we now lack. Over time we mobilised, and we forgot, and we mobilised again and forgot again. We got jobs, we lost jobs, had our hearts broken and mended inumerable times. We kept smoking and fuming.

Yeah, it’s still ugly out there…

Despite it all, I have to say it’s still beautiful in here. Inside all these hidden spaces, the backrooms of small bars, factory loft apartments where strange jazz rings out, snowy alleyways speckled by poppy seeds and all the wobbly balconies attached to them. Immense church basements where we meet and exchange. The margins of the page.

Expozine, Montreal’s annual small press, comics and zine fair, is one such place. It’s emblematic of all these spaces, of a bubbling and frothing creative culture that won’t take no for an answer. Inspired by the Anarchist book fair, but without the ideological bent (though I would argue that making honest shit

yourself these days is pretty damn political, even if it is about the cats in your alleyway), Expozine emerged out of necessity. From a couple of tables set up in the venerable Sala Rossa it has grown into two sweat packed days in a church basement, with almost 300 exhibitors each year and thousands upon thousands passing through. It continues to grow because people feel the need to make something that speaks of their experience of; art making, gender identity, politics, being, or just plain madness. It grows because people have so many things they need to share.

This November, Expozine celebrates it’s tenth anniversary. In collaboration with Archive Montreal, this issue of Four Minutes to Midnight is dedicated to that celebration and to all those that have participated in the festival over the years. It is by no means an attempt at a comprehensive nor authoratative anthology. It is an intimate sampling of those we’ve rubbed shoulders with in the beautiful space created by Expozine.

John and Kevin

Lianne Zannier Les Chations du Quartier

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Montreal is the only major city in Canada that does not have an independent book fair. Toronto has Canzine (run by the folks at Broken Pencil magazine), a small press fair, and a cut-and-paste festival. Ottawa, Vancouver, even Edmonton all have zine and book fairs. But where is our Zinebec? Ironically, Montreal is positioned to have the most diverse and successful fair of any city. What I see at Canzine are hundreds of tables of the same thing (with a few notable exceptions), yet I am constantly amazed by the amount of book/magazine/CD launches, commix jams, and cabaret shows that take place around Montreal, sometimes two or three a week. And those are just the ones I know about or in which I am involved. Montreal has an internationally renowned bandes dessinés/comix community, independent record labels, artist book exhibitions, some of the best zines in the country, Distroboto, and a spoken word community which has become the envy of other cities. And at the risk of banging my dear reader over the head, remember all of this is in two official languages. The recent success of the Anarchist Book and Freedom Fair proved that there is a lot of interest in independent publications. However,

Originally published in La Voce del Popoplo, Vol. 1 No. 1 Fall /Automne 2001

Zinebec:When will it come?

BY ANDY BROWN

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to midnightSimon Bossé Mille Putois

those tables were filled solely with politically–oriented tracts. If these kinds of crowds will come out for a single genre, imagine the potential in a fair that would feature many vibrant and overlapping scenes. We need a fair that is representative of all the communities and all the languages which make this city such a unique place to live. Montreal hosts an impressive array of homegrown culture. There are only a handful of English–language small presses operating in the city, but there is a wealth of talent. Perhaps this is because the mentality here is to be truly independent, which means not being dependent on Chapters to sell your book, nor on government subsidies in the form of grants. So the cultural product is out there, but it must be sold through alternative avenues since mainstream culture has monopolized the distribution networks. We have been very adept so far but the most beneficial way to sell and promote these independent publications is at a huge and diverse fair. Zinebec is born!

The gauntlet has been thrown down. Who shall pick it up?

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BY JESSICA ALLEY

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I had lived in Montreal less than a month when a co-worker took me to a show at Cagibi. I was so new to the city that I got lost trying to find her place on Colonial, wandering north on St-Denis instead. But the night was beautiful and I was free, surrounded by unknown ruelles and dimly lit avenues, engulfed by a polyphony of languages; an outsider in the middle of everything, hungrily taking in this pauperized bounty of prosperity. This night is pertinent to my memory for many reasons. On our way to the show, we stopped at a dep to buy beer for the walk. In Nova Scotia, such conveniences simply don’t exist. Cagibi turned out to be a cozy closet-sized cafe of mismatched armchairs, worn-in upholstery, softly glowing table lamps and a fusion of aromas that wafted lazily around the room, coiling under noses and erupting tummy rumbles. The show was a Neil Young tribute; a suitable marriage, I thought, of my love for Neil and my newly discovered love for Montreal. But most important were the cultural discoveries I made that night: a zine called Four Minutes to Midnight and something called a Distroboto, an ingenious machine that serves up small packets of hand-crafted art. It would take more than a few months, but eventually I would walk up the right avenue in this cultural landscape and find myself just where I wanted to be — surrounded by heaps of zines and scores of Distroboto machines.

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It’s in a commercial loft off of rue Beaubien that Archive Montreal calls home. This is where I found myself one evening last June, amidst hundreds of zines and old cigarette vending machines awaiting their reincarnation as Distrobotos. This is where I met Louis Rastelli and spent the next few hours chatting with him about his DIY lifestyle and Expozine. Louis Rastelli is a founding member of Archive Montreal, a collective of friends and associates who have been a prominent part of Montreal’s independent arts scene since the early 90’s. Archive Montreal is the umbrella organization responsible for Expozine, Montreal’s annual zine fair, the Distroboto network of art-vending machines, and several other cultural initiatives centered on the promotion of independent literature and art. Registered in 1998, the Archive initially took on the task of housing the members’ impressive zine collections, which I imagine were once stacked throughout their apartments in precarious, teetering towers, with bookmarks stuck out from between pages, grazing the legs of whoever was bold enough to walk so close. The towers have since been transported, and now they live amongst each other in a similar organized chaos.

Louis is hands down one of the most interesting people I’ve ever talked to. He knows so much about do-it-yourself culture and relays his knowledge in an incessant stream of intelligent chatter. Drumming a list off the top of his head, he suggested that anyone interested in this DIY credo should just “get a blog going, put out a zine as well, maybe make some post cards or other products… I grew up, in my early teens, listening to activist-type punk, Crass was probably the band that influenced me the most, and a big part of it is that it’s really important to have the ability to put out your own stuff.” Writing for zines since he was 15 and creating his own at 16, Louis has had a platform for self-expression since the late 80’s. “I was probably 12 or 13 when I started buying zines. I got a radio show at the university station when I was 16. I started writing for a local newspaper reviewing bands, and doing zines and buying zines.” In

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1996, Louis founded Fish Piss magazine, correctly guessing that the local creative community needed more outlets to be published in. With this infatuation influencing his early years and shaping his adulthood, it’s not surprising that by the late 90’s, he and his friends were itching to create a book fair of sorts in Montreal. “Because we were in the biz, we were long time zine people, DIY people, and we knew that it was getting frustrating. It was getting harder to find places to sell stuff in, and if you can’t get your stuff out there, what’s the point?” Finally, in 2002, four years after Archive Montreal was established, Louis co-founded Expozine, which has since grown to become one of the biggest zine fairs in North America. This year, Expozine turns ten, with a profusion of reasons to celebrate. “There’s no other fair with 300 different publishers. So we have publishers like Microcosm and other American publishers, alternative presses, that go to all the fairs in North America, and they’re the ones who tell us ‘Wow, this is like the shit!’ ” And they’re right. Squeezing though the congested aisles last year, casting my voracious stare over every table, I devoured the array of zines surrounding me. I wanted to buy them all. A mini hand-drawn zine titled L’Éléphant triste came home with me, as did about ten more, all creative, all unique; some stapled together, some beautifully bound.

