Public programs
MOMENTA’s public programs provide a constant presence with activities that take place outside of the biennial event. The organization produces various projects to maintain its engagement and its footprint in the local, national, and international art scenes. Workshops, conversations, and a podcast series are available all year round.
Thursday April 30, 2020
MOMENTA is proud to partner with Capture Photography Festival and Canadian Art to present a talk in the form of a webinar by curator Cliff Lauson, on Thursday April 30 from 12pm to 1pm (PT) and from 3pm to 4pm (EDT).
In this illustrated talk, curator Cliff Lauson discusses the complex relationship between lens-based image culture and the ‘experience economy’. Recently, most countries around the world closed their borders and imposed lockdowns in response to the global pandemic. Cliff reflects on the condition of electronic mediation and the current extreme turn. For the time being, art and exhibitions can only be experienced through our devices and screens, testing the limits of our virtual sensibilities.
Dr. Cliff Lauson is Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery, London, where he has organized major exhibitions including: Bridget Riley, Martin Creed, Ernesto Neto, Tracey Emin, Light Show and Space Shifters. He currently serves on the British Council Collection Acquisitions Advisory Committee, the Open Space Advisory Board, and is a trustee of Film and Video Umbrella. Lauson is also a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a qualified coach.
Sunday March 21, 2021
MOMENTA and The International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) partner up to present Sandlines, the Story of History by Francis Alÿs.
Discover the interview dedicated to "Sandlines, the Story of History" by Francis Alÿs. The conversation brings together Audrey Genois, Executive Director of MOMENTA and artist Francis Alÿs. During the interview, he explains what led him to make this historical fiction, produced between 2018 and 2020 near a Yezidi refugee camp in Iraq, and which is part of a series of projects that has seen Belgian artist work with children all over the world.
Sunday October 10, 2021
For youth and adults
Designed by film artist, educator, and Queer plant witch Jamie Ross and facilitated in collaboration with Aurora Prelević.
> Offered Thursday September 16th (5:00 pm - 7:00 pm) and Sunday, October 10th (1:00 pm - 3:00 pm)
> Duration: 2 h
> Free of charge
> French and English
> The workshop starts with a guided tour of Candice Lin and P. Staff’s installation displayed at Occurrence
> Book here
> For more information, please contact: education@momentabiennale.com
Echoing the themes outlined in Candice Lin and P. Staff’s installation displayed at Occurrence, Jamie Ross offers a workshop in the urban forest regrowing along the train tracks behind the gallery. Guiding participants through a space that has held bonfires and ritual gatherings for decades, Ross frames an approach to some of the medicinal plants growing wild in the space, raising questions about harvesting ethics and highlighting the importance of allowing the land to heal from human-driven contamination. In ancient Greek, all plants that sit at the powerful pharmaceutical crossroads—queer love spell, poison, and plant medicine—were referred to as φάρμακον (phármakon). With listening and sensing as a method, participants are presented with a context that undoes notions about understanding plants based on anthropocentric use value, good, evil, and wellness. The workshop contains optional hands-on activities and takes place rain or shine.
About Jamie Ross
Jamie Ross is a film artist, city gardener, and preschool teacher. In their most recent films, Radical Faeries elders help young people memorize the chants sung in twentieth-century Queer street battles with the police; Pagan men incarcerated in federal prisons in Quebec share intimate encounters with the divine alongside Jamie, their chaplain; and the portrait of a season at a sheep farm run by witches on a remote hill in the Appalachians is presented from the perspective of the flow of autumnal viscera and liquids.
Saturday August 27, 2022
Savoir devenir image. Quelles stratégies de visibilité et d'invisibilité aujourd'hui ?
In view of its 18th edition, which will take place in the fall of 2023, MOMENTA presents in association with Papier, a first public conversation around the theme Masquerades: The Lure of Metamorphosis. Jade Almeida, researcher in sociology and history of culture, Nathalie Casemajor, professor-researcher specialized in digital culture, and Ji-Yoon Han, curator of MOMENTA 2023, discuss contemporary issues of visuality raised by, among other things, identity politics and the development of surveillance technologies.
This event will be held in French only.