In this desolate area, however, lies an anomaly: Gilgamesh, located at the cross section of Parc and Beaubien, is a luxury furniture store and café owned by Tobin Belanger. Gilgamesh’s clean, renovated exterior is a distinct contrast to the dingy discothéque and the carpet warehouses the area also houses. Though it might seem like an odd area to have the store, for Bélanger, who lives in the studio just above Gilgamesh, the location made perfect sense. In a telephone interview, Bélanger explained that buying out the downstairs floor was better than letting it go to “some shady guys who wanted to open a crummy fast food restaurant.”

The area where Gilgamesh is located won’t be deserted for long, however. “There’s a huge medical campus from Université de Montréal going in right…down the street and so it’s pretty obvious that there are going to be a lot of changes here in the next five to ten years,” Bélanger explained. Just as the Plateau and Mile End have become gentrified in the past few years, the implementation of a school campus up on Parc will surely bring change even further north in Montreal as well: “It’s sort of a natural thing where first it’s derelict, the artists move in, the furniture people move in, and then the condos start getting built and that’s already happened here,” Bélanger commented.

Upon entering Gilgamesh, what’s most evident about the store is the furniture – items stacked on top of one another, spilling out the door to the street curb, offering customers an eclectic mix of “revamped, vintage and retro and classic” pieces. Clientele mostly consists of the “Outremont and Plateau/Mile End young professional” crowd; prices are reasonable considering the usual overpricing of designer furniture, but at $18 for a photo frame, many items are beyond a student’s budget. On the bright side, the coffee at Gilgamesh is good and cheap – Bélanger claims there is “no good espresso around,” so many people walking by the busy intersection come in just for that aspect. The trip up Parc to Gilgamesh provides one with a rich combination of things to look at and taste, even if the espresso bar seems more of a charity for the coffee-loving owner than the intentional centerpiece of the store.

Cafés are notably lacking in this area of Parc Extension, and the opening of Gilgamesh seems to reflect the northward migration of students and young professionals that are drawn to the area’s businesses. It’s a bit dramatic to be calling Gilgamesh “really out there” in terms of distance – it’s just three blocks away from the hustle and bustle of cafes and in markets lower down on Parc in the Mile End.

Still, this shiny new example of gentrification stands out in the homogenous few blocks separating Mile End from Parc Ex, and goes to prove that those few extra steps underneath the overpass will lead to some interesting finds.

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Rangsch began her presentation by speaking about the estuary’s tides. At its highest point, she explained, the tide rises five metres above the low tide mark. To illustrate the difference this makes on the shore, Rangsch measured the height of the house she was staying at in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, a town along the estuary, using a tall white pole with a bright pink stopper at the end. During the talk, she played a sped-up video that showed her placing the stick on the shore at low tide, and how it disappeared completely when the tide rose six hours later.

In addition to depicting the beauty of the area through photos and videos, Rangsch brought in statistics and test results to highlight the area’s unique environment. During her stay along the estuary, Rangsch took water samples from various parts of the river, measuring different sediment levels. The inclusion of visuals of the testing certificates Rangsch received – verifying that the water quality tests performed were accurate – allowed her scientific background to seep into the presentation, as did a photograph of test tubes lined up side-by-side, revealing the different sediment-rich colours of the water at the different test sites.

In this way, Rangsch showed the authority of her scientific procedure, while at the same time enabling the audience to engage with the project via its artistic qualities. The photos and videos not only gave Rangsch freedom to make the presentation more playful and colourful, but they also allowed the viewer to see the estuaire moyen in a holistic way, while keeping the scientific facts precise and validated. Using both these disciplines, Rangsch enforced the importance of this area of water as a central and unique ecological environment.

Rangsch’s presentation also illustrated that this part of the river is not only important for scientific purposes or its scenic setting. She made a point of showing the estuary’s influence on the people who live along its banks as well, as when she played an audio clip in which a man describes the effects that extreme tides have on those living along the estuary. She connects these three communities – of scientists, artists, and local residents – through various mediums as a way of giving her audience a realistic view of the estuary, even in a small gallery space miles and miles away from its waters.

Through showing the diversity of this aquatic landscape to audiences around the country, Rangsch hopes to get people to begin to call it estuaire central, and in so doing to award the unique environment the recognition it deserves. The subtle change to a grander name will hopefully prompt other communities to explore this area of the river, rather than overlook the hidden habitat.

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The noblemen all spoke highly of their great king, and the triumphs of his life. When finished speaking, they proceeded to sing Britain’s national anthem, while the audience watched the procession of the king’s body from the Arts steps all the way to the SSMU building. Onlookers maintained relative silence as the royal corpse was escorted away. The entire drama lasted only 10 minutes, and when it was over, the sun retreated ominously as if cued, leaving the crowd with a heavy sense of loss. To see the events of the king’s life that lead up to this solemn occasion, go see Henry VI: Rise of York.

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Upon entering the gallery space, viewers are greeted with a television projection of a Loch Ness expedition. To the right of the TV, the floor is littered with mounted pieces of cardboard, wood, and paper splotched with paint. The overall effect can feel confusing, and disconnected from this idea of manipulation. However, when one looks through the video camera set up on a tripod facing these objects, the installation begins to make sense. Seen through the lens, these randomly set up recycled shapes project the exact same image shown on the television screen. Using salvaged and recycled materials, Lyons – a Concordia student currently pursuing his Masters’ in art history – is able to make his audience really grasp the perils of relying on photography as hard evidence.

