Artistic creation in the urban environment is changing. For a long time confined to shows, performances, objects or images placed in the city, without any connection with the place, it is becoming more and more intimately involved with the urban environment, inventing itself in situ, dialoguing with the context and thus actively contributing to the "manufacture of urbanity", sometimes even in direct contact with the world of urban planning.  

To better understand these new ways of "doing the city with artists", the Consulate General of France in Quebec City, in partnership with Les Escales Improbables de Montréal and the Consulate General of Switzerland in Montreal, have imagined an event composed of several meetings: conferences, workshops, videos, podcasts and resource boxes to nourish the reflection on the subject

The aim of these meetings is to present and compare new artistic practices in Quebec, France and Switzerland, in the various stages of urban development - diagnosis, consultation, design, transition, construction and delivery - but also via the activation of public spaces and the development of new uses. Their aim is to improve knowledge and understanding of the issues, operating methods, effects and also the difficulties of these approaches developed on both sides of the Atlantic.

For the first edition, which took place in November 2020, they devised an online programme mixing three conferences to be followed live with renowned speakers in Quebec, France and Switzerland, as well as podcasts and video capsules featuring artists from the performing and visual arts, actors from the world of culture and urban planning.

The second edition was held from March to April 2021 on the theme "The Sensitive City in the Covid Age". It addressed the following questions: Can creation in public space awaken our aesthetic and political sensibilities? What site-specific actions could we imagine to stimulate our urban sensoriality and our political sense and thus 'work for a sensitive city'? And how can we bring the sensitive city to life: through institutional management or by encouraging informal uses?

Full details of the programme and the resource box can be found at www.villesinvivo.com

FOCUS ON: AUDIO-SERIES - MAKING THE CITY WITH ARTISTS

Faire la ville avec les artistes, opens the microphone to project leaders who give their testimonies on a work or an urban experience they have developed. Whether they are artists, cultural organisations, citizens or representatives of a city, they have been involved in making the city a different place to live. In 14 episodes, they talk to us about sounds in the city, about different urban wanderings, about spaces and places that are used differently, about the memory of cities... Embark on an auditory journey to Sherbrooke, Quebec City, Laval, Montreal, Paris, Fresnes, Pré-en-Pail, and Lausanne.

Check out episode 1 below and find the full episodes here .

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Project holders:

On an initiative of the Consulate General of France in Quebec
Co-piloted by Pascal Le Brun-Cordier, associate professor at the École des arts de la Sorbonne (Paris 1), coordinator of the Villes In Vivo network.
Delegated production Les Escales Improbables de Montréal
In partnership with the Consulate General of Switzerland in Montreal
In collaboration with the Théâtre des Petites Lanternes (Sherbrooke), Université Laval (Québec), Université de Sherbrooke, UQAM (Montréal), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris), the network Les art et la Ville and the network Villes in VIvo.
With the support of the French Institute and Présence Suisse

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