Politics are seldom boring in Quebec, and what’s unfolding in Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau’s Papineau riding during this federal election campaign is a great example. Following in the performance art tradition of Mr Peanut and the Rhino Party, artists Kim Waldron and Chris Lloyd are both, separately, running as official independents. And in a lovely turn of events, as part of the performance festival Viva! Art Action, the artist-run centre Optica is hosting the riding’s All Candidates debate.
Image may be NSFW.
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Chris Lloyd & Kim Waldron
Lloyd became known to many Canadians earlier this year when his Conservative candidacy was outed as a performance art project and gained a great deal of media attention. Following his resignation he struck out on his own as an independent. Waldron is also a performance artist. Her practice often involves her taking on the invisible, but often labour intensive, work we take for granted – for example, food produc-tion, cleaning services, and now running for public office.
There are some definite parallels between these projects. To mention a couple: both artists’ current can-didacies emerge out of earlier works seeking political engagement through letter writing. During the 2012 Quebec student strikes Waldron created Same Day, a letter to then Premier Jean Charest, and for the past fifteen years Lloyd has been attempting to engage with Prime Ministers through his Dear PM project. Both artists have also outsourced their very refreshing campaign poster images to other artists. Clément de Gaulejac drew a charming and dapper cartoon of Lloyd and Waldron had her official portrait painted in triplicate while on residency in China.
The incumbent, Justin Trudeau, is unexpectedly neck-in-neck in the polls with the NDP candidate, jour-nalist Anne Lagacé Dowson. Could these art projects by chance swing the vote towards Trudeau? Will this unforeseen pressure lead him to show up at Optica’s debate? We’ll have to wait and see…
Optica: http://www.optica.ca/programmation/index_en.php#877
The All Candidates Debate takes place on October 5th at 7pm.
Susannah Wesley is an artist and curator living in Montreal. She has been a member of the collaborative duo Leisure since 2004 and from 1997-2000 was part of the notorious British art collective the Leeds13. Formerly Director at Battat Contemporary in Montreal, she holds an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and an MA in Art History from Concordia University. She is Akimblog's Montreal correspondent and can be followed @susannahwesley1 on Twitter.
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Chris Lloyd & Kim Waldron at Optica
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