9 days of free artistic activities

[Cliquez pour la version française | Click here for French version]

 

Caravansérail Artist-Run Center presents Tenderness! Gathering to break the isolation, from May 7 to 15, 2022. With the complicity of a host of artists, collectives and partnered organizations, the Center wants to offer its communities friendly and relaxed opportunities to get together. While spring is slowly setting in and we are trying somehow to adapt to new ways of meeting, Caravansérail offers to broaden the focus and think more broadly about the relationships we weave with the world, the environment and the people around us.

Be ready for: performances, screenings, meetings, workshops, conversations and more!

 

TENDERNESS! GATHERING TO BREAK ISOLATION

How can art highlight our interdependencies?
Through which means can we actively be together?
What energies can we harness to open sharing spaces? 

Through the interim of several activities, Tenderness! explores the many spheres of isolation - social, geographical and artistic - that shape our way of being, interacting and caring for each other. By rejecting universalities that tend to blur inequities, Tenderness! instead affirms that it is in the sum of our singularities, in the expansion of our particularities, that a commonplace can be constructed. 

Four Canadian artists and collectives have been invited to create novel works and performances that constitute the heart of Tenderness!’s line-up. Through maneuvers, gestures, words and suggestions, the artists shed light on their realities, share their knowledge and reveal areas of tension. While seeking to create moments of ephemeral connection and generating empathy, they invite the public in their imagination and help unfold such notions as care, belonging and compassion.

These four moments of performance are accompanied by a diversity of activities co-created with our partnered artists, collectives and organizations. Panels, meetings, projections, soup kitchen, workshop and exhibition…a plethora of opportunities to collectively widen this temporary creative playground exploring the many facets of isolation. To gather in this way allows us to develop a better understanding of our role and place in this complex web of interactions, experiences, histories and trajectories that shape what we call “our” society. 

Tenderness! is Caravansérail saying “come in, we’re open!” It is a program to meet up, discover and exchange in a willingly convivial and accessible setting. It is an Artist-Run Center that strives to show art as something that is shared, as an offering, as an occasion for contact, of openings and transformations.

Tenderness! Gathering to break isolation
It’s tenderness with an exclamation point 
Tenderness as a rallying cry, as an emblem
It’s a political tenderness, subversive, powerful 
A tenderness we hope to be transformative     

 

PROGRAM

 

ONE-OFF ACTIVITIES

 

COME OVER, WE’RE OPEN!
In collaboration with Moisson Rimouski-Neigette 

Soup kitchen and neighborhood party
Saturday, May 7, 2022
12pm - 2pm
Outside of Caravansérail Artist-Run Center 
Directions on Google Maps

As a way to start off Tenderness!, the Caravansérail team invites you to break bread together. With the complicity of Moisson Rimouski-Neigette, a communal soup will be offered free of charge to all of the participants. This will be the perfect occasion for residents of Saint-Robert, Rimouski and its surroundings to get to know Caravansérail Artist-Run Center and its team, and also discover the program and activities that will be offered throughout Tenderness!

More details

 

A RIMOUSQUEER DINER PARTY
Haus of Rimousqueer

Drag show
Saturday, May 7, 2022
8pm
Coopérative Paradis - Salle rouge
Directions on Google Maps
Free - limited tickets
Booking: bit.ly/3K51B1p 
Online streaming: youtu.be/tYmIAvRv4v4

The Haus of Rimousqueer invites you to a dazzling evening filled with colours and emotions, where you can get to know unique people - each one queerer than the next! After more than two years of isolation during which loneliness was an issue more than ever for queer people, it is now time to gather again.

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METIYEWESTUWIK
Ivanie Aubin-Malo + Louis-Xavier Aubin-Bérubé

Performance
Tuesday, May 10, 2022
6pm - 7pm
Park in front of the St-Épiphane Church
Directions on Google Maps

Metiyewestuwik (radio) is a performance that invites us to imagine the potential of having a community radio station for the Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk. Louis-Xavier and Ivanie, both members of this community, will express themselves by talking about history and the news, and playing participatory games. All of it will be punctuated by music and dance, united by a single thread, that of the Wolastoqey language.