Expozine has come a long way since its premiere at Sala Rossa nearly a decade ago. Although it has since relocated to the basement of the St-Enfant-Jésus Church, size and space are still the main challenges Expozine faces. “Within the first year of Expozine, we realized that the need we had a hunch about was totally there, and now the challenge was ‘okay, how do we expand?’ ” said Louis. “We’ve done a lot in ten years, we’ve proven that we’re here for good, and that the need for our stuff isn’t about to go away, but we’ve never tapped the potential, really. The ultimate goal is to continue coming up with ways that can make it easy for the public to access the world of zines and underground, alternative, DIY publishing, creation and culture.” The barrage of bodies moving like molasses through the church basement is a testament to Expozine’s necessary expansion. But when grants are

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Fish Piss covers by Jean-Pierre Chansigaud, Siris, Caro Caron, Uncle Costa

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so difficult to obtain, and every year is a gruelling, precarious process of filling out applications and appealing to sponsors, expanding to a larger venue is easier said than done. As Louis admits, the issue of expansion raises some difficult questions, and he immediately begins to question himself as he ponders the issue out loud. “I mean we have serious growing pains, we need a bigger space, we turn away too many people. Maybe we don’t need a bigger space though, because we don’t want to go to, you know, a convention hall — it’s more the comfort of it. We could have 400 exhibitors, but then is there time? Is it too much for one weekend? Maybe there are different formulas. I don’t know what the answer is, but we’re really waaaay outgrowing the space and the formula that we have. Our reputation is bigger, so more people from more places want to take part, but we don’t want to squeeze out the locals either, because it’s a priority in Montreal, and we like to keep a language balance as well...”

But a form of expansion, so to speak, has been occurring. Slowly and surely, Louis and Archive Montreal have been expanding across the ocean to France. “The government of France is way more open to different kinds of art, especially compared to the government of Quebec. The amazing thing is, 90% of our trouble with grants has been with Quebec, for both Expozine and Distroboto… Here in Quebec we have good, professional standards, normal stuff, just like everybody else…” he mocked. “That seems to be their preoccupation, you know? I mean, who gets most of the money? It’s not the weirdo music festivals, it’s the Jazz Fest and FrancoFolies. We have issues with that, in France they don’t though.” Last year, Louis and two of the artist collectives that have participated in Expozine over the years, were completely funded by the government of France to take a trip to Fanzinothèque, one of the largest zine libraries in the world. “They get over a hundred zines a month in the mail, and they’re getting them from more and more different countries,” he said. “I brought a selection, as much as my suitcase could allow, from the 60’s to today, a selection of zines from Quebec from our Archive.” So, although the notion of physically expanding

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Expozine raises challenging questions, culturally, Louis and Expozine are expanding internationally and creating literary ties. Later that year, Louis formally invited the Fanzinotèque team to Expozine, where they had a table, gave a presentation and scooped up a ton of zines to bring back to their Archive. Louis, of course, did the same, adding plenty of European zines to the archive. “We’re really happy to have more of this international kind of reputation and partnership. After ten years, hopefully this is really just the beginning of the next step.”

So it’s clear that people care about zines and that zines matter. It’s also clear that Expozine matters, as more and more people, both Canadian and international, rush to be a part of it every year. “There’s always going to be something being ignored, not talked about, and that’s where zines come in,” mentioned Louis. Zines often speak from the margins, with counter-cultural topics that wouldn’t have a place in the mainstream — but not always. Speaking about the term ‘underground’ Louis said “to us it’s less about the content than the fact of it. We have older poetry writers, or middle aged writers who have a literary club, who book a table to sell their annual collection of poems or something like that, it’s not very underground content. But still, it’s the act of not waiting around or hoping that some other publisher will do it for you someday, and then just getting together and printing it.” And whether you’re getting together with friends to print a collective zine, or chatting with people you’ve just met at Expozine, or hanging out stapling zines with a bunch of fellow procrastinators the night before, it’s that sense of camaraderie that makes Expozine so wonderful, so important. Louis told me a beautiful story about an older Chinese woman who had a table at last year’s Expozine, who had printed her own book about how to learn Chinese. “And I wasn’t sure if she’d make it much past the first day of Expozine,” he continued. “But by the end of the first day I noticed she was talking to the people next to her, and the second day she came up and said ‘this is so much fun, I didn’t know so many people did this too, just went ahead and published their book.’ And even though her book had like zero to do with anything else in that whole room, she felt this empowerment that

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she was among a ton of people from all sorts of places and all sorts of subjects and interests, doing just that. And obviously it encouraged her to do that, to keep doing it.” “I’ve always been firm on the fact that ‘doing it yourself ’ is more of a political act than the content of it. It doesn’t have to be political content. You’re already doing something, not so much against the system, but for self-empowerment, if you’re doing it yourself.”

I let those last words resonate as I waited for Louis to lock up, the first to arrive and the last to leave, burnt out from hours of working on grant applications and long meetings. As the last lights flickered off, it became obvious that aside from all the blood, sweat, time and money Louis’ DIY ethic requires, ultimately, it’s about a heart-felt devotion to other people; the teachers, the poets, the weirdos and punks, all those that’ve still got something to say.

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PAR SARA MCCULLOCH ET KEVIN LO

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Pascal-Angelo Fioramore est un artiste intransigeant qui chapeaute son temps entre une carrière de chanteur-performeur au sein des Abdigradationnistes, un poste d’éditeur au sein des Éditions Rodrigol, un DJ populaire, des ambitions poétiques depuis la parution du bouquin Têtagoise et le doux sobriquet d’homme au foyer, en étant paternel hors pair. Il a vendu son âme à L’Empire Rodrigol et est membre de l’unique club A.T.R. (Action Terroriste Ridicule). Il aime particulièrement se charger des samosas lors de la foire Expozine.

Quand avez-vous découvert le milieu des petits éditeurs indépendants ?En 2003, lors de la foire Expozine, nous avions fait paraître un seul titre avec les Éditions Rodrigol et nous cherchions une façon de le rendre disponible et d’obtenir de la visibilité. Il y avait aussi à la même époque les premières éditions du Marché de la poésie et de l’activité autour de la parution de la revue Steak Haché.

Quel était votre livre paru ? Le titre fondateur de la maison est celui d’Annie Gauthier, De Dieu et de ma camisole de force. C’est un récit autobiographique tellement éclaté

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qu’il est difficile de savoir ce qui est réel et ce qui ne l’est pas. Une forme de quête complètement supplantée par un épisode de psychose intense.

Aviez-vous eu des échanges avec d’autres petits éditeurs avant ? Et comment était la communauté littéraire à Montréal à ce moment ?Pas vraiment, en fait j’avais vu des projets indépendants comme le recueil collectiff de Mitsiko Miller, La vache enragée mais pas plus. C’est sûr qu’il y avait déjà quelques publications indépendantes dans le monde musical, comme Kérozen dirigé par Pat K.

