When thinking about the role a public event like this should take, I let myself be guided by my preference for contemporary art that has left the “ivory towers” of the museums and galleries, for all the “hors-les-murs” exhibitions. This kind of truant work, however, has few traits in common with works that are “public commissions,” despite their appearance. In fact, these artworks are more related to the often-discreet aspects of certain ephemeral projects that remain in the memory of those who visited them.
I am thinking of the duo Lyne Lapointe and Martha Fleming’s remarkable interventions that took place between 1982 and 1995 in Montreal and elsewhere in the world. They occurred in such emotionally and historically charged places as an old fire station, an abandoned post office and a former theatre to mention just a few. The 1989 exhibition Fictions also comes to mind. Here the French curator, Jérôme Sans, asked twenty-five well-known artists to occupy the public spaces at Mirabel International Airport for three months, to merge and play with the infrastructures. There have also been few successes in Quebec City such as Paysages verticaux and Chambres d’hôtel, and as for what has been presented abroad, there was Chambres d’amis, organised by Jan Hoet in 1986. This event took place in about fifty houses and private apartments in the town of Ghent, and was one of the outstanding exhibitions of the 20th century. Also, in 1987, the view of most visitors to the immense Skulptur Projekte in Münster — myself included — was that the most stimulating works were the ephemeral and in situ ones.

Gilles Daigneault