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BUILDING TOGETHER
In collaboration with the Cabaret de la diversité

Gathering and open mic
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
5pm - 7pm
Caravansérail Artist-Run Center
Directions on Google Maps

Cabaret de la diversité takes over Caravansérail for a festive happy hour! First, feast on appetizers prepared by members of the Carabert while gazing at the works being presented in the gallery for Tenderness! Second, participate in an open mic, hosted by Maël Pelletier.

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ALONE TOGETHER
In collaboration with Paraloeil

Short films screening
Thursday, May 12, 2022
8pm - 10pm
Parking lot behind Coopérative Paradis
Directions on Google Maps

Paraloeil offers an original program of short documentaries, thought out in dialogue with the programming and themes of Tenderness! It presents a quilt of people who live, each in their own way, a form of marginality, sometimes of exclusion, which forces us to think about the interdependencies necessary for living together and the issues that this entails. This evening of screenings will take place under the stars, transforming the parking lot of Coopérative Paradis into a micro outdoors cinema.

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INTRODUCTION TO BLACK ASH BASKETRY
Stephen Jerome

Workshop
Satuday, May 14, 2022 - FULL
9am - 2pm
Friday, May 13, 2022 - FULL
1pm - 6pm
Caravansérail Artist-Run Center 
Directions on Google Maps
Very limited spots: book your place quickly at communication@caravanserail.org

During a relaxed workshop, learn the basics of Mi’gmaq basketry from one of the masters of this traditional technique using black ash, Stephen Jerome.

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FINDING REFUGE
In collaboration with Collectif Abondance

Round table
Saturday, May 14, 2022
4pm - 6pm
Caravansérail Artist-Run Center
Directions on Google Maps
Online streaming: https://youtu.be/1DJBTsPSBqk

How does one live a feminist life? What can these struggles – and the thoughts they bring – teach us, individually and collectively? What are our paths towards human, ideological and territorial connection at a time of great upheaval for our lives and our worlds? Various guests will discuss these pressing issues in an intimate evening during which we will share thoughts and tenderness, offering a refuge where the feminisms that bridge us together can further flourish.

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PLAYFULNESS
Lux + Dre

Participatory performance
Sunday, May 15, 2022
1pm - 4pm
Gazebo at Ernest-Lepage Park 
*Due to the risk of rain, the activity is moved to Caravansérail Artist-Run Center
Directions on Google Maps

Using a mix of text in their mother tongues, print, book, take-aways and local clay, both artists navigate the losses, overwhelm and fragmentation from personal experiences at the intersections of isolation - cultural, emotional, interpersonal, social, biological and geographical.

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ONGOING ACTIVITIES, FROM MAY 7 TO 15

 

FOLLOWING TIDES
Sooyeong Lee

Video documentation, printed booklet
Online and at Caravansérail Artist-Run Center
Directions on Google Maps
Anytime during the center’s opening hours

Opening party: 
Sunday, May 8, 2022
2pm - 5pm

Water has always witnessed the movement of people and animals as they migrate and settle, reflecting the changing seasons. Similarly, our bodies hold memories we carry across our lives––the histories of our thoughts and emotions that ebb and flow. Sooyeong Lee’s Following Tides honours our bodies’ grief and triumph as we adapt to life’s changes. She offers compassion for the body that has survived the journey of  simply being.

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MANIFESTATIONS
Collectif l’indiscipline

Ongoing video projection
In French, 14min
Caravansérail Artist-Run Center
Directions on Google Maps
Anytime during the center’s opening hours

Opening party: 
Sunday, May 8, 2022
2pm - 5pm

Manifestations results from an approach that privileges the creative process, presenting four scenes that each reveal one of the current members of the collective in an aestheticized staging of their everyday life. This work questions the links between performativity and art, while also engaging in radical vulnerability and catharsis.