Est-ce que les Éditions Rodrigol était déjà connues ? Qu’est-ce qui vous a amené à produire des livres ? Dans le monde de l’édition ?C’est ce projet qui a parti le bal en question mais bon cela fesait déjà presque 10 ans à l’époque que notre regroupement nommé L’Empire Rodrigol (un collectif de création multidisciplinaire) produisait des cabarets, des disques et des courts-métrages. Le fait de commencer à coucher sur papier nos productions semblait naturel. Cela me plaisait bien de pouvoir travailler avec d’autres créateurs, de pouvoir échanger sur le travail et la production d’une œuvre qui n’était pas la mienne. Sans compter le fait que le projet des Éditions

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Rodrigol en était un dirigé à trois, par André Racette, Claudine Vachon et moi-même. Cela apporte des dynamiques de travail très différentes de la production d’oeuvres en solo.

Comment avez-vous croisé Louis Rastelli ? Et comment avez-vous été mis en contact avec le monde de l’édition ici à Montréal ?Je l’ai rencontré lors de la foire où l’on était la première fois. Et par le fait même découvert tout un pan de la culture underground que je connaissais que très peu. J’ai été rapidement très enthousiaste de pouvoir rencontrer les acteurs de cette scène. Après notre deuxième année à titre d’exposant, nous avons approché Louis afin de donner un coup de main autant au point de vue de la correction du français, de la logistique de l’événement, mais surtout en la recherche de d’autres créateurs de livres et zines francophones.

Quand vous êtes allé à Expozine pour la première fois, trouviez-vous qu’il y avait assez de représentation de la production francophone?C’est clair que non, mais, en fait, je ne m’attendais pas non plus à grand-chose. C’est justement cette découverte d’un monde parallèle

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anglophone qui nous a fait se dire que nous voulions aussi y participer et rassembler des créateurs francophones.

Avec les années, est-ce que le nombre de petits éditeurs a augmenté ? Et quels sont les autres éditeurs ou fanzines que vous aimez ?Je crois qu’il y a un effet très significatif de la présence d’Expozine et de la production de plus d’œuvres du genre du côté francophone. Il y a une partie de la production qui se veut plus établie (l’éditeur au sens propre du terme), j’avais l’impression à vue de nez que le DIY n’était pas moins présent mais pas nécessairement ce qui était le plus recherché dans les productions francophones. J’étais néophyte aussi, il faut dire. Depuis le temps, bien sûr j’aime le travail de L’Oie de Cravan, cette exactitude dans la beauté des choses, cet amour de la publication. Je constate d’ailleurs qu’il y a véritablement des amateurs du genre. Des passionnés des beaux objets/livres. Mais dans un autre spectre, il y a la gang du FAS ou les petits trucs qui ne durent que le temps d’un salon. Il faut être un amoureux du papier d’abord, et ensuite le travail se fait tout seul.

Comment les fanzines ont-ils évolués depuis quelques années ?Je crois que la qualité a augmenté par l’utilisation de certaines technologies, ou du moins cela est plus facile de produire un beau zine... mais est-il bon ? Tout se discute. Et il ne faut pas oublier qu’il y a des techniques qui vont se perdre par ces mutations technologiques. Je demeure donc prudent sur la qualité des objets qui sont produits.

Pensez-vous que les productions indépendantes jouent un plus grand rôle au Québec que dans d’autres parties du Canada ou d’Amérique du nord ?Je ne sais pas réellement l’impact que cela peu avoir même ici. Je constate une plus grande ouverture, une augmentation de la production et de la qualité des oeuvres, mais y établir une comparaison avec l’étranger, je ne sais pas. Nous avons tout de même un empire de 300 millions de gens à côté de nous, il faut se garder une petite gêne.

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Est-ce possible d’expérimenter facilement à Montréal ? Et comment la communauté artistique vous perçoit depuis quelques années ?Je pense que je pourrais produire des fanzines ou des livres assez facilement ailleurs, ceci étant dit la diffusion et l’ouverture de public Montréalais semble assez exceptionnel. Je me base aussi sur des commentaires recueillis d’exposants venants des Etats-Unis et de France. Aujourd’hui je sais que Rodrigol fait partie prenante de cette scène et j’apprécie vraiment d’avoir des rencontres avec un public respectueux et curieux de savoir ce que nous allons produire de nouveau.

Que pouvez-vous dire à propos de la communauté créatrice de Montréal ?Elle est importante et essentielle à la vitalité culturelle du Québec. Elle à une particularité sur cette portion de continent qu’il faut absolument savoir mettre en valeur et promouvoir, afin de pousser le public à être plus curieux et plus intéressé à ce qui se produit ici.

En entrant dans sa 10ième année, qu’est-ce que vous pensez qu’Expozine a changé à Montréal, quel est son impact ?Expozine a réussi à créer un événement incontournable, gigantesque pour ses moyens de productions, une diffusion monstres de créations originales, un positionnement génial pour la ville auprès des réseaux de créateurs internationaux et ce, sans le soutien réel des médias dit traditionnels. Comme un coup de pied au cul des structures établies qui, année après année, préfères parler d’un ixième livre de cuisine publié à l’occasion du Salon du livre de Mourial, rendant le tout complètement obsolète.

BY VINCENT TINGUELY

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Billy Mavreas is an artist, archivist, collector, curator, and mentor. He co-runs Monastiraki, a hybrid curiosity shop /art space on Saint Laurent blvd. Breaking into the consciousness of the creative realm in the late-eighties with his street poster designs for the Montreal literary and spoken word scenes, he’s long since become a fixture in the independent arts community, the go-to reference for eclectic curiosities and printed ephemera. He’s been involved in Expozine since it started.

vincent tinguely How do you see your evolution as an artist?

billy mavreas My evolution as an artist… I think my challenge as an artist for the last few years has been to accept the fact that I have all these different aspects to my art practice. If I draw stupid bunny drawings on one side, then do text manipulations on the other side, or collections, installation–whatever–my challenge has really been trying to figure out how to tell the world that it’s all one person doing this. Basically, it’s like flirting with the contemporary art world and realizing that people who are involved in that world don’t necessarily have a secret practice that they aren’t including in their artist’s

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statement. If they draw, do performance art, do video art and make books, they somehow package that and say, “That’s the artist I am.” It’s always been a challenge for me, because I draw these robots and I draw these bunnies. I also do this really abstract stuff. But people only know me for my comics. Where I’m going now is kind of being comfortable and saying all these different streams come from the same place. My exploration tends to be continuous: if you give me a stack of coat hangers I’m going to fart around with the coat hangers and see what I can do. Or liquid paper and knapsacks? I’ll do something with that. Video, or anything–I like that constant play and curiosity. What helps that is community and collaboration. When I was in Banff at an artist’s residency, I was able to witness how other people work for a month in their studios, and see how they prioritize their creation. You come away from it going, “I don’t do that at all,” or “I see how what I do fits in.” Then there’s also the opportunity of artists coming into your space — artists you don’t know very well (people you’ve just met) and they’re able to see what you do in a way that you haven’t seen it.

vince It sounds like the wall has gone down between high and low culture, in the sense that previously, you might have said, “Well, I’m just a comic artist, I’m not an artist.” Right?

billy Right.

vince And part of that, I guess, is that the ‘Canadian Art Establishment’ has recognized this work.

billy That’s right. I self-identified as a cartoonist and as a comics artist several years ago, and was very happy to be part of that community, because I liked how unpretentious it was. I liked how accessible it was. I was very pleased to count myself as a part of that community, but also to have a little bit of the stigma of being on the outside of the contemporary art world. And you’re right, internationally, the contemporary art world has subsumed all these

