Art Metropole

Founded by Claire Bourque, Sylvie Cotton and Diane Tremblay, DARE-DARE opened its doors in International Youth Year in 1985. Its goal is to disseminate the work of young artists by privileging in particular disciplinary hybridism.

After becoming an artist-run centre in 1990, DARE-DARE reiterated its commitment to the diversity of forms found in contemporary art and established a programming committee made up of member artists.

Since 1996 in particular, DARE-DARE has been developing its expertise in public art by supporting performances in the public arena, projects carried out in collaboration with a variety of communities and ongoing and ephemeral projects and those of varying duration while at the same time increasing its visibility within a larger and more varied public.

DARE-DARE is an artist-run centre that has about 100 members. Since its inception in 1985, the centre presented the work of more than 1000 artists. Since 2004, the administrative office for DARE-DARE has been in a mobile ‘construction’ trailer, which moves about every two years throughout the city of Montréal. Currently, it is located in Cabot Square at the corner of Ste-Catherine and Atwater streets. The centre works closely with the city administrators and the citizens of Montréal to present the programmed projects in the urban environment. DARE-DARE supports research and valorizes emerging practices. Its members are interested in the context of creation and answer the need of exchange and collaboration. DARE-DARE is a flexible, open space devoted to research, experimentation, risk and critical inquiry. The artist-run centre manifests a sustained interest in exploration and in the diversity in the modes of presentation. Therefore, DARE-DARE accepts innovative, original and critical propositions, which involve the gallery’s space, the urban space or any other context.

With Dis/location: projet d’articulation urbaine, DARE-DARE created a setting for enquiry into and the dissemination of artistic practices, which are carried out in the public arena. For this project, the centre acquired a mobile shelter and abandoned its gallery space. This urban exploration took the form of successive moorings throughout Montreal, giving rise to a number of intriguing social and political questions. Some of the centre’s most recent events include Satellite (in Detroit and Tijuana, 2011), OFF biennale (2009), Périmètre, un événement d’art public (in Square Viger, 2005); Mémoire vive (with the Centre d’histoire de Montréal, 2002); and L’algèbre d’Ariane (an exchange with Les Brasseurs Art Contemporain, Liège, 2000). In 2004, DARE-DARE published Mémoire vive + L’algèbre d’Ariane about the work of the artists and instigators of these two events. Previous publications include Mobilité et résonnances (2000) and Orbitae (1997).

Nadia Moss is a Montréal based artist. Bébé is her second art book with L’Oie de Cravan. She has exhibited across Canada and her work has appeared in the Walrus and Maisonnueve magazines as well as numerous zines and self published books – a scene with which she has close ties. Nadia is also an active member of the Montréal music community, and this role extends to visual works as well. She’s created posters and album artwork for Carla Bozulich, A Silver Mt Zion, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Vic Chesnutt and others.

Founded in January 1992, L’Oie de Cravan is a Montreal-based publishing house interested in poetry triggers of all sorts. What does this mean? It means that we publish books that can’t be reduce to a simple category but all aim at trigering some inner mechanism; books that we don’t always understand but always admire. Books with a mystery, books with an edge that gives us goose bumps. We publish books in French but also wordless books of insane visual poetry, books of lyrics by people like mike watt and also stuff like a nineteenth-century home-made absinthe recipe book. We care about things that are not spectacular, things that are almost invisible and hard to explain but that we hope will burn in you for a long, long time.

What is an Oie de Cravan? Our name has something to do with poet and boxer Arthur Cravan, with the amazing surrealist poet Louis Scutenaire, and even with the artic goose of Canada! Our name smells good and looks good. You, too, could be like our name — you just need to never ever buy one of our books. Because if you do, that’s it, you will be lost to this world. But what does this world know? Esthetics and statics — you’re more alive than that!