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MY FATHER’S TOOLS
Heather Condo

Ongoing film projection
Without dialogue, 6min 33s
Caravansérail Artist-Run Center
Directions on Google Maps
Anytime during the center’s opening hours

Opening party: 
Sunday, May 8, 2022
2pm - 5pm

Favoring a cinema-vérité approach, filmmaker Heather Condo documents in all simplicity the art of weaving baskets in black ash wood, a tradition passed down from generation to generation. Without voiceover or dialogue, the film focuses on the work of the director's husband, Stephen Jerome, on his talent and on the attention to detail associated with the manufacture of these baskets.

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VISIBLE - SENSIBLE
In collaboration with Mains BSL

Artists:
mc berlinguette
Jérôme Caouette
Sigrid Patterson 

Exhibition
Caravansérail Artist-Run Center
Directions on Google Maps
Anytime during the center’s opening hours

Opening party: 
Sunday, May 8, 2022
2pm - 5pm

visible - sensible brings together the work of LGBTQ+ people from the Lower-Saint-Laurent, taking a look into a few of the multiple realities that make up our communities. Metaphorical portraiture, everyday spaces, images of loved ones and partners, abstract textures and materials - these are the tools used by the artists to capture experiences, affects, and ideas that resonate with and within their lives. Seeking to highlight the importance of creating spaces to express our plural existences, and bringing forward these diverse experiences, this project also held space for a few convivial meetings between people who are part of the LGBTQ+ communities.

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L’ANANAS TAKES OVER THE DOCUMENTATION SPACE!
In collaboration with l'Ananas, Feminist Library

Selected publications to discover
Caravansérail Artist-Run Cente 
Directions on Google Maps
and
l'Ananas, Feminist Library
Directions on Google Maps
Anytime during the center’s opening hours

Opening party: 
Sunday, May 8, 2022
2pm - 5pm

For Tenderness!, Caravansérail invites the feminist library l’Ananas to take over the Center’s documentation space.  Chosen for the way they echo Tenderness!’s programming, a selection of books, zines and other publications will be available for consultation. This specially curated collection will also extend to the library’s space which is located at UQAR, connecting the two initiatives through books and ideas.

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SOLIDARITY GRAFFITI
In collaboration with the Comité enjeux psychosociaux and En tout C.A.S.

Graffiti wall available for the community
Accessible at all times
Rear parking lot of the Coopérative Paradis
Directions on Google Maps

Inauguration:
Saturday, May 7, 2022
12pm - 2pm

As part of the Come over, we’re open! event 

Solidarity graffiti is a project initiated by the Comité enjeux psychosociaux, which brings together several community organizations of the Rimouski-Neigette MRC, that consists in installing a removable wall in a municipal space, offering it to community members who are interested in graffiti-making. The objectives of Solidarity graffiti are to give back community spaces to citizens, share messages of mutual aid, and create moments of togetherness while respecting sanitary measures. 

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CONTEXT

Tenderness! registers at the crossroads of many ruminations that have occupied the team of Caravansérail in recent years. In 2017, the development agent Nathalie Dion traveled across the Lower St. Lawrence in order to meet the artists members of Caravansérail. Quickly, isolation - be it geographical, social or artistic - appeared as a shared reality. Furthermore, the team and the administrative counsel of the Center have been pursuing, since 2018, a series of actions that centralize the questions of equity, parity and inclusion: member consultations and internal training, along with support by Diversité artistique Montréal in the framework of Cellule iDAM, action plan, etc. Throughout this tutelage, Audrey-Anne V. Leblanc, the then Artistic and General Director of Caravansérail, imagined and instilled a major project that allowed the Center and its communities to explore the notion of isolation across multiple subsections. Consequently to this idea, Tenderness! was born.

 

SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

Tenderness! Gathering to break isolation is made possible by the support of the Canada Council for the Arts (Public Outreach), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (Manifestation et présentation publique) as well as the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications and the City of Rimouski (Entente de développement culturel).

 

 

  

We are also counting on the precious collaboration of many volunteers, artists, collectives and partnered organizations who have believed in the impact of a major project of reflection and common actions like Tenderness!. We thank them warmly.

 

Biographie