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various forms: whether it’s the folk art that’s now being touted as the new vanguard, or the comics over here. Drawing is in vogue now. It wasn’t twenty years ago, so there’s kids doing retardo drawings in college, and it seems like they just started drawing a few years ago and that’s permissible. I don’t know about the people airbrushing vans. I don’t know if that’s permissible, but the craft certainly is. You know, the world of craft is really well-adjusted internationally right now. It’s timely. Things are coming together, I think.

vince Maybe we can talk a bit more about community, in Montreal specifically, because I think that you’ve always had a community aspect to your practice. For instance you got together with the comic book crew and you would do comic jams.

billy I got the notice of the comics’ community and was invited to contribute to zines because they saw my poster work, and the poster work I was doing was predominantly for spoken word or literary events. I was doing rock things with my brother even earlier than that, but it was doing weird rock posters for the literary events that the comic guys noticed. And then I started getting involved in that. I self-identified as a writer all the time even though I hardly wrote. So it was all these different communities that I was straddling, just like in high school, where I was cool with the cool kids and I hung out more with the weirdoes and the artists and the punk rockers, and the queers.

vince Do you see that there’s been an evolution in indie culture in general? From the early days, which would have been for you the late eighties...

billy I think we can really get it down to pre-and-post internet. There’s just so much happening right now. I think in the mid-nineties, we could fool ourselves into thinking there was a comic scene in Montreal — even though there were always people that didn’t fit into it, or there were outsiders, or there were older people or younger people or whatever — but you can’t so easily say ‘comic scene’ now. Now, there has to be a plurality, because there are so many. Kind of like the spoken

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word scene. It’s not the one spoken word scene that we might have thought existed in the mid-nineties. Right now there are how many different scenes? And some of them don’t overlap. There is no overlap. It’s not a Venn diagram, because they don’t even know these old guys exist, or vice versa. I think there’s just way more cultural activity happening. Everybody is like, “I can do this too… oh, I’m gonna make a zine for a few issues, and then I’m gonna get bored of that and join a band until I become a potter, or a glass blower, or a teacher.”

vince And you figure this is being transmitted more quickly by the internet?

billy It’s being transmitted more quickly, which could encourage people who would say, “Look, I could do that too.” If I make a full-colour design in my sketchbook, I can scan that in and put it on the internet. So right away artists can show their full-colour dazzling work, whereas I was limited technologically before the internet and scanners and all that stuff, because it had to be cheaply reproducible via black-and-white photocopies. Laser copies were a little bit out of reach…

vince A little extravagant.

billy Yeah. So the kids — ‘the kids,’ we’re talking about thirty year olds — they’re uploading entire sketchbooks on the internet, willy-nilly, and sharing them with people, and then seeing what everyone else is doing, and maybe being inspired by that. A zine fair in Montreal, in 2008, looks like a zine fair in Boston in 2008, or in Toronto or San Francisco. I don’t know if there are regional differences anymore. Kind of like Etsy or the craft fairs — everybody’s making bacon scarves or jewelry that takes found objects, and you go to Etsy and you see so many people doing similar things across the planet. That’s where we‘re at now, but the flipside of that is that I think it’s encouraging people to say, “I could do that too, let me try my hand at that for a little while, to see if I could do it.”

34

four minutes

vince But people still get their stuff out through these very medieval things called ‘zine fairs’...

billy Really medieval, yeah...

vince ...which is just basically bringing together actual people and their actual stuff.

billy And their actual smells.

vince I don’t know if you got into it on the ground floor, but Expozine’s been going on for ten years.

billy In on the ground floor in the sense that I’d be in the car going back and forth to Toronto with Andy Brown or Louis Rastelli or Dave Widgington, going to Canzine and back, and always having these conversations. We were like, “Montreal’s full of talent, we could do this too. Let’s save gas money.” Right? So there was a lot of conversation about it, and I was always around there. I was never a bureaucratic participant: you know, crunching numbers and applying for grants and calling up table rentals. I was more the poster boy — literally — I was always, I’m gonna say, a little more than just tagging along.

vince You go to Expozine now and its overwhelming. It’s gigantic. It’s far bigger than the Canzines I was going to in the nineties.

billy The first one was at Sala Rossa, right? A venue that holds 280 people or something like that? The vibe in the Sala Rossa, though, was the same as the vibe is now, somehow. This kind of flurry of being overwhelmed by everything — a carnival feeling, a lot of talent, and a kind of saturated energy. But if you think about it, wow, that was tiny! That’s tiny: that’s forty tables or less, forty exhibitors or whatever it was. This kind of weird exponential growth happened, and then people would say, “Well, I’m gonna come from Toronto for this.” Just like we

35

to midnight

were going to Toronto for Canzine, people from Toronto were now coming to Expozine. And then maybe Québec City, and then ...

vince People from the States, people from the Maritimes... They’re coming from all over the place. Plus it’s bilingual — that’s a plus too — because there’s this whole huge other culture that goes on in another language, but they do much of the same thing.

billy I think in French there’s more mid-level publishing happening. Maybe more sober poetry books, beautiful small presses. But maybe they don’t want to be there — maybe that’s not their scene. I think we’re missing out on that aspect of the culture that’s happening here in Québec — these kinds of people who want to break into top-level Salon du Livre kinds of places, and maybe they go there. I don’t know the publishing houses, but you go to places like Port de Tête and you see there are a lot of things happening here in town. Are these people being represented at Expozine, or do they even give a shit? Because maybe they’re fine in their communities; whereas in English, even a place like Vehicule Press will be at Expozine, some house that’s been kicking around for over thirty years.

36

four minutes

vince There’s a lot of interchange that goes on at Expozine, a lot of exchange of information.

billy That’s what’s amazing about it, for me. “Oh, here comes Punk Rocker sitting next to Cook Book Lady.” Good! You know? Get these people talking, whether they like it or not, to the point where I don’t know who I recognize anymore, or from where. Part of me would love to disappear and just be another person at a table, with my one little zine, you know... or even disappear completely, as a member of the public, with two hundred bucks in my pocket.

vince It’s a networking opportunity that happens once a year.

billy And it doesn’t have to be as formal as ‘networking’ sounds. There are also friends being made, and relationships...

vince Where does this culture represented by your activity and what goes on at Expozine, and maybe in the indie music scene of Montreal, spoken word, that sort of thing... where does this intersect with what’s called ‘mainstream culture’? What is mainstream culture anymore? Is there still such a thing as mainstream culture? Or is it a sort of a shell? Has it been hollowed out?

billy I don’t know if you could talk about it in those terms. Maybe we’re talking about size of markets? If Lady Gaga is pulling out all the stops and festooning her videos with every trope of the underground for the last how many years... I think we’ve been seeing that from the eighties, that kind of blending of the tribes. The subcultural signifiers are flying willy-nilly in every direction... But at the same time, if she was in her civilian outfit walking through Expozine, she’d have her mind blown, which is what’s interesting. I think any rock star just walking down the street and being attentive will still be impressed with the culture that they see around them — the graffiti, the trash, the weird couches on the street.

