Striking a match between social justice artivism and oppositional cultural practice
The Printemps québécois ended 2 1/2 years ago. It was the largest protest movement in Québec history that lasted six months and was punctuated by more than 600 demonstrations, actions, occupations and blockades that dominated public discourse and pervaded private conversations.
It’s interesting to watch how people interact with the Printemps CUBEcois protest banner installation as it was on exhibit in the EV Building Atrium at Concordia University from October 12th to the 18th, 2014. The time-lapse video of the CUBE’s exterior was recorded between 5-6pm during a Thursday rush hour. It was initially recorded at the rate of one photograph every 2 seconds using a GoPro Hero 3. The images were edited together at a video frame rate of 12 frames per second (FPS). So for every second that passes in the video, the actual time that lapsed during the...
On July 3rd, we disassembled the Printemps CUBEcois banner installation that was exhibited within the Hemispheric Institute‘s Encuentro 2014, MANIFEST! : Choreographing Social Movements in the Americas, hosted by Concordia University. With the help of friends (THANKS! You know who you are), it took only three hours to remove the hundreds of staples, to clip the dozens of sewing points from the forty protest banners that formed the skin of the cube, and unscrew the hundreds of screws holding the wooden structure that measured 13ft high x 17ft wide on all sides. It was a monumental sight within the university’s...
