PODCAST
Grandeur et misère du centre d’artistes

Artist-run centres played a key role in the emergence of a new art scene and in the integration of contemporary art into Québec’s cultural landscape. Today, they make up a structured production and presentation network, the most extensive in Québec’s art ecosystem, with a presence in every region.

During the 1980s, however, artist-run centres had to adapt to the dictates of neoliberal policies, which profoundly changed both funding mechanisms and cultural policy orientations. These changes had repercussions on the full spectrum of support programs for cultural organizations, going so far as to alter artist-run centres’ original mission. Where does that leave the artist-run centre today?

Read the transcript of episode 1 [in French]

Born out of a desire for freedom, experimentation and collective self-determination, artist-run centres embarked on a path toward professionalization in the 1980s. Chronic underfunding and institutional transformations in the artistic ecosystem became crucial issues that influenced the choices and internal dynamics of these vital spaces for providing support, promotion and creative opportunities for artists. More than 40 years after their inception, are artist-run centres facing a crisis?

Artist-run centres have fostered the emergence of a culture of experimentation and risk taking: a fertile ground for challenging established structures, where the institution itself could be viewed in a subjective way, like a work in progress shaped by those invested in it. This political, even social, role is at the heart of artist-run centres’ mission that is at once rooted in a collective movement and guided by artistic values.

But as they become more professionalized, move into presentation or production spaces and adopt effective management models—in short, as they become institutionalized—are they not at risk of gradually losing their ability to reinvent themselves?

This podcast was made possible with the financial support of the program Connaissances en actions of Université du Québec à Montréal.