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to midnight

vince So what’s the interaction between this indie culture and the mainstream? Because you can see that it blows up unexpectedly large in certain areas. Like Braids. They came from Calgary, they came here to Montreal, next thing you know they’re in The Guardian.

billy Maybe it’s getting faster in certain cases, but Arcade Fire’s walking through Expozine buying zines, or the graphic designer that did their first cover is sitting there selling her zines... One of the questions that I tend to ask myself is, where are the art speculators in places like Expozine? Why not just go and harvest tons of amazing art for peanuts? We have heavy hitters sitting there. We have Julie Doucet selling signed mini-prints for five dollars or fifteen dollars. You could buy her out for a couple of hundred bucks and have a decent investment. Not to flip it on eBay the next day, but maybe the next Jonathan Goldstein is some kid with their zine... it’s a matter of somebody going in there and taking the chance, by buying a whole bunch of stuff. But maybe it doesn’t work that way. Maybe they need another curator before them that’s already made those choices. But that’s just in terms of the relationship between the ‘mainstream’ and some kid with their weird books.

vince Another difference is that mass culture is organized hierarchically, because that’s how you can draw a vast amount of people. You can’t do it rhizomatically so much. So I see that as the difference too. The way that Expozine or the way that we organize ourselves as an artistic community is very horizontal and...

billy Organic...

vince ...by consent and so forth. Where does this come from? Is it something that’s innate in people?

billy I’m going to go with “Yeah”. I think cooperation is not something that’s learned — I think that we have that capacity. I think

38

four minutes

that we want to party — we want to make friends, and have a good time and do a little win-win. I don’t buy the idea that competition is hardwired and is the only model. I think that model will be re-adjusted in the coming years. I think, generally, people want to play together. And this is play. I see what you do, I’m kind of turned on by it. Look what I do, I want you to approve of what I do. “Check it out. Do you like that? Is it thumbs-up all around? Okay, hey, maybe we can get together, maybe we could form a band or something.” I like that. I like when people are given opportunities to do that with each other, to facilitate that, because we’re stuck in our own lives. Especially as we get older, we get really stuck in our own little lives and we forget that we might need to take a little time out and go try to find kindred spirits again. Not the same ones we’ve known for fifteen-twenty years, but new people. That’s why I also think that intergenerational connection is important.

vince Yeah, I’ve been discovering that more as well.

billy There’s a part of me that can look at the work of a twenty-year-old kid and seethe because it’s too sophisticated, it’s amazing. They’re too cool, they’re cute ... it’s like, “Aw God!” Break my pencil, these kids — they’re too good. You know? They’re all around. They’ve got something going on... maybe they breathe or transmit pop culture faster, better. I don’t know. But these should be allies for the old people. And ‘old’, like, Jesus, at forty you’re not old, art is something that you can keep on doing until you expire.

vince But there can definitely be an exchange with younger people. It energizes everything, and I learn as much as I ever give out to people who are younger than me.

billy Well, you see something and say, “I never considered that combination before.” Just, even if you look at the styles or the fashions, “Oh, I never considered that.” Not that I would necessarily go and try it for myself, but, “Oh, check what they’re doing, I never even

39

to midnight

thought about placing a tattoo like that, or ruining my boots this way.” So I like the mash-up that seems to happen, and I see it as a percolating froth. All these bubbles — imagine a total multidirectional field of translucent bubbles meshing, interconnecting and affecting each other, touching each other. It’s effervescent.

vince I think that even in small towns now, people are picking up on this sort of DIY aesthetic. Whether it’s visual arts or whether its music, it’s implicitly political the way that it goes about its business, by being cooperative, by being non-hierarchical. Sappyfest, for instance, which is in Sackville, New Brunswick. It’s a town of six thousand. So it’s like you say, this culture seems to be just about anywhere you go, now.

billy Yeah. Canada’s interesting, because a lot of the artists that do well here — visual artists — they’ve hopped around different cities in Canada. Any artist visiting another city is going to go to the comparable neighbourhood and leave their mark somehow, make friends. You go to school in Vancouver, you bump into somebody in Halifax, and on and on it goes. And then you could buy property in Bruno, Saskatchewan, like some people did recently, and they created a little shop — All Citizens — a little zine shop, with their mango juice and their tea. I don’t know if it’s still running, but what happens then is that, well, a band is going through — it’s only a couple of hours from Saskatoon — and they’ll stop and do a concert on the roof. And then — “What’s going on here?” Maybe somebody else will move there. This is what I’m hoping. Where’s the next little town to move in? I’m kind of tired of Mile End. Can we move to the country altogether, guys, and make a scene? So Sappyfest happens, and it’s Arcade Fire’s pleasure to play at Sappyfest. Why wouldn’t they want to do that? That’s their community. They’re still people that wave to you on the street if you see them, it’s not like they’ve got their ‘people’ all around them pushing you away as if they were Eminem. Or Madonna.

45

Billy Mavreas Seeds

46

Elisabeth Beliveau September Album

47

Jonathan Reid Sevigny Constellation

48

Jeff Levine Watching Days Become Years no. 2

49

Amber Forrester Culture Slut issue 20

Jean-Pierre Chansigeau Fantôme: le zine qui apparait quelques fois

The next month, I was living in Montreal. I was dreaming in a new bed with a new boy. I was surrounded by people who spoke a language I did not understand.

Mid-December of last year, I had a strange dream. I dreamt I was in a new city. I had been at some sort of a protest with friends, but when the cops showed up, the crowd dispersed and I lost sight of everyone I knew. So I ran all alone through the streets of an unknown city. I couldn’t read the signs, the language was unrecognizable. I ran past a pizza shop, a clinic, I saw many billboards whose messages I could not decipher. I was confused. I awoke.

50

Julie Doucet À l’école de l’amour

51

Tara Williamson Things That Old Men Have Told Me

52

Julie Doucet Sophie Punt no. 34

53

Amy Drover Book of Fear

54Ian Sullivan Cant Papercut Heart

55Aaron McConomy YPF Yearbook

56

Amy Drover Science is Fun

57

Sves Nailbiter 2: An Anxiety Zine

Sarala Beautiful Mess 2

58

Jeff Levine Watching Days Become Years no. 2

59

John Campbell Nailbiter 2: An Anxiety Zine

60

Aaron Costain Calamity Coach

61

Marc Beauchamp Cybernoid Rose

62

Elisabeth Beliveau September Album

63

Ethan Rilly The Nervous Party

64

Elisabeth Beliveau September Album

Geneviève Dumas Long Distance

65Geneviève Dumas Long Distance

66

67

It was hard to decide whether it was sad that the best songwriter in Montréal was playing a tiny bar to a thin crowd — surely he deserved more, better, something other than that. Why didn’t the world wake up and notice that he was blessed, or was his particular blessing just not selling well that decade? And yet there was nothing sad about Soria, as he played with the energy and confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was meant to do with himself, and exactly what he was meant to make and give to te world. If anything there was a peculiar joy in it, joy embraced and returned in equal share by the room, whose sparse population was clearly composed either of Soria’s friends and those who wished they could be his friends.

The song dropped down to only Soria’s guitar and the drums, and after he finally hit his last note the drums continued a second and stopped, and the room exploded into cheers, whistles, and clapping that went on and on, as Soria, bashful, muttered, “Thanks. Thank you,” into the microphone. Eventually the bar stereo crackled to life with Howlin’ Wolf as the last cheers and persistent clappers waned.