Since it was first reported in 1933, the Loch Ness Monster’s existence has been much debated, captivating the imaginations of people around the world. Much of the evidence used to prove the existence of the mythical animal has been dismissed as elaborately thought-out hoax photographs or incorrectly identified objects in the water. Lyons’s main focus with this installation is not so much to question the legitimacy of the modern day myth itself, but to show the case’s dependency upon photography as its most convincing evidence. The Loch Ness investigation has a “reliance on photographic technology to try to prove the existence of an elusive species,” Lyons explained. “It figures as ‘evidence’ something which will always be uncertain.”

Lyons shows his audience how easily a few objects set up at a certain angle can replicate a photographic subject that doesn’t exist in real life. As Lyons puts it: “after a photograph has been taken, its referent, or, in other words, the thing which is placed before the camera lens, is immediately lost, and the photographic document is mediated and limited by the lens used, the film stock, the shot’s angle, the distance from the object, and so on.” The installation “takes Loch Ness as a metaphor, placing the viewer in direct contact with both the image and referent, exposing what is hiding in plain sight.”

Lyons allows his audience to experience the inherent unreliability of photography for themselves by making his installation interactive. Offering more than a side-by-side comparison of manipulated and original photographs, the audience is given the chance to see what is really in front of the camera, and witness the process of how a new image can be created. In his own words, Lyons is letting the viewers “[navigate] the entire space, inside the frame of view and around it, [so that] the visitor may question the relationship between the two- dimensional representation and three-dimensional material referent and challenge its inconsistencies.”

Loch Ness successfully explores this link between medium and evidence, through Lyon’s intent to provide “an opportunity for a visitor to physically experience the photographic object.” By adding the element of back-story through careful placement of objects, Lyons is able to break the sensory restrictions that photography always entails.

Loch Ness is currently on display at SKOL (372 Ste. Catherine
O., suite 314).

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On top of booking fee-free and DIY venues, there’s also the possibility of going and contacting bands directly in the hopes of playing with them. “If you’re a fan of a band, and you think that that band fits your sound, [you could say,] ‘Hey, I noticed there’s an open space for a local band, we love this band, and we think they’re kind of like equal counterparts for our style of music like that would a great fit for the show’.… If you can convince them, then you’re pretty much golden,” White said.

However, “establishing oneself” does not have to start or even end on a big scale – it can be something as simple as putting yourself on the map at school by, for example, playing a great set at a party. Beginner bands take note: “[New bands] definitely shouldn’t think that if they couldn’t play at a bar, they’re not a legitimate band,” Frank says. “Part of the fun is playing in strange places or in friends’ basements or living rooms, or making friends who have big living rooms.”   
All three band members also emphasized that it wasn’t about playing the biggest venue in Montreal, but playing a great set and having a good interaction with your audience. As White puts it, “it doesn’t really matter if you know, like, if it’s a prestigious place, but if it’s the kind of place that invites a good, like, a good kind of atmosphere, that’s where you wanna play a show. It’s very important to make a show go well. Even if you’re good, [if] you know the crowd’s not feeling it because all the different circumstances, you know, then you don’t have a good show for yourself.”

Regardless of where you end up playing, it’s about making the crowd really grasp what you’re conveying through your music. Opt for any space that can culture this kind of relationship. Frank sums this up by stating that “You kind of make the most of the space you have, and if you can make people forget that they’re in a living room or a dingy dive bar, because that’s the only space you could get, then that’s a success, I think.”  

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Marie-Hélène Bellavance plays Simone, a young, independent biology student at Harvard who has come back home to deal with the aftermath of her grandmother’s unexpected death. Her grandmother’s passing forces Simone to enter a palliative care centre for the first time in her life. The fact that she was not present for her grandmother’s last moments sparks Simone’s interest in forging bonds with the people in the centre where her grandmother passed. Simone signs up to volunteer at this centre, and forms some of the most intimate, but short-lived, relationships she’s ever experienced.

The story of these relationships allows the movie to deal with themes of mortality and morality. While it is clear that Simone is an independent woman, she is obsessed with her own perceived weakness. A car accident in her youth resulted in the loss of her legs from the knee down, and categorized her as a disabled person. That Simone is able to help the centre’s patients, who rely on her for nearly all their needs, gives her a sense of authority and purpose that she has not experienced before. However, this overwhelming sense of gratification quickly takes a subconscious toll on Simone’s life, as she grows too close to the patients and ignores the rules of therapy. It even affects her personal life, as she gets more deeply involved in her already tumultuous relationship with her lover, Boris (Francis Ducharme).

Bellavance gives the film’s strongest performance, outshining her costar Ducharme with the sincerity and warmth she adds to Simone’s character. Nearly silent scenes and a recurring minimalist soundtrack only add to the film’s appeal. Clear, poignant shots of benign objects – for example, a snowblower – allow the viewer to identify, fully appreciate, and absorb the emotion the scene tries to convey. When the music returns, overpowering the speakers with its powerful, eerie trumpets, it further emphasizes that emotion, allowing the viewer to feel its full range and force.

Still, Deraspe avoids getting too wrapped up in the solemn moments, and the film also has a sincere sense of humour when needed. The amusing pangs don’t take away from the overall sensibility of the movie, but rather add another dimension to the already multi-layered plot. Les Signes Vitaux provides an interesting perspective on palliative centres and the people involved in them, with its raw depiction of death, the fragility of life, and the potentially dangerous feeling of power in the presence of the weak.

Les Signes Vitaux screens at Ex-centris (3536 St. Laurent) on October 10 at 8:45 p.m. and at 5:15 p.m. on October 12.

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