Provocative art group clings to ‘radical’ roots
MONTREAL— Annie Roy and Pierre Allard chose an explosive name for the artistic collective they launched two decades ago.
Socially Acceptable Terrorist Action, or ATSA, as it was called by its French acronym, did not shy away from controversy.
They once asked the Canadian military for a field camp to serve as the setting for a mock refugee camp to draw attention to homelessness, only backing away when the force tried to turn it into a public relations exercise.
They have turned a section of Montreal’s Saint Laurent Blvd. into a scene out of war-torn Baghdad or Kabul to denounce the world’s dependence on oil; created a fake archeological site made of garbage to comment on overconsumption; launched a sock bank to make people think about bank profits and poverty; and trashed the trailer home of a fictional family of polar bears, part of a dystopian twist on the Goldilocks and the Three Bears tale to make people think about global warming.
Their projects have had provocative titles such as “State of Emergency,” “Attack” and “Change.”
But it took a good 15 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States before Roy and Allard decided to step away from their provocative name.
Their in-your-face style has followed suit.
Few outside Quebec’s arts community had likely heard of Roy, Allard or ATSA before they were mentioned by Bloc Québécois MP Carole Lavallée on the floor of the House of Commons.
On Nov. 25, 2010, she asked the Conservative government’s thenheritage minister, James Moore, about a cut in funding to the group, who replied that the government had given the money instead to “a family-friendly organization.”
Moore did not explicitly say that ATSA’s original name factored into the decision, but his carefully phrased response invited that interpretation.
“The world changed,” Roy said in a recent interview. “When we chose that name at the beginning, there was something very romantic and revolutionary. Now the world has changed and we’re no longer able to carry that word and all of the very raw images associated with it.”
She was speaking just days before When Art Takes Action, or ATSA, as the group is now known, departed for Burkina Faso to tour a project she said is well-suited to the age of terror, refugees, social media and the isolation and misinformation that it has engendered.
“While Having Soup” is a simple idea that leaves a powerful impact: one that has ATSA in the running for the Conseil des arts de Montréal’s annual grand prize.
Two strangers are selected from a crowd to sit facing one another in chairs and hold a discussion that lasts as long as the bowl of soup they are served.
“There is a mix of curiosity and fear at the start,” Roy said. “People leave with their hearts filled with generosity, with faith in human nature.”
Roy and Allard — partners in art and in life — received $250,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, which will also help their project travel to Morocco, Lebanon and throughout the Canadian Arctic.
“With the terrorist attacks and the fear of refugees in the last few years, the central issue has been a fear of others; that’s our subject right now,” Roy said. “You can’t really work on that core issue by being confrontational. You have to be welcoming, to go softly . . . You can’t approach it aggressively or with something that is rough, because it’s already rough.”
But she warned against concluding that When Art Takes Action has strayed from its radical roots.
“When you look at the recent rise of hate and mistrust, it is a radical project. This is a project that obliges people to ask themselves whether they have the courage to sit down beside a stranger,” she said. “You may find it soft from the outside, but it’s not soft.”
It’s not just the subject matter that has forced a change of approach. There is also less willingness to host public art that challenges people to take an opinion on divisive issues.
Roy said there is a preference for artistic shows that draw crowds and liven up neighbourhoods, rather than those demanding spectators to do more than just watch. As a function of that, people more frequently ask about the content, message and opinions of a presentation before deciding.
When Art Takes Action has been rejected in the past when seeking permission to stage a show that is distinctly against oil pipelines.
“It’s like they feel if they allow us to do our show in their space, they are endorsing our message. All we’re saying is that the debate is there and we have the right to continue having it,” Roy said.
The solution, she ventured, is to be more creative in the presentation, finding different mediums and methods through which to pass the message.
“We are trying to stay true to ourselves with a commentary on political issues even as we work on a way to treat them that is accessible and playful so that people are attracted,” she said.
“Once we have their attention, then they will realize that we are asking them to do something that takes courage, or has a message, or requires reflection.”