J.B. Staniforth Uno Mass: An Excerpt of a Novel in Progress

68

Angie Neatby Fuckin’ Loons

69

Amy and I sat still, watching the band pack up their gear. The red-faced drummer, his clothes soaked through with sweat, staggered past us and out the door, and sat promptly down on the snowy stairs, steam rising from his flushed neck and sweat-slick hair. Peter walked by and smiled when we gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I thought that maybe I could go and say something to Soria, but I wasn’t sure what I could say that would matter, so I just sat still, watching him wind his patch cords and latch his guitar into its hard case. At the end of the day, he had to go home, just like me, get the weekend in, relax, and take a couple of days to enjoy the fact that he was a genius who could shake a roomful of people into awe, before he had to go back to work on Monday morning. And he seemed to accept it, he seemed to know that this joy was more than most people were ever able to find anywhere within themselves, let alone impart to others. His friends at the bar approached him, patted his back, complimented him and brought him more beer, and he smiled with shy eyes but kept quiet even as the sound of his songs still rand great and thunderous in my ears.

J.R. Carpenter Entreville

70

Colin White Mini Confectionaries

71

“Pappy died,” she said.

“Fuck,” I said. “Oh fuck.”

Paula told me that Pappy had been doing much better, but suddenly, the night before, he’d begun howling and throwing up. She tried calling all my friends, but most of them were out because it was Saturday night. He died in her room, in her closet, and Bindy had stayed near him, very perturbed and apparently crying herself.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Wasn’t he supposed to go to the vet with the neighbour?” I asked.

“He was doing better, “ Paula repeated. “I tried calling the neighbour a few times, but there was never any answer.” Of course, none of this mattered now. Pappy was dead.

I felt horrible. He must’ve thought I’d left for good, that I’d left him behind. Poor guy, and he’d been trying to tell me something before I left too.

He’d been such a humble sincere cat.

Louis Rastelli A Fine Ending

Lianne Zannier Les Chations du Quartier

72

Billy Mavreas Inside Outside Overlap

73

Mélanie Baillairgé C’est Selon, quatorze de meute

Ryan Mrozowski Hour Hour

Aaron McConomy Untitled

76

there is no emotion too srongthat it can’t be buried under a thousand tons of snowand let to diea saintly russian death

Nadia Moss Untitled

Marc Guay Quantumplation

77Anonymous Bike Crush vol. 2

78

Billy Mavreas Unfinished ABC

JP King Untitled

80

Sherwin Tija Licket Split Smut Zine no.1

81

Des baisers sur la joue. Des baisers sur les lèvres. Des baisers sur le coude. Des baisers ailleurs. Des frotti-frotta sur le nez. Des caresses. Des étreintes, comme quand on se prend dans les bras. Des saisissures par la main. Des bras-dessus-bras-dessous. Des touchers de cheveux. Des sommeils côte à côte, ou collé-e-s. Des léchouilles. Des cuni, des fellations. Des chatouilles. Des attouchements génitaux. Des pénétrations anales. J’en passe et des meilleures.

On appellera tout ça des échanges physiques. Il semble habituel de les diviser en deux groupes : ceux qui procurent un plaisir sexuel, qu’on appellera donc échanges sexuels, et ceux qui procurent d’autres plaisirs, qu’on appellera gestes de tendresse.

Des regards. Des discussions interminables. Des louanges. Des marques d’attention, d’écoute, d’intérêt. Des moments passés ensemble. Des mots doux. Des tranches de rigolade. Des sourires complices. J’en passe et des meilleures encore.

Il s’agit là aussi d’échanges affectifs, mais sans contact physique : attitudes, comportements, dialogues...

Anonyme (Iosk éditions) Contre l’amour

82

Robyn Licket Split Smut Zine no.6

83

84

J.R. Carpenter Entreville

Kirsten McCrea Papirmasse

Daniel Ian Taylor I am the Flame. I am Mexico.

Anonymous Dispatches From the City

87

Amy Drover Science is Fun

88

Julie Doucet À l’école de l’amour

Anonyme (Iosk éditions) Contre l’amour

90

Angela Carr Ropewalk

Does the line las longerthan the point at which you wanted me?Ater a time.Am I fragile at this point you wanting me?Am I lasing at this point?Am I coming at this point and is it lasing?Am I nettles?Are you burning in this point?Am I centred in your beauty and is it cold and are we holding?

91

Shannon Gerard Hung #3: Lonely Tylenol

92

Ken Dahl Monsters

93

Shawn Kuruneru Untitled

Simon Bossé Mille Putois

Matthew Forsythe Ojingogo

Nicolas Plamondon Théâtre de Souffrance : Acte 1

Rev. B. Pan The Summer of Light & The Winter of Death

Sagana Fanzine Bidon 4

Fred Mahieu Hasemeister

99

Kirsten McCrea Untitled

100

Nadia Moss Untitled

101

Ethan Rilly The Nervous Party

102

There are stories of some armies in South America giving their soldiers puppies to raise and nurture. After a year they are forced to kill their dog to prove their mettle as killers. Canada’s version was to give us each a grouse. Those feathery critters were thankfully in our lives a little more than an hour — less time than they would spend in our bellies. While most of our platoon was allowed to chop their heads off with an axe, my section participated in a tribute. Our section commander, Mcpl. Turtle, was an aging skid and a huge fan of Black Sabbath, so as a tribute to Ozzy we were ordered to bite the heads off the live birds. As my teenage teeth sank into the grouse’s neck I was mostly surprised at how warm and soft it was (imagine biting into a heated, feathery Twinkie). Perhaps the hollow bones helped.

Though much has faded, I can close my eyes right now [right now] and feel the warmth, the fuzziness and the ease with which I performed my first kill for the infantry.

Scott Waters The Hero Book

103

Shawn Kuruneru Untitled

104Ian Sullivan Cant Papercut Hearts

il nous arrive de parcourir des volcans intérieurs, des marécages blancs, des histoires de répétition. on marche alors à rebours et la guerre s’inscrit, le carnaval guette, les maisons hurlent. la couleur des lieux parachève la vision humaine, éconduit jusqu’à l’écriture, celle qui est un feu, un refuge dans la nuit barbouillée d’étoiles sauvages. et la lumière s’inscrit, couche par strate.

Véronique Cyr Ectropion, vol.3, #1

105Laura Broadbent Ms. Guided issue 2

106

Colin White The Watering Hole

107

Thierry Guitard Être Rock

Charlotte De Seduoy Que se passe-t-il? no. 7

110

Rev. B. Pan The Summer of Light & The Winter of Death

111

Sarala Beautiful Mess 2

112

Liz Colford Short Stories

In May, in my neighbourhood, the travelling anarchists bring their dogs. The dogs piss on trees for all the other anarcho dogs to sniff. May is lilac season.

And it’s said that one part piss to ten parts water makes a great nitrogen-rich fertilizer.

And I say this year, April showers have continued into May.

So I can only come to the logical conclusion that the influx of anarchists and their dogs are doing a real service to the community, ’cause the lilacs are fucking radiant.

And dogs aside, there’s something beautiful about the crowded kitchens in collective houses across the city, the way that all these people are visiting and exploring and learning and going through crises and picking themselves up again and writing songs about it. And the way that those of us who live here are shocked into all shades of emotion. Our grey city existence now has sparks of purple too.

We sleep outdoors. We collect dew.

