by Catalina Villegas-Burgos

Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024

2-4pm live on CKUT 90.3FM on Funky Revolutions

5500 Saint Hubert

Montreal, Quebec

This discussion was co-hosted by Stefan Christoff and Khalid M’Seffar of Funky Revolutions, the weekly program on CKUT 90.3 FM that will carry this live broadcast. 

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Speakers:

• Lauren Laframboise, Vanier Scholar and PhD student at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS) (profile page) and the External Affairs Officer for the Concordia Research and Education Workers’ Union (CREW–CSN).
• Kiva Stimac, the general and artistic director of the Suoni per il Popolo festival.
• Asher Woodhead, a Concordia student and independent musician (Doldrums / Crasher)
• A Solidarity Economy Incubation Zone (SEIZE) researcher who co-authored the report “From Crisis to Consensus: A survey of 60 housing groups from across Canada,” looking at the state of the housing justice movement in Québec and Canada (read the report here).
• Catherine Bodmer, a visual artist and the general director of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec (RCAAQ)

GMAQ gathering “No(s) cultures, no(s) futurs” on October 5th at the Darling Foundry (the event will be bi-lingual, but invite only in french for now) : https://www.facebook.com/events/1717214182357692?ref=newsfeed

CKUT 90.3 FM’s production coordinator Spencer Gilley (profile in The McGill Daily) will be the on location live broadcast sound engineer. Photographer Amru Salahuddien will be documenting this event and the Social Justice Centre at Concordia University is supporting the documentation of this live broadcast. 

Join us for a community radio broadcast to look at the ways that real estate monsters are attacking independent artists in the context of an unprecedented housing and space affordability crisis in the city and beyond. 

This broadcast is taking place at 5500 St. Hubert, a space that has served for years as a gathering point for independent artists. The location is currently the locale for a thriving independent arts network, including multiple small visual arts studios and music rehearsal locations. This address is inhabited by cultural workers with creative practices not defined by mainstream art market paradigms. 

Today this location, a former potato chip factory, is slated for demolition by UTILE, a company aiming to construct private student condo units. This process also involves massive amounts of public funding (report), as $21.4 million is going to the company just from the city of Montréal, for a larger process that involves few mechanisms for full accountability or democratic access to the decision making of the company. 

UTILE claims to be creating accessible student housing while the company is making massive profits and has little meaningful track record of creating truly affordable non-market student housing that is safe from rising rents in the long term. In the context of the current housing crisis market driven projects are not the solution. Today students and other communities who are dealing with precarious housing are being presented with false market oriented projects that are billed as solutions.

Non-market housing options, like the urgent need for public financial support for co-op housing from all levels of government, is a key element to building any real long term solutions. Demolishing affordable artist studios, where many students and community members work, thrive and create is what UTILE is doing in this case and this is unacceptable. 

Join us for a live in-person broadcast and discussion on location.

This specific institutional attack by UTILE on affordable artist spaces is an example of the larger gentrification crisis that deeply impacts independent artists, students and many low income communities. 

In this city many artists, a community including many students, is struggling to access affordable spaces to create. In this context it is critical to build alliances between artists and all community members facing impacts of so-called urban development projects that are violently displacing communities, a process that is backed by a Projet Montréal administration which is still claiming to be progressive.

Speaker information and information on what each person will be sharing for the broadcast:

Stefan Christoff is a media maker, community activist and artist living in Montréal. Stefan hosts the program Free City Radio, broadcasting weekly on seven community radio stations in Canada and shared globally as a podcast (Spotify + Apple Podcasts). Stefan makes music with many people globally, including Rêves sonores, Sam Shalabi, Lori Goldston, Adriana Camancho and Anarchist Mountains. Stefan is on the board of the Immigrant Workers Centre in Côte-Des-Neiges and organizes with Cinema Politica Network. Stefan works with the Social Justice Centre and is also a graduate student in history at Concordia University.

Lauren Laframboise is a Vanier Scholar and PhD student at the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling in the Department of History at Concordia. Her research explores the impacts of factory closures and deindustrialization on cities like Montreal and New York City. She has worked on a variety of public history projects exploring labour and urban history, including museum exhibitions, online oral history platforms, walking tours, and documentary films and radio, including the Voices of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre oral history project. She is also the External Affairs Officer for the Concordia Research and Education Workers’ Union (CREW–CSN).

Khalid M’Seffar, the host of Funky Revolutions, was involved in ISART, a non-profit collective artist space that was shut down due to the expansion of Palais des congrès de Montréal in 2000 and never was able to reopen due to the economic impacts of the shutdown. This was an example of affordable artist space in the city during a period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when there were many affordable autonomous artist spaces operating in the city, this is an important reference point. Khalid will also share some questions about possible opportunities to create artist spaces in the empty office towers that have been left vacant due the impacts of the pandemic that created new work conditions that sees so many people working from home. Khalid will share some questions on these possibilities while also being aware of the ways that such empty office towers could be used to address the housing crisis. 

Artist, chef, printer, poet, graphic designer and entrepreneur, Kiva Tanya Stimac, is the co-founder of local ground-breaking and world famous Montreal music institutions Casa del Popolo and La Sala Rossa  as well as a co-founder, co-visionary and Executive Director behind the internationally recognized festivals Suoni per il Popolo and Lux Magna. She also is the sole force behind Popolo Press, the in-house printshop of the Casa del Popolo, which is world renowned for its graphic design, printing and artwork for music posters, book and album covers and packaging which has coloured the neighborhood she has lived in for the past 25 years.  She has been an important creative and cultural force in Montreal and continues to influence and support new generations of artists and musicians within her community (as a mentor and employer) and beyond.

Asher Woodhead (Crasher / Doldrums) will be sharing a series of tracks specially selected for this broadcast that were created at or composed at 5500 Saint Hubert, the artist space being evicted. Asher will also share some reflections about the impacts of gentrification on creativity in the city, which for independent artists relies on affordable spaces to experiment, explore and create.

Catherine Bodmer is a visual artist and cultural worker who has been involved in artist-run centers for over 25 years. She was part of a group of artists who had their studios in the former Catelli factory, the emblematic 305 Bellechasse in Montreal. Nearly a hundred artists were dislocated in 2018-19 as a result of the sale of the building. Having co-directed several artist-run centers, such as La Centrale/Galerie Powerhouse and articule, she is inspired by various forms of self-management and collaboration. She is also a founding member of VIVA! Art Action, a biennial performance art festival in Montreal. Since 2020, she has been the general director of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec (RCAAQ), working to support and mobilize a network of over 70 artist-run centers across Quebec.

Photos below by Amru Salahuddien