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EXPERIENCE

PHI Event Centre Derniereminute COVE Rv2
Photo: Julien Grimard

Last minute

  • Experience
  • Immersion
  • Innovation
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PHI Centre Galerie 3
315 Saint-Paul St West
Montreal, Quebec, H2Y 2A3

Monday and Tuesday:
Closed

Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday:
11 am to 6:20 pm (last group enters at 5:40 pm)

Friday and Saturday:
10 am to 7:50 pm (last group enters at 7:10 pm)

Duration: 30 minutes

The PHI Performance Sessions:
Click here
to discover a new way to inhabit Last minute with a series of unique performances to accompany this immersive installation.

Wednesday and Thursday: $17-$22
Friday to Sunday*: $20.50-$24

Taxes and fees not included

*The PHI Performance Sessions at 1:20 pm, 2:10 pm and 3:50 pm on Dec 3, 17, Jan 14 and Feb 11 will incur an additional $5 cost 

What if it was the first minute of your life? What if it was the last?

Get ready for a sensory, immersive installation around the concept of a single minute stretched out in time, the one right before crossing the threshold between a "before" and "after."

Last minute trailer |

PHI Event Centre Derniereminute IMG2v2
Photo: Julien Grimard

This 30-minute work takes you on a journey through a hypnotizing universe using a combination of music, light, and interactive projections. Walk through the space, bathed in images and sound, and feel situated amongst the elements to live this metamorphosis from the vantage point of a particle—a droplet, a burning blaze, rising smoke, shivering ash, shaking earth, falling air, trickling rain, or a rising wave.

"We composed this symbolic experience of the body on the verge of passing to the other side—between a "before" and an "after"—by placing ourselves in the vantage point of the elements."

— Claire Bardainne

THE PHI PERFORMANCE SESSIONS

Discover a new way to inhabit Last minute with a series of performances placing moving bodies next to the artwork, co-creating a unique experience for and with visitors.

Four dates, which include three performances each, will take place at the PHI Centre over the coming months for visitors to explore and view the work from all angles. For an additional $5, the performances are welcomed and encouraged for all ages.

Don’t miss the opportunity to heighten your experience of this already engaging work!

Saturday, December 3, 2022: 1:20 pm, 2:10 pm, 3:50 pm


Saturday, December 17, 2022: 1:20 pm, 2:10 pm, 3:50 pm


Saturday, January 14, 2023: 1:20 pm, 2:10 pm, 3:50 pm


Saturday, February 11, 2023: 1:20 pm, 2:10 pm, 3:50 pm

A WORD FROM
THE CREATOR

One day in May 2021, at low tide, I scattered my father's ashes by the sea not far from the bay of Mont St Michel, his childhood home.

In the pale light, the black-headed sheep graze and bleat in the bushes and look at us, a small group walking hand in hand in silence across the salt meadow. The green water of a stream flows gently to the sea, and waves shiver on the surface. The sky is streaked with delicate cirrus clouds. Wagtails sing in the cool wind, and their footprints form small signs in the grey clay sand. Next to a cairn made of granite stones, we throw the white ashes into the crisp air, and they fly away in infinitely delicate clouds.

The striking beauty of this moment, the light of this minute stretched to infinity, where my father's vanished body extends to the world, is imprinted in me. Where the dust of his body binds to the earth, air, and water. My father is the landscape, my father is the sea, my father is the wind, and his drawing is extended by the trace of a plane in the clear sky. My father has become immense, limitless, and his time no longer exists; he has become suspended in the present. I am pregnant, and while life is organizing itself within me to form a new body, life has left another. In a play of mirrors, one body is growing while another is disintegrating. A father has just left, and a son is about to arrive. Vertigo.

From this intimate experience, Adrien and I wanted to create a reincarnation: the last-minute journey. The one just before crossing the threshold. The starting point of this project, of this immersive installation, is, therefore, the end. The last minute. The one before you die or before you are born.

We composed this symbolic experience of the body on the verge of passing to the other side—between a "before" and an "after"—by placing ourselves in the vantage point of the elements. We wrote the story at the level of the particle: a droplet, a burning blaze, rising smoke, shivering ash, shaking earth, falling air, trickling rain, or a rising wave.

For the small group of people who will live together for 30 minutes in this final, stretched minute, we hope that the ritual character of the experience will be palpable—a ritual to care for our mourning, births, and metamorphoses.

— Claire Bardainne

Adrien M & Claire B

Since 2011, Claire Bardainne and Adrien Mondot have been the artistic directors of the company Adrien M & Claire B, and together they create shows and installations in the visual and performing arts field.

Today, the Adrien M & Claire B company comprises about 30 collaborators, with two exhibitions and three shows internationally touring. Its offices are in Lyon. Since 2020, its creative workshops and rehearsal space have been located in Crest in the Drôme at the Villa Aphéa.