113

Jeff Levine Watching Days Become Years no. 2

114

Eloisa Aquino The Life and Times of Butch Dykes: JD Samson

115

Meanwhile, despite the hype, despite Will and Grace and gay marriage and “cool queers” there is more and more that needs to be done. “Gay acceptability” has come at a steep cost to gay runaways and sex workers and others who are now a liability to the respectable and admirable homosexual entrepreneur. Guppification plays out in a cruel dialectic with homophobic and whore-phobic violence, each of which makes the truly oppressed ever more vulnerable. The very public embrace of gay celebrities is cold comfort as we get the sneaking suspicion that we could simply be being set up as scapegoats when the water gets choppy.

There is as much reason to organize and fight back today as their ever was. The only question — now as eighteen years ago — is what will allow people to feel that winning is possible, that fighting back is worth it.

That’s what we have to figure out.

Kersplebedeb The Radical Roots of DiversCité

116

Colin Mathes Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas

117

Rev. B. Pan The Summer of Light & The Winter of Death

Shawnda Wilson Superstar

118

Karen K + Marissa J-V Not Blowing in the Wind, Intentionally Swaying

$2.00 (COMES WITH MIXTAPE)106U21 PRODUCTIONS2356 PRESS40 WATT SPOTLIGHT8ET896 EYES COMICS999J

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STUDENTS ASSOCIATION

A NEAR COMPLETE LIST OF EXPOZINE EXHIBITORS 2002–2011

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The Lindbergh Line photo by Robin Hart Hiltz

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Le Québec, en tant qu’îlot majoritairement francophone dans un océan anglophone, est unique dans sa façon de voir la culture, dans un pays où les deux peuples colonisateurs tentent tant bien que mal de se différencier culturellement des États-Unis. Le Canada anglais à réussi à former des artistes qui se distinguent de leurs compères américains de deux façons : en encourageant ceux qui en sont carrément différents, d’une part (The Tragically Hip et Rush par exemple), et en s’hyper-américanisant, de l’autre, et faire des artistes canadiens-anglais des figures importantes aux États-Unis (Nickelback et Shania Twain) — s’inspirer du star-système et l’infiltrer pour foisonner. Au Québec, vu le contexte de la langue, les éditeurs se sont rass-emblés pour s’entraider et créer une sous-culture (du point de vue nord-américain) qui deviendrait son propre star-système, avec une demi-douzaine de ‘gros’ éditeurs de livres, deux plus grandes compagnies de disques (Audiogram et Québécor) et un tout petit groupe de producteurs de cinéma qui engage toujours les mêmes visages, qui changent aux 10 ou 15 ans. Le hic, c’est que tout cet ‘establishment québécois’ continue de se vendre comme étant des regroupements d’artistes indépendants, des petits travailleurs honnêtes pas trop riches, qui ne sont que des

l’essentiel pour l’indie-rOck PAR SÉBASTIEN HELL

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mouches comparées à leurs comparses américains, sauf que ce sont eux qui dominent la culture populaire, la radio, la télé, le cinéma, les salles de spectacles (surtout celles de plus de 100 places), les comptoirs à journaux… sans compter que Québécor est une grande entreprise d’envergure internationale qui tisse ses toiles dans la plupart des domaines économiques. Et le reste de la culture, celle qui n’est pas annoncée dans les épiceries, doit soit être considéré comme ‘la relève’ qui tente de percer dans ce marché, soit une culture vraiment, absolument indépendante, résolument en marge. En fait, plusieurs variétés de sous-cultures existent : quelques-unes tournées vers les Américains (punk hardcore, fanzines) ou vers les Européens (la musique métal et les films gore), la filière indie-rock à succès (Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade) et ceux qui tentent de s’y greffer (les Wind Up Radio Sessions et autres Lindbergh Line qui multiplient les spectacles à la Casa Del Popolo), les punks francophones, les poètes qui font plus de spectacles/lectures qu’ils n’ont de textes sortis en recueils…

N’empêche qu’on semble loin du Refus Global, qu’il ne se dégage guère d’unité, d’esprit de corps. Qu’on pense seulement au groupe punk The Sainte Catherines : leur leader, Hugo Mudie, a lancé sa propre compagnie de gérance, L’Écurie, qui en plus produit des spectacles et un mini-festival nommé le Pouzza Fest. Un de leurs anciens membres, Wood Nadeau, promeut aussi des spectacles — d’abord seul, puis avec le collaboratif Mon Œil, devenu depuis L’œil du tigre, qui est avec le temps aussi devenu une maison de disques. Et bien que les deux clans collaborent souvent, à présenter des spectacles chacun de leur côté, ils se divisent le public-cible — pas seulement en argent, dont le montant est, avouons-le, quand même assez minime, mais surtout en gestion de temps. Qui a le temps d’aller voir deux concerts du même type par semaine alors que l’offre de divertissement à Montréal est presque sans limite? Il y a aussi ce qui se produit entre les scènes différentes : la scène noise nouvellement implantée à St-Henri se rend moins souvent sur le Plateau ou dans le Mile-End; les salles du centre-ville ferment à vue

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d’œil, par dizaines, et celles qui demeurent sont trop grandes pour accueillir des groupes de moindre envergure et des projets plus osés. Les salles underground qui opèrent à la limite de la légalité se font fermer et celles qui demeurent se voient forcées d’opérer avec des budgets intenables, résultant en des factures salées qu’elles refilent aux groupes qui désirent s’y produire. Il faudrait un organisme qui chapeaute toutes les scènes, presque bénévolement, afin de laisser libre cours aux artistes pour que ces derniers puissent s’occuper de faire ce qu’ils font de mieux : de l’art. Parce que créer est assez pointu en soi, et qu’après la création, vient la mise en marché et/ou la distribution de l’œuvre, qui elle non plus n’est pas qu’une partie de plaisir.

Mais aucune des grandes institutions ne veut en prendre charge : les ‘grands’ éditeurs préfèrent garder ceux qui font déjà partie de leur star-système; les ‘grands’ festivals préfèrent les artistes internationaux ou les ‘grands noms québécois’; les festivals de région n’en ont que pour les rockeurs de radio; et Pop Montréal est bien trop occupé à faire venir des oubliés des fins fonds des États-Unis qui n’ont pas fait de concerts depuis plus de 30 ans que de prêter l’oreille (et leur vitrine médiatique exceptionnelle) aux groupes émergents qui ne font pas partie de leur cercle d’amis. Il faut dire que plusieurs musiciens, en jouant dans trois ou quatre groupes en même temps, trouvent eux-mêmes les moyens de se tirer des balles dans les pieds en multipliant l’offre d’entertainment (et par le fait même les demandes de subventions et les applications aux nombreux festivals et événements), en divisant le nombre de lieux d’exposition (en s’y produisant avec leurs groupes dits ‘secondaires’) et en étirant la patience de leurs proches, qui finissent par ne plus savoir où donner de la tête. Et tout ça parce qu’il est dorénavant tellement facile de produire de la musique à rabais, soit en enregistrant live dans les locaux de pratique, en spectacle, ou chez soi sur un ordinateur. Et ensuite, pour le sortir, il suffit de graver un CD-R encore dans son ordi, ou de convertir en mp3 et l’envoyer à tout le monde.

