This collaborative project transformed an art gallery into an immersive environment exploring concepts of national belonging and inspired by artist collectives that made an impact on modernity in Quebec.

Just Watch Me was a large-scale site-specific project and event design at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Montreal about the legacy of immigration in the 1970s in current concepts of neo-Quebec identity.

The project transformed a 3,600 sq. ft. gallery into a social club, which included a disco-bar, fair-trade café, stage, movie theatre, studios for artists-in-residence, library and theater stage.

The site-specific installation targeted the students of this gallery university, as well as local neighbours of Montreal, and was the result of two years’ fieldwork, involving interviews and archive research in collaboration with three art historians about three art collectives from the 1970s that have marked modernity in Quebec: the Mousse Spacthèque, the Fusion des Arts inc. group, the Fondation du Théâtre d’Environnement Intégral and the periodicals Parti Pris and Liberté among others.

The whole event, which spread over five spaces and lasted a month, was made in collaboration with over 50 partners, from community organisations to activists. Numerous free daily activities and performative works, including video-making workshops, yoga, tai chi, GROOVE, panel discussions, screenings, and conversations, promoted immersive participation, discussion, and exchange on questions of identity in a festive environment. Guest DJs performed every Friday evenings during the event.

The objective was to enable the public to experience the findings of our research, reflecting upon the role of ethnicities in the construction of identity in Quebec and the role of the artist as a social actor as well as the state’s role in art, through a meeting place that encouraged dialogue and collective creation. The project aimed for reviving the will to integrate art into society that was so prevalent in the 1970s. A website in collaboration with the art historian Francine Couture documented the whole event.

The project was initiated by Romeo Gongora and organized with Anithe de Carvalho, Francine Couture, CUTV, Kester Dyer, Les Éditions de la Tournure, Géraldine Eguiluz, Les Filles électriques, Ève Lamoureux, La Médiathèque littéraire Gaëtan Dostie, Felicity Tayler, University of the Streets Café and many others.

Just Watch Me was produced and presented by Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Montreal (CA). With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the contribution of MOOG Audio.