#coms324

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A PARADOXICAL REFUGE: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED UNITED CHURCH by Lisa Suliteanu

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Menstrual Memories Zine by Gabrielle Allain and Evan Smith

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BODY, SPACE AND THE BALLET STUDIO by Cathleen Evans

A dance studio is, in theory, a blank slate: an almost empty room, save for a mirror and a bar, which the dancer inhabits and shapes through their physical expression. Studio A, the rental dance space in the Plateau which I chose to explore for my final project, encompasses this ideal. While I visited the studio on three occasions, it felt familiar from the moment I stepped foot on its shiny hardwood surface – a room recognizable to all who have donned a pair of pointe shoes. A part of the larger Studio Bizz dance complex located on the corner of Pontiac and Mont-Royal, the space is comfortingly characteristic: four walls (one adorned with a full length mirror), two windows, a set of free-standing bars, and the lingering smell of stale sweat. Sleek, serene, and somewhat sterile, Studio A appears devoid of any distinguishing attributes – with only a letter to differentiate it from its neighbouring stalls. Created for the sole purpose of offering affordable dance space by the hour, the intentional un-remarkability of the room is written into the ethos of Studio Bizz: a business whose aim is to provide as neutral a space as possible to the potential patron. In sum, Studio A represents the prototype dance studio – a “blank slate” which is unbiased in theory, yet deeply differential in practice.

A variety of factors – not simply ample space and unassuming décor – dictate who may comfortably inhabit the space of a dance studio and how. Gender, race, ability, and class create intersectional barriers so overwhelming only the most specific of bodies are entirely welcome within the studio walls. In no genre are these rigid cultural and physical criteria more pronounced than in classical ballet, a style whose rules, expectations, and traditions are imprinted upon its dancers from their first pirouette to their final bow. In essence, the ballet space presents a phenomenological mold; its inhabitants are forced to either embody its unattainable bar or find a way to work, and dance, around it.

Using the practice of photo-weaving to blur the lines between myself (the dancer) and the studio space, my project aims to present the relationship between the dancer and their studio as one of symbiosis: an embodied pas de deux rather than strict spatial practice.

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IN AND OUT OF BED By Garrett Lockhart and Danica Pinteric

http://inandoutofbed.tumblr.com/

The exploration of the bed as a socially produced space prompts many questions about the subjectivity of lived experience, dependency, and, representations within a space. How do we experience beds differently? Who is granted access to certain beds? What emotions do certain beds conjure? In and Out of Bed is a standalone collection of photographs that we produce as a response to these questions from our own embodied experiences in the bed that we share. In and Out of Bed is a standalone collection that we envision being exhibited in a physical or online art gallery.

We approached this project with both a primary and secondary methodology. We wanted to capture our experience of the bed from two predominant theoretical frameworks: communicating personal embodied experiences (inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jason Farman), and exploring how we produce spaces through patterns of social activity (inspired by Henri Lefebvre).

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Mont-Royal Avenue by Anne-Mette Hansen

http://annemette91.tumblr.com/

I decided to do a creative project about the area of the Plateau-Mont Royal with a specific focus on Mont-Royal Avenue. The project is focusing on the history of the space and how it has developed from a working class borough to the multicultural neighborhood that it is today. The project is showing a photo series of old pictures of the avenue from the beginning of the 20thcentury. To re-create the experience of the space I went to the same exact locations and took new pictures of the spaces. The project aims to illustrate and describe how the street has changed.