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Par contre, ce qui est compliqué, c’est de sortir de sa scène, de son noyau d’amis et d’irréductibles, de propager son message à un plus grand nombre d’oreilles. C’est là que de converger les scènes, de collaborer entre groupes, genres, promoteurs et labels pourrait profiter à plusieurs groupes — surtout dans une ville cosmopolite, culturellement vivante, curieuse et dépensière comme Montréal. Parce que si une revue est limitée par son tirage (physique, elle n’a aucune limite numérique, évidemment), il n’en est rien de la musique qui, elle, se retrouve déjà en mode internet de nos jours et qui, plus souvent qu’autrement, tire sa force d’être entendue en direct, en concert, de la communion directe entre le public et l’artiste. Et je persiste à croire qu’une ville comme Montréal peut très bien abriter autant de salles de spectacles aujourd’hui qu’en 2009 (on en compte une soixantaine de moins à l’heure actuelle), et qu’elles peuvent toutes être pleines — et que tous pourraient y trouver leur compte.

C’est d’ailleurs pourquoi j’organise chaque année UnPop Montréal — pour donner aux artistes une plate-forme où se présenter, où expérimenter, où s’amuser. Des spectacles gratuits pour inciter les gens à découvrir les perles rares qui ne demandent qu’à s’exprimer.

Parce que comme le dit si bien Wood Nadeau :

« La beauté de faire de la musique en ce moment, c’est que l’Industrie n’est plus en contrôle de la situation, nous le sommes. Et si l’Industrie tombe ou

meurt, nous demeurerons actifs, parce que nous n’avons pas peur de perdre de l’argent, tant qu’on s’amuse comme des fous pendant ce temps-là. »

Le plaisir de créer d’un côté, le plaisir d’écouter de l’autre. Le retour à la case départ, à l’essentiel. Dire qu’on s’est laissé dire qu’on avait besoin de plus que ça pendant 50 ans…

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In Montreal, art is a key element of the intensely complex collective identity that stretches across this beautiful island city. Today, as Montreal is being celebrated as a centre for cutting edge art in North America, a heightened critical reflection on artistic production and its representation is necessary. There are contesting visions on the directions forward for cultural movements in this city, visions that often overlap, but just as often clash. Now is the time for us to intensify our collective thinking on the multitude of difficult questions that confront the arts today in Montreal.

Are the corporate sponsorships for indy festivals, or efforts to push ‘underground’ culture into capitalist-driven art markets the best way forward for the long term health of the arts community in Montreal? On the flipside, are artists working hard enough to build bridges with the community organizations and activists who struggle daily to sustain the political and economic space that works to create the room for independent culture to thrive in Montreal? The complex issues of gentrification in neighbourhoods like the Mile End and the Plateau need to be addressed. Are Montreal artists contributing to sustaining a livable city for all, or is the rapid fire mainstream celebration of local artists contributing to creating economic conditions that exclude people living in poverty?

montreal: art & insPirationmeet on the streets

BY STEFAN CHRISTOFF

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As corporate box condos are dispatched to artistic hotspots in our beloved city, areas that have fostered and nurtured the arts for so many years, are artists doing enough to confront this process of gentrification that stands as the antithesis to the rugged beauty that has inspired so many living here? Are we giving attention to and supporting organizations like the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (frapru), a grassroots organisation that fights for social housing on a policy level while employing direct action campaigns and street protests to challenge the injustices of gentrification. As artists interested in preserving the vital character of Montreal, lending solidarity and support to activist groups like frapru, and the many others with similarly inspiring mandates, is a clear necessity. Are the independent cultural institutions working seriously to challenge a Ville de Montréal administration that is diligently working to co-opt the global hype surrounding the city’s art? When the Place des arts is no longer a Place des peuples, what are we left with?

As all cultural workers understand in the heart, inspiration for our best work rests in the difficult and beautiful realities of the world around us, not in the monotone words or florescent-lit halls of political power, guided by an economic logic that works to close the social spaces in which creativity flourishes. Certainly, the struggle to survive with dignity as artists, to sustain ourselves economically, is a challenging reality that needs constant focus. In the context of global financial systems now failing at hyper-speed and rooted in a race to the bottom economics, sparking inspiring street protests globally, let us look to community based economic alternatives. Failed corporate economic models will not address our collective economic challenges as community-based and independent artists. Quick fixes are never healthy in the long term, and today’s economic implosions certainly offer a clear argument in that direction. Urgent economic thinking and exploration outside of capitalist boxes of commodification and corporate sponsorships is needed.

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Difficult questions confront all visions of the arts in Montreal for the next years, but in stepping towards the future, we should recognize the incredible accomplishments over recent years; a thriving indie music scene built from the ground up, an internationalist hip-hop scene that speaks to the reality of Montreal as a global city, a cinema culture that inspires globally, and an internationally respected design and publishing culture, all performed in two ‘official’ languages. This cultural reality is rooted in the daily work of thousands of artists, cultural workers and activists, a process far removed from the empty words of municipal politicians or corporate types now moving to claim credit and profit from the global attention on Montreal arts.

The celebratory reception of Montreal’s current artistic culture in the mainstream press, both locally and globally, does little to address the history of political struggle that worked to construct the spaces for these visionary arts practices to take root. Montreal’s artistic renaissance over the past decade is deeply connected to Québec’s turbulent political and economic history. Across Québec, protests confronting social injustice in the late 1960s and early 1970s influenced a generation of artists. Major worker and student strikes from the era continue to shape our reality today, from official government policy to a popular culture rooted in the struggle for independence. And though the mass social movements in Québec certainly spoke to struggles linked to the economic and linguistic oppression of Québecois, these popular mobilizations also spoke to the international revolutionary spirit of the times that reshaped modern artistic practice across the board. Beyond the common contemporary representation of the Quiet Revolution as being directly focused on Québec nationalist demands, the reality of its political language and dreams were largely visioned as revolutionary, internationalist and rooted in cultural expression. It was in this era that spaces opened for serious artistic exploration, from the artist run centres showcasing contemporary art practices, to the cafes and bars that acted as venues for popular musicians and storytellers, to a political culture that gained widespread support for

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significant public funding for the arts. Montreal began to solidify an artistic voice that stood in stark contrast to the commodity culture that would soon sweep across most of North America.

In The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal by historian Sean Mills, the relationship between art and activism is addressed:

“Quebec’s political independence had to form part of a comprehensive transformation that would affect all spheres of life, from poetry and literature

to cinema and sexuality. (...) Literature, and culture generally, were deeply constitutive of this leftism, and were central to the new world of freedom and

creativity that needed to be built.”

Today the Conservative attack on public funding for the arts, alongside an austerity economics that presses for corporate tax cuts as a solution to financial crisis, are a very real affront to Québec’s tradition of patronage of the arts, a reality that was only achieved via the struggles of social movements of past generations.

In a globalised world, struggles stretch beyond borders, and questions concerning how the arts will deal with increasingly stringent austerity measures, a growing conservatism both economic and social, are being raised to cultural workers across the world. However, there is also the specific context of Montreal’s history of struggle that is directly responsible for the spaces that exist today to create the unique art that has come to shape our collective identity. As artists operating in a city that stands in discord to Wall Street economics — a city which, for the most part, rejects the destructive capitalist economics of the box store/shopping mall/condo model —we should take inspiration from this history, and honour and learn from past struggles. From the sonic explorations challenging musical genres, to the street art that beautifies our urban environment, to the

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spoken poetics that reshape contemporary literature, arts in this city must not be isolated from Montreal’s political history.

Let us focus on this contested moment in history and move forward in a way that stands in solidarity with the social movements that create independent spaces, who value and love the arts, the same movements for change that have inspired the most incredible artists throughout time.

Adam Sacks Paean