TOPO, Digital Creation Centre, partners with the Festival international de cinéma adapté (FICAM) for the third edition of Art, digital and wellness. The event, whose mission is to promote cultural inclusion, will take place this year at the MEM – Centre des mémoires montréalaises and offers two distinct areas to discover.
Demo Zone
11 PM to 6:30 PM - Free Entry
TOPO is occupying Atelier 1 at the MEM, which has been transformed for the occasion into a demonstration area offering the public a selection of works and prototypes aimed at promoting accessibility and cultural inclusion for diverse audiences to the arts and digital media.
Thomas Gaudy from Ludociels presents
- Another Audio Maze – An experimental, minimalist game with no visuals, in which the soundscape consists of a single sound. Its simplicity makes it easy to access for a first experience of sound gaming.
- AVOXTURE – Audio exploration and adventure game with 10 levels. A spirit avatar wanders through limbo. To get it out of this gloomy place, you listen to birdsong and the cry of an owl. You move like a cursor on a grid.
- HSH Go! – Interactive, collaborative one-touch game. Explore the pitch-black environment, search for teleporters to open all the eyes and light up the room.
- VicDor – Very simple, one-button exploration game. Designed as a sound stimulation game for blind or amblyopic children, it is also used as visual and auditory stimulation for children with cognitive or motor disabilities.
- DPK – Virtual reality maze game for blind and visually impaired people.
Web & Audio Artworks
- Dream Voices – A web-based work co-created by Réjane Bougé (writer) and Chantal Dumas (sound artist) about the dreams of eight visually impaired people. A project initiated by the artist-run centre Turbine, featuring portraits of each person inspired by their dreams.
- Montréal ville invisible – A series of podcasts presented on the web, co-produced by sound artists Chantal Dumas and Florian Grond. They present the experience of the city as lived by people with visual impairments.
Cabaret
Doors opening at 5:30 PM
FICAM screenings - From 6:30 PM to 10:15 PM – Entry $7
The MEM Cabaret will host a programme of films selected by FICAM. This festival, whose mission is to bring cinema closer to people with mental, motor, hearing or visual disabilities or neuroatypical profiles, offers five evenings tailored to different audiences.
Discover the works of Cummings & Pifko Collective Their artistic approach is part of the movement crip art, an avant-garde artistic approach that proposes to create, think, experience and present art differently, denouncing ableism in all its forms.
- L’Astralopithèque
- ZOTIC (Zone d’Outils Technologiques Inclusifs de Communication [translation: Inclusive Communication Technology Tools Zone])
Two works from their exhibition collection Éloge d’un fauteuil maudit.
FICAM international competition film screening programme
As part of this edition, documentary, fiction and animated films, music videos, and short and medium-length films (60 minutes or less) have been selected in connection with these individuals' experiences.
Deaf audience category
Le 21 octobre de 18h15 à 22h15
Film screening for 19° de Sylvain Gélinas, produit par Cinéall. Cette maison de production se spécialise dans la création de films et de contenus adaptés pour les publics sourd et malentendant.
Soirée adaptée pour les personnes sourdes et malentendantes. Version en français ou avec sous-titres en français, et interprétation LSQ en salle. Accessible aux personnes sourdes, malentendantes, en fauteuil roulant, ainsi qu’au public sans handicap.
Art & Disability Category
Le 22 octobre de 18h15 à 22h15
Music video screenings for Danse en corps et Slam au naturel. Les membres du centre communautaire Radisson seront sur place pour parler de leur expérience « filmique-dansante ».
Version en français ou avec sous-titrage en français. Accessible au public avec un handicap physique, en fauteuil roulant, ainsi qu’au public sans handicap.
Catégorie handicap mental – Neurodivergent
Le 23 octobre de 18h15 à 22h15
Film screening for H.E.L.I.O.S. Spectrum Productions. This production company provides opportunities for autistic creators to be involved in the fields of film, media production and the arts. With the participation of films by Productions Spectrum and Gang à Rambrou
. Film in French or with French subtitles. Screening accessible to neurodivergent people, people with mental or physical disabilities, wheelchair users, and members of the public without disabilities.