Claire Bardainne

Claire Bardainne is a visual artist with a background in graphic design and scenography. Born in 1978 in Grenoble, she graduated from the École Estienne and the ENSAD in Paris. Her research focuses on the intersection between images, spaces, and the imaginary. In 2004, she founded Studio BW in Paris with Olivier Waissmann, which focuses on creating visual identities, multimedia graphics, and exhibition and space graphics, and where she worked until 2010. In 2007, as part of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, she initiated her project entitled Wicklow, combining drawing, micro-publishing, and performance. At the same time, through graphic work and the creation of images, she accompanies the theoretical work of researchers in the sociology of the imaginary from the Ceaq (Sorbonne, Paris), a laboratory focused on new forms of sociality and the contemporary imaginary. She has published the art essay book Récréations - Galaxies de l'imaginaire postmoderne (CNRS Éditions, Paris, 2009) with Vincenzo Susca, devoted to the imaginary of contemporary technologies and media.

Adrien Mondot

Adrien Mondot is a multidisciplinary artist, computer scientist, and juggler. Born in 1979 in Grenoble, his work explores and questions movement at the intersection between the art of juggling and computer innovation. Initially a researcher in computer science, he worked for three years at INRIA in Grenoble, where he imagined and designed new tools for graphic creation that was free of reality. During this period, he also developed street art practice with juggled and improvised musical performances. Having been noticed in street festivals, he founded the Adrien M company in 2004 to participate in the Young Circus Talents operation, of which he was the winner the same year. He then closely mixed digital arts, sound, juggling, and movement, exploring the links between technological innovation and artistic creation. Relying on the tools he develops, he frees himself from the rules of weightlessness and time, blurs the lines, and plays with the art of the circus and computers in a work of magical, choreographic and poetic illusion. He also multiplies his collaborations, notably with Kitsou Dubois, Stéphanie Aubin, Ez3kiel and within the undisciplined research laboratories he regularly organizes, which allow him to nourish his reflections and research work. Adrien participated in creating Wajdi Mouawad's show Ciels, made in 2009 at the Avignon Festival. That same year, Cinématique won the Grand Prix du jury in the international competition "Dance and New Technologies" organized by the Bains Numériques festival in Enghien-les-Bains.

Olivier Mellano

Composer, musician

Born in Paris in 1971, Olivier Mellano has been a musician, composer, improviser, author and guitarist in more than fifty bands since the early 1990s. He alternates between pop-rock projects and compositions for symphony orchestras, ensembles of 17 electric guitars, harpsichords, organs, and voice or string quartets. His compositional work extends to film, theatre, dance, and literature. In 2008, he began writing and published his first book. Olivier Mellano offers a composite, generous and demanding work, drawing on the heritage of Carlo Gesualdo, Henry Purcell, Benjamin Britten, Gavin Bryars, Moondog and György Ligeti. He develops a singular musical aesthetic that dissolves stylistic hierarchies in his compositions, sculpting the most volcanic or ethereal sound matter. He puts baroque harmony to the test with sonic fire, investing the symphonic and chamber ensemble with new energy, hybridizing electric guitars and classical voices with a luminous and sacred dimension pulsing at the heart of a maximalist, accessible, and learned writing. His approach, which evolves from the most ambitious pop music to the most uncomplicated contemporary music, is in line with that of a new generation of composers, including Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, and Jonny Greenwood.

PHI Event Centre Derniere Minute IMG3v2
Photo: Julien Grimard

FAQ

WHAT THE MEDIA IS SAYING

“[...] Last minute is one of the most disturbing immersive experiences that La Presse has seen in recent years.”

— Éric Clément, La Presse, Naître et mourir en 30 minutes

“There are those experiences that are lived more than described. Last minute, the new installation-experience offered at the PHI Centre, is one of them.”

— Sarah-Émilie Nault, Journal de Montréal, «Dernière minute»: une exposition propose un voyage sensoriel au seuil de la vie

“We were completely swallowed up”

“You can be one with what’s happening.”

“It’s something that can be experienced together as a family. It’s great.”

— Michel Coulombe, Radio-Canada [Dessine-moi un matin], Cinéma avec M. Coulombe : « Dernière minute », expérience immersive au Centre PHI

Last minute

Adrien M & Claire B
Creation 2022

  • Team

    Concept, artistic direction, images and scenography: Claire Bardainne, Adrien Mondot


    Music score and sound concept: Olivier Mellano


    Computer design and development: Adrien Mondot, Loïs Drouglazet


    Technical management: Jean-Marc Lanoë


    Outside eye: Stéfanie James


    Special thanks to Paul Brossier and Pierre-Yves Mansour


    Administration:
    Marek Vuiton, assisted by Mathis Guyetand


    Technical direction: Raphaël Guénot


    Production and booking: Joanna Rieussec


    Production: Margaux Fritsch, Delphine Teypaz, Juli Allard-Schaefer


    Outreach development: Johanna Guerreiro

  • Production

    Adrien M & Claire B

    Coproduction

    Les Champs Libres, Rennes


    Théâtre-Sénart, Scène Nationale, Lieusaint


    Chaillot - Théâtre National de la Danse, Paris

  • Support

    Fonds [SCAN] - Préfet de la région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes et Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes


    DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes : plan de sauvegarde du spectacle vivant 2020-2021


    With the support of DICRéAM – Centre National du cinéma et de l’image animée


    The Adrien M & Claire B Company is subsidized and accredited by DRAC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region and is supported by the City of Lyon.

  • With the financial support of












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