Relaunch of Quebec and French Canada Research Network

We recently heard from the Quebec and French Canada Research Network (QaFCaRN). Our good friend Dr. Craig Moyes at King’s College London shared that QaFCaRN has rebranded and will relaunch with two exciting events to which you are warmly invited. QaFCaRN was formerly the Centre for Quebec and French-Canadian Studies (CQFCS). Although they have moved from Senate House to King's College London on the Strand and updated their name, their mission remains constant, providing a forum for Quebec Studies in the UK by inviting speakers, showing films, and fostering research on French Canada. QaFCaRN is on Facebook, Twitter, and on King’s College website. But, to the invitations at hand, details below!

On June 8 please join QaFCaRN for the UK film première of Ghost Artist, in the presence of director Steven Palmer. A maverick artist is rediscovered in Paris when his taboo-busting 1967 film resurfaces in the art world. Robert Cordier’s movie about medicine and the body made 20,000 faint at the Man and HIs Health Pavilion at the Montreal World Fair Expo 67. Ghost Artist unmasks what could have been a banal medical commission as an avant-garde work for the masses inspired by Cordier’s many collaborations with legendary artists like James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet and Salvador Dalí.

The screening will be followed by a round table discussion on the work of Robert Cordier and open question time with specialists from Oxford University, Concordia University and King’s, and all are invited to help celebrate at the reception afterwards.

Steven Palmer is a documentary filmmaker and historian from the University of Windsor, where he held the Canada Research Chair in the History of International Health from 2006-2016. For complimentary tickets to the event, taking place in the Old Anatomy Theatre at King's College London, hop over to Eventbrite here. In order for us to have an accurate idea of numbers, please sign up as early as possible.

The next event in the QaFaRN celebrations is a lecture by Professor Johanne Sloan of Concordia University in Montreal, Anachronism and assemblage: the unfinished image of Montreal on June 9.

When the 50th anniversary of a student protest occurred in 2019, long-buried archival photographs of affected buildings and streets in downtown Montreal had already begun to circulate – appearing in a documentary film and locally organized activist programming, but also in the French art historian Georges Didi–Huberman’s touring exhibition Uprisings (2016-18) and the Belgian artist Vincent Meessen’s Blues Klair exhibition (2018), across town. With this activation of the archive and re-circulation of selected images, historical episodes that had been marginalized could be asserted and accorded a new centrality; the city’s modern identity could be re-narrativized. The city itself is thus regarded not as a fixed entity, but rather as an inherently unfinished oeuvre, to use Henri Lefebvre’s term. Equally important, though, is the question of how archival urban imagery gets redeployed. When such photographs of Montreal reappear in Warburgian artworks or assemblages, relational meanings are generated, and a number of questions arise – about urban temporality, historical context, and anachronism. 

Johanne Sloan is a professor in the Department of Art History, Concordia University, Montreal. Her research often focuses on Montreal’s art and visual culture, from the 1960s to the present day. She is co-editor of the recently published book Photogenic Montreal: Activisms and Archives in a Post-industrial City (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021). Organised by Professor David Peters Corbett (The Courtauld) and Dr Craig Moyes (King’s College London), this is a collaborative event between the Centre for American Art (The Courtauld) and the Quebec and French Canada Research Network (King’s College London). 

Thursday 9th June 2022, lecture 17.30 - 18.30 BST, reception 18.30 - 20.00 BST. Tickets are free, but booking is essential via EventBrite link here You may also wish to check out the Courtald Gallery here or QaFCaRN here