1 PM | CARLA RANGEL - DIGESTING TENSIONS

Carla Rangel presents the project Digesting Tensions (2018), conceived and performed in collaboration with Chiara Sgaramella, Juxhina Spahiu and Sébastien Tripod in the context of the New Curriculum programme. Digesting Tensions was an invitation to embody different human and non-human agents that inhabit the Picos de Europa mountain range, to equally represent their perspectives, interests and needs. The project emerged from a series of field trips in and about the high pastures. Conversations with different shepherds pointed to the need for conservation regulations, such as the ones carried by Picos de Europa National Park, to be compatible with shepherding cultures. By enacting a conversation, where both a shepherd, a National Park representative and a wolf —among others—had the same platform for dialogue, the performance attempts to bring different systems of knowledge around a specific point of tension: what about the goat?

2 PM | MIWA KOJIMA - HAPPY HOUR

Miwa Kojima (courier-art) presents the project Happy Hour, a socially engaged artistic event aiming to gather experiences of happy moments lived by its visitors by sharing tea and other refreshments. Stories and words were documented through interviews or writing sessions inside a white lace tent. The project was staged in six cities and four different countries between 2003 and 2005, and then, after almost 20 years, the project was presented in Phase I of Around the Table at La Centrale galerie Powerhouse.

3 PM | CARLOTA BOULANGERIE MEXICAINE - TRADITIONAL MEXICAN BREAD TASTING

Mariana Martin, from Carlota Boulangerie mexicaine, presents a talk about the influence of colonization on Mexican bread and how her experience of bread making in Montreal has helped her understand and become part of the rich multicultural food culture of this city. She also shares the rich Mexican bread produced by Carlota Bakery, allowing the Latin community in Montreal to reconnect with its roots and traditions through culinary experiences.

4 PM | CACO REVOLUTION - MAKING TRADITIONAL MEXICAN HOT CHOCOLATE

Cacao Révolution presents its project around traditional Mexican cocoa and offers a workshop on preparing hot chocolate. She shares a brief history of chocolate and its cultural significance, while introducing participants to the preparation of traditional Mexican hot chocolate, emphasizing the importance of ingredient quality and using various methods to achieve delicious hot chocolate.

ALL DAY | SALIMA PUNJANI - TEA, TEA

Salima Punjani presents Tea, Tea, a tea station where visitors are invited to prepare a cup of masala chai. Guided by instructions recorded by Salima, this experience is an invitation to reflect on how to preserve traditions while living in a world that seeks to appropriate them and drain them of any social and relational meaning. This experience is inspired by the feelings of comfort, slowness, and connection that masala chai symbolizes for her.

GUESTS

Carla Rangel is a Mexican designer and artist based in Montreal, Canada. Her work seeks to foster moments of exchange and critical engagement with the systems that sustain us, may they be urban, social or ecological. She works collaboratively across a range of media, including architectural interventions, sound, performance, and participatory programming. Since 2014, she has worked with architecture collectives, artists, land activists, and neighborhood associations toward the transformation of public spaces, the regeneration of rural areas, and the protection of biodiversity. She is currently the Head of Public Programs and Institutional Development at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art.

Born in Vancouver in 1986, Salima Punjani is a multisensory artist whose mediums include social sculpture, vibrotactile, spatial sound, digital video, photography, and relational aesthetics. Her artistic approach is rooted in trauma-informed care and disability justice. She uses multiple senses to expand the possibilities of welcoming disabled people into art spaces by creating artful experiences of empathy, intimacy, and connection. Her recent work explores themes such as softness and anti-urgency, collective grief, isolation, and resocialization processes related to COVID-19, rest as resistance to systemic injustice, as well as how medical data can be subverted into finding human connection rather than pathologies. She holds a B.A. in Communications and Political Science from Carleton University, a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from Concordia University, and a Master’s in Social Work from McGill University with research focusing on the intersection of the arts and care work.