OFFTA in the Quartier: A Pair of Works That Dive Deep

Cabaret Essence

by Athena Lucie Assamba
June 5 at 7 p.m., Place de la Paix

The action
A wild open mic under a June evening sky. Slam poets, dancers and musicians take their turns in a continuous flow, with no discernible start or finish. Come, participate, leave transformed… or stick around.

The concept
Athena Lucie Assamba calls them “ancestral technologies”: knowledge of the body, collective memory, healing rituals. A choreographer and researcher of Cameroonian descent, who trained in traditional African dance before diving into waacking, dancehall and Afro house after arriving in Montreal, she sees movement as a spatial phenomenon that’s both political and spiritual. Her project draws on an Afrocentric school of thought that does not see the past with nostalgia, but as a living resource – a form of resistance and emancipation. Cabaret Essence puts bodily autonomy on stage: its right to joy, transmission, imagination. 

The invitation 
You are not a spectator, but a co-creator of the ceremony. Show up with open hands.

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Inframondes

by Sabrina Ratté
Starting May 29, Place de la Paix and Galerie ELLEPHANT

The material 
The three sections of Inframondes are based on 3D animation, analogue video synths and immersive audio. First is an audio-visual performance (May 30, 9 p.m.), then a set of open-air luminous tableaux accessible 24/7 in Place de la Paix (May 29 to June 5) and finally an exhibition at Galerie ELLEPHANT (May 29 to June 20).

The concept 
A deep dive into the prima materia, the primeval substance out of which all shapes emerge. Sabrina Ratté works at the intersection of the digital and the organic, of technology and spirituality, mapping the liminal zones where reality and virtuality diverge. A Montreal artist who’s acclaimed far and wide, she creates universes where we think we recognize something – a cell, an alga, a forgotten dream – without ever being able to pin it down. These worlds resemble maps of a place we’ve never been but feel we must have passed through in our dreams. Inframondes draws on the creation myths of the world and ecological thinking to ask a mind-bending question: what if the origin of all things is still there, below the surface, accessible to those who are willing to search deep enough?

The invitation 
A deep dive into the abyss and the subliminal. See it at least once under a starry sky, and again in the white space of the gallery: this is no longer the same work.

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