Contemplating Collaboration: a methodological laboratory

with Gabrielle Larocque and Le Broke Lab

June 15 - 17, 2021

During the week of June 14, Gabrielle Larocque and members of the Le Broke Lab collective will meet in Artexte’s exhibition space (currently closed to the public) for a three-day laboratory that revisits the collective’s archives in response to research that examines the subject of collaboration and rooted in Gabrielle’s findings and reflections in the Artexte Collection this spring. The laboratory is structured in various episodes pertaining to collaboration: 1) viewpoints and facets of collaboration (how are meeting points of knowledge and point of view produced?)   2) Methodology  and action (how is the process organized?)  3) mutual adjustments (what adjustments are made and how do they operate?). With the help of the Le Broke Lab archives, they attempt to activate the collective’s memory which they believe is partly accumulated in the bodies of its members. This laboratory could deepen their understanding of the dynamics behind “the elaboration of a collaborative art work”  (cnrtl.fr). If collaboration is used abundantly as a work practice, how could it be approached beyond its romantic ideal, as a political tool?

 

About Gabrielle Larocque’s research residency @ Artexte

How does the encounter between the document collection and live or performative arts inform the subject of collaboration? My residency draws from Artexte’s material documents —a literature primarily donated by a community of artists and cultural workers—  so as to extract concepts that allow to measure, analyse, and ultimately, to forge a connection between the documentation of Le Broke Lab, a dance collective whose work is focused on modes of collaboration, research and experimentation.

 

Artist and researcher, Gabrielle Larocque comes from an anthropological and visual arts background. Her doctoral research, supervised by Anne Bénichou, focuses on the heritage of performing arts and on the interdisciplinary encounter that is produced. Her research practice extends beyond academia, and engages her through curatorial and artistic practice. She publishes and communicates about her projects (VU, 2020) and her artworks have recently been acquired by private and institutional collections (MAC LAU, 2019). She is the winner of the 2015 Roland-Arpin Award and the recipient of the FRQSC scholarship since 2020.

In 2011 Merryn Kritzinger, Susan Paulson and Roxane Duchesne-Roy, all professional dancers who practice in Montreal, founded Le Broke Lab, a malleable structure that creates a series of dance research micro-laboratories involving artists from all disciplines, both established and emerging, that inspire us. Together, we dedicate ourselves to an exploration free of constraints which would normally be linked to the production of an art work. Le Broke Lab puts an emphasis on uncensored research free of all pressures, and where artistic and human exchange remains the priority. We look to provoke encounters, to contribute to the development of pure research, to operate as a resource, and ultimately, to recharge and to exchange. Fifty three collaborations were made to this day and a documentation component is at the heart of our projects.