PHI Foundation
465 Saint-Jean Street
Education Room (SS01)
Opening Hours
Thursdays from 1 PM to 5 PM
Sundays from 1 PM to 5 PM
Free admission
Before visiting, please review all essential information about the visit, including details on accessibility at the Foundation.
Public Engagement Project
The Bureau of Noncompetitive Research is a public engagement project by the collective of the same name. Taking place in the PHI Foundation’s Education Room, the project runs from November 3, 2023, to March 10, 2024, in conjunction with the presentation of the exhibition Rirkrit Tiravanija: JOUEZ/PLAY.
For this project, the Education Room fulfills a prophecy foretold by its always-running central AC, its suspended ceiling, and its grid of fluorescent lights; it has been fully transformed into an office space, complete with printer and coffee stations, a boardroom table, and workstations.
This room, which welcomes our Education groups, will be activated by a durational performance carried out by the three members of the collective, who will be using it regularly as a workspace for the next few months. It will also serve as a creative meeting place for our public, who will be invited to take part in a variety of events and workshops, including the creation of demotivational posters and a happy-hour artist talk.
If this newly furnished room offers a sharp contrast to the architectural fantasies of the design-y open-concept floor plan (or the cozy home office setup), it is a nod to the persistence of this sterile and alienating environment as a setting in popular culture, especially in comedies—think of the 1999 film Office Space, or the UK and US versions of the television series The Office. In this mode, the office becomes a site of the absurd, in which is enacted a perpetual role play; where one is simultaneously manager and managed, boss and employee, active and passive, idle and busy.
By parodying these standardized environments and roles, the Bureau of Noncompetitive Research proposes a transformation of the office space from a site of detached labour to one of critical resistance. Just as the collective’s projects offer a sly critique of some of the values that seem to guide the contemporary art milieu today—hyperproductivity and hypervisibility, commodification, entrepreneurship—so too are they committed to exploring other forms of labour, guided by an ethos of slowness, play, collaboration, and exchange.
Curator: Daniel Fiset
This public engagement project is presented with the support of the SDC Vieux-Montréal.
The Bureau of Noncompetitive Research is a group of artists and researchers who explore how slow philosophy, dialogue, collaboration, pedagogy, and public space intersect. Founded in 2021, the Bureau has taken on academic and artistic projects, namely Slowness and the Institution (2021), Pedagogy and Time (2022), and Giving Nothing (2023). In this iteration, the Bureau comprises Victoria Stanton, José Cortés, and Stacey Cann.
Stacey Cann is a performance artist and researcher interested in ideas of work, endurance, and collaboration.
José Cortés is a transdisciplinary artist whose work juxtaposes value and mundane matters in multimedia, public space, and pedagogic projects.
Victoria Stanton is an undisciplined performance artist whose infiltrating/relational works explore the role of rest, pause, and liminal space in artistic processes.
Past Event
Foundation
During this ongoing activity offered by members of the Bureau amidst their installation, the public is invited to make their own demotivational posters
Past Event
Foundation
In this public performance that probes the interview process to reveal all of its absurdity, the group proposes to meet potential candidates in order to find the ideal employee
Past Event
Foundation
Come and have a beer or a Coca-Cola with the three artists of the Bureau of Noncompetitive Research and learn more about their collective and individual practices as artists and pedagogues
Past Event
Foundation
Over the course of two days of dialogue, artists, educators and researchers will come together to present their research, offer workshops, reflect on the successes and failures of their respective practices, and discuss failure as a generative tool in the work of public engagement
Past Event
Foundation
The Bureau of Noncompetitive Research is a public engagement project by the collective of the same name. Taking place in the PHI Foundation’s Education Room
Past Event
Foundation
During this ongoing activity offered by members of the Bureau amidst their installation, the public is invited to make their own demotivational posters
Past Event
Foundation
In this public performance that probes the interview process to reveal all of its absurdity, the group proposes to meet potential candidates in order to find the ideal employee
Past Event
Foundation
Come and have a beer or a Coca-Cola with the three artists of the Bureau of Noncompetitive Research and learn more about their collective and individual practices as artists and pedagogues
Past Event
Foundation
Over the course of two days of dialogue, artists, educators and researchers will come together to present their research, offer workshops, reflect on the successes and failures of their respective practices, and discuss failure as a generative tool in the work of public engagement
Past Event
Foundation
The Bureau of Noncompetitive Research is a public engagement project by the collective of the same name. Taking place in the PHI Foundation’s Education Room
Past Event
Foundation
The PHI Foundation is pleased to present JOUEZ/PLAY, a solo exhibition by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija
Past Event
Foundation
The PHI Foundation is pleased to present JOUEZ/PLAY, a solo exhibition by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija
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