Love & Disability Category
Le 24 octobre de 18h15 à 22h15
Montreal premiere of the film Les eaux calmes by Annie Leclair, co-produced with the Festival du nouveau cinéma and in collaboration with Moelle Épinière et motricité Québec. The director and lead actress, Soleine Démétré, will be in attendance.
French version or with French subtitles. Accessible to wheelchair users and people without disabilities.
Tickets here
Blind Audience Category
Le 25 octobre de 18h15 à 22h15
The MEM and FICAM invite you to the Montreal premiere of the film Les eaux calmes by Annie Leclair, co-screened with the Festival du nouveau cinéma and in collaboration with the Regroupement des Aveugles et Amblyopes Du Montréal Métropolitain (RAAMM). La réalisatrice et l’actrice principale, Soleine Démétré, seront présentes ainsi que des membres du comité Culture du RAAMM. Ces personnes viendront parler de leur nouveau rôle au sein du comité de sélection des films du FICAM et des films sélectionnés pour le public aveugle de cette édition.
Version en français, avec audio description en français. Accessible aux personnes aveugles, en fauteuil et aux personnes sans handicap.
Tickets here
Thomas Gaudy
Cummings & Pifko
The Cummings & Pifko collective was born in 2019 from an installation that revealed the strength of their complementary worlds. For more than 25 years, Gaëtane Cummings, an artist with diverse abilities, has been transforming her experiences in a wheelchair into creativity and activism. Art, a space of freedom, leads her to explore performance, documentary, painting, installations, video, interventions and poetry. Sigmund Pifko, a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, painter, graphic designer and enthusiast of digital arts and scenography, approaches each project as a research-creation, guided by sensitivity and curiosity. Together, they are part of the CripArt movement, which proposes to create and think about art differently while denouncing ableism. Their practice, nourished by the experience of marginalisation, seeks to transform exclusion into beauty, to reveal invisible realities and to open up new perspectives.
Florian Grond
Florian Grond is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University, where he is also Co-Director of the Centre for Sensory Studies. He is also a digital artist whose practice and research are rooted in immersive sound, sonification, auditory display, participatory design and accessibility. After completing a PhD in Germany (University of Bielefeld) and a postdoctoral fellowship in research-creation at McGill University, he developed expertise in the capture, mixing and diffusion of immersive sound.
His projects explore the creation of inclusive devices and experiences, in close dialogue with marginalised communities, particularly blind and neurodivergent people. He has initiated and led several artistic co-creation projects with artists with disabilities, and collaborated with researchers in sensory ethnography. With the late Belgian writer and researcher Piet Devos, he adapted the use of binaural technology as an innovative method for ethnographic research. His work is supported by the CALQ, the CAC, the FRQSC and the SSHRC, and spans the fields of sound arts, research-creation and sensory studies, with a view to developing new forms of listening and cultural mediation.
Chantal Dumas
Chantal Dumas is a Montreal-based sound artist who has been exploring the medium of sound for some thirty years. Her work takes the form of narration and soundscapes, composition, listening journeys and installations. Field recording has become a natural practice for her, allowing her to capture moments of life and grasp their essence and emotion, thus developing a documentation of her environment. Over the years, a recurring theme has emerged (space, time, territory), highlighting an environmental awareness combined with a keen interest in listening. Cartography therefore naturally comes into play in this context as a structuring element in some of her projects.
In recent years, she has collaborated on numerous projects, to mention just a few: the Kamikaze du vendredi podcast by poet Amélie Prévost (Quadrature and Planète rebelle), Dream Voices with author Réjane Bougé, in which blind people describe what their dreams are made of (Turbine), Montréal Ville invisible with Florian Grond and the Regroupement des aveugles et amblyopes du Montréal métropolitain (RAAM) and l’Autre Montréal. (2021). Then she composes Oscillations planétaires an electroacoustic piece evoking the geological world (commissioned by DeutschlandFunk Kultur, Germany), which was a finalist for the 2019-20 Opus Award: Album of the Year. Published by Diffusion iMedia.
