Goethe-Institut Kanada 2012-2021

Montreal
2014
"Maison Fontaine" house

Water. A simple and short word, but with a long list of implications that extend to all aspects of life. In the summer of 2014, Maison fontaine is built on the Clark Esplanade in collaboration with the Quartier des spectacles de Montréal and numerous local and international partners. This circular ecological structure illustrates the fundamental role of water through its architecture. “This house, with a fountain of water running through it,” project manager Markus Bader of Berlin-based architectural firm raumlaborberlin tells Le Devoir newspaper, “is about creating a spatial celebration of what we think is an ordinary, everyday necessity that we don’t care about.” An example : the fountain water is reused and released as steam. The walls planted inside and outside turn into mushrooms and herbs.  
  
“We didn’t want to just invite a German artist to do his thing; we always seek dialogue with the local community,” explains Manfred Stoffl, director of the Goethe-Institut and initiator of the project. Quebec artist Cécile Martin illuminates the green building, Chantal Dumas offers a sound installation, Magali Babin and Erin Sexton perform inside, and AElab and Chris Salter will offer the public an audiovisual performance. The arches of Maison fontaine are open to the public for three months, becoming in their own way the ephemeral home of an entire community.    

2019
Emergences

To the question “What is emerging in contemporary performance art?”, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and EUNIC Montreal answer with Émerge, an impressive five-day event that brings together a dozen European and Canadian artists and participants invited to present recent works and discuss issues related to performance art. Founded in Berlin in 2016 by Berlin-based Sarah Ancelle Schoenfeld and Montreal-based Louis-Philippe Scoufaras, the duo PPKK performs PPKK 04.01, a work conceived in 2017 in Munich for the exhibition-concert entitled Mythology, Electricity and Music.  
  

Find here the recordings of the exchanges made during the great forum that gathered the participants of the conferences and workshops! 

Website - Emerge

2020
Reconciliation

As far as reconciliation efforts to constructively come to terms with traumatic historical conflicts are concerned, Tagesspiegel editor Lars von Törne is categorical: “Comic narratives can contribute to such coming to terms with the past, as many authors have shown in the history of this artistic form of expression.” The Goethe-Institut Canada agrees with this assessment and has invited twenty Canadian and German comic artists to create new comics in English, French, German and Indigenous languages around the theme of reconciliation.  

 “We found that this is a theme that touches both our countries from different angles,” Goethe-Institut Montreal librarian Marie-Pierre Poulin tells Le Devoir newspaper.   
  
For example, the German artist Olivier Kugler staged the English actor Stan Boardman, part of whose family had fallen victim to the Nazi bombing of Liverpool in 1941. Later, the actor used his impressions and memories of World War II and the Germans as a source of inspiration for his jokes. The 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book by Indigenous author and cartoonist Gord Hill, formulates reservations about the concept of reconciliation itself and its implementation by the Canadian government. 
  
The comics of the twenty comic artists can be found HERE.