SPECIAL EVENT

doux soft club is an artistic and curatorial collective reuniting the practices of duo Pénélope et Chloë, Mariane Stratis, and Marion Paquette. The four artists met while completing their B.A.s in visual and media arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal (2012). It is through numerous exchanges and a mutual desire to see their practices evolve together that doux soft club was founded in 2017. Moved by cohesion, they see the regrouping of their plural visions as an essential part of their process. The club is an adaptable structure that invites all members to collaborate in the sharing, exchange and interinfluence of ideas. doux soft club’s work has been seen in Canada in the context of solo exhibitions at the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art (Montreal, 2022), the Darling Foundry (Montréal, 2023), AXENÉO7 (Gatineau, 2019), Verticale (Laval, 2021 and 2019), GHAM & DAFE (Montréal, 2018) and in group exhibitions at the Campus de la Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (2021), Musée Ambulant (Québec, 2021), Arprim (Montréal, 2020) and Puce N.5 (Saint-Armand, 2019). The collective was nominated for the Plein Sud Award (Longueuil, 2020) and has received a research, creation and exploration grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (2020).

The collective is interested in an aesthetics of softness, which brings forward a rehabilitation of the senses through notions of care, empathy, and resilience. Doux-soft is understood by the artists as the capacity to be amazed by the banal. This capacity is closely tied to the contexts through which the works appear, and allow for a poetics of the everyday to emerge in their works. Their projects investigate, dialogue with, and take on a multiplicity of forms: exterior interventions, websites, artist books, exhibitions, and performances. In this way, their performative work allows them to animate the sculptural objects they create, revealing their sensorial and sensuous characters. These manipulations, documentations and exhibitions seek to transform the viewer’s experience through a series of slippages. By constantly revisiting each project’s potential, the club reflects on the polymorphic, lively and permutable aspects of their production. Through their process, a collective intelligence emerges, feeding their research and production: inter-influence, determine how something is influenced, copy and paste, throw a ball around, catch it, and throw it back.
douxsoftclub.com
@douxsoftclub

Mollygum is a home cook by day with “Have You Eaten?” and a DJ by night. When she arrived in Montreal from Kunming, China, she brought her love for electronic music and authentic Chinese cuisine with her to share her beloved culture with those around her. Whether she’s cooking traditional meals, or serving some of her lively gems, Mollygum is always dishing out something new. With huge plans in her sight, She is looking to close the cultural gap between Canada and China the best way she knows how, with delicious food and lively beats.
soundcloud.com/m0llygum

The Urban Science Brass Band reinvents hip hop classics with the fervor and intensity of a surprise street performance. Picture a New Orleans-style fanfare—trumpets, saxophones, trombones, sousaphones, tubas—but with a repertory that includes everything from Dr. Dre to Kendrick Lamar—and all this complete with multilingual MCs on megaphones, mobile drummers, and street dancers. Whether it takes the form of a parade or an electrifying stage performance, the energy level is always high in these unique interactive performances.

Featuring some of Montréal's most renowned musicians all in one group, its members have performed or recorded with artists such as Talib Kweli, Nelly, KRS-One, Illa J, Snarky Puppy, Erik Truffaz, Bran Van 3000 or Imhothep (IAM). Notable achievements of its members include the 2016 world title of End of the Weak, winning the King of the Dot six times, performing on The Tonight Show, and artistic sponsorships by Soultone Cymbals and Dream Cymbals.

The Urban Science Brass Band has been invited to participate in residencies at the Montréal Jazz Festival since 2017. They are featured in the documentary Vacations of the Brave (2018) on Amazon Prime. They are an antenna project of URBAN SCIENCE #LECYPHER.
urbsci.com