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CEMETERY AS AN ARCHIVE OF HUMAN IDENTITY

Essay by Danika and Anna 

The practices online in relation to death and the archiving of a deceased person’s digital identity is mirrored in the practices that date before the invention of the internet and before the conception of the term cyberspace coined by fiction writer William Gibson in 1982 (Badulescu, 2011). In light of this fact, we conclude that it is not reasonable to see the two spaces as separate; cemeteries and cyberspace not only both represent heterotopias but also lead to near identical behaviour in relation to the mourning of the dead. More importantly than that, the point that we have insisted on is that they both serve as archives that have recorded lived experiences in varying ways, but that both wind up containing an immense amount of data the deceased. The tombstone, size of plot, location and items left by visitors are similar to the online presence that an identify possesses. If an identity is being lived out through one or several accounts after the passing away of an individual, then the amount of friends, posts to wall and the creation of a memorial page is the equivalent of all that is found on a tomb. The main difference between the online space and the cemetery is the physical versus digital aspect; meaning that the physical may reveal less at first sight than the digital. In addition to this, digital conservation of identity and data after death has come makes it so that the archives are more widely accessible and can be accessed an infinite amount of times. This is a phenomenon that is not witnessed in a cemetery which has closing hours, regulations and private plots and tombs. An issue that is brought up in relation to the creation and preservation of online identity is the authenticity of the information that the individual chose to reveal: what is the real self, what is more authentic? The marks on the body, the embodied, neurological, biological experience; or the online accounts, the selected photos and tidbits, the mini autobiographies, reposts, etc.? This is near impossible to answer, almost as hard as it is to say what happens after death – all that we can be sure of is that it all definitely relates to the individuals identity, seeing as what they choose to post or not says a lot about them same as our actions and words in the physical world say a lot about us.

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Aéroportraits by Béatrice Viens Côté

as seen on http://aeroportraits.tumblr.com 

The project Aéroportraits (translated as “Airportraits” in English) aims to explore Montreal-Trudeau Airport through its various components, such as its design and its people. Indeed, airports are not simply a dot on a geographical map; they are also well thought constructions that come alive thanks to humans. In order to justify the valuable humans’ presence in that space, I decided to lead a discussion with strangers and collect a myriad of airport stories. The conversations were triggered by asking them to tell me about a moment they either experienced or witnessed at the airport and that they would never forget. Thanks to the photographic technique of double exposure, I completed the stories by combining portraits of interviewees with the various surrounding décors. The idea was to create confusion between body and space, two fundamental terms of the course. Moreover, some contradictions seem necessary to airports’ performance. As architect and engineer Daniel Estevez writes, “The airport is often shown as a milieu in tension. […] It is closed but opened, public but private, delimited but proliferating, in operation but under construction, coercive but fun” (23); such contradictions thus constituted the basis to my project. The hoped-for and final objectives were to perceive airports with a more human perspective, or more specifically, as thirdspaces, and to expose how dualism is intrinsic to that space, by, in the meantime, exploring notions of surveillance.

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THE COMMUTER TRAIN AS A DISCIPLINARY APPARATUS: BODIES AND ORDER -- Essay By Sarah Bibeau and Ana-Patricia Bourgeois

Abstract Shot of the AMT train cabins Photo: Ana Patricia Bourgeois

In “Discipline and Punish” (1975), Foucault focuses on the regulation of bodies and the question of power within particular institutions, using Bentham’s idea of the panopticon. Drawing upon Foucault’s interpretation of technologies of power, as well as Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological understanding of the environment, and Lefebvre’s idea from which politics and ideologies are embedded within spaces, this research project will focus on the commuter train as a disciplinary device, therefore adding an additional layer to Foucault’s argument. We believe that commuter trains tend to reinforce existing discourses around the orientation of our bodies within this particular space, therefore acting as a disciplinary device similar to the panopticon. We hope to arrive at a better understanding of this space by unpacking the different ways it forces us to behave, as well as the ways discipline is displayed. We believe that this research paper will fit within the greater discourse of this class about how our bodies relate to particular spaces and also about what kind of ideologies are at stake within such spaces. The commuter train doesn’t only help us to go from point A to point B; it is tightly related with old ideologies and follows important paradigmatic assumptions that have been perpetuated throughout the years about acceptable ways to behave within a public space.