During the night from Monday to Tuesday, some 25 posters appeared on unoccupied commercial spaces in Mile End with a link to the website locals-vacants.org. Mystery ? Rather, it is the open-air exhibition of the artist Nans Bortuzzo.
“It’s an artistic intervention that combines data journalism with visual arts,” explains the man who has lived in Mile End for almost 20 years, whom we met before nightfall and whom we followed for part of its nocturnal display.
Nans Bortuzzo regrets seeing many local businesses that contribute to the life of his neighborhood and its social fabric gradually closing. The Clarke bakery, in 2015. The Hôtel Herman restaurant, in 2017. The Chez De Gaulle pastry shop, in 2019. Or more recently, the Zi Yuan convenience store, Fairmount Avenue.
It’s even more distressing when the premises remain vacant only to be re-rented for much more money.
Entitled Vacant Premises, Nans Bortuzzo’s project is part of the doctorate in arts studies and practices that he is undertaking at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
The posters he stuck on the fronts of vacant premises collect discussions about places, photos, but also comments and Google reviews which testify to the attachment to closed businesses. “I didn’t produce anything, only collected data,” insists Nans Bortuzzo.
On the internet, there are traces of vanished places and the abundance that we felt there, he argues.
It is a first for Nans Bortuzzo to appear artistically unexpectedly in a public space. Is he stepping out of his comfort zone with his nighttime stunt? Absolutely. “I’m not in an environment that I control,” he illustrates.
Will its posters be torn down? Will the rain damage them? We’ll see, but Nans Bortuzzo plans to monitor and even move his posters throughout the month of November. “We will see how the intervention evolves. »
The first large-format poster was put up Monday evening around 6:30 p.m. in front of the old auction house on Boulevard Saint-Laurent. We see more than 10,000 names of citizens, organizations or businesses orbiting around a dense node. All were interacting with a dozen closed Mile End businesses on social media, which generated 157,000 interactions! This “digital reflection of real interactions” allows us to understand the importance of the businesses that closed, underlines Nans Bortuzzo.
All posters refer to the local-vacants.org website. There is an interactive map with some 175 unoccupied premises in Mile End, the genesis and approach of Nans Bortuzzo’s project, but also solutions.
The artist was affected in 2021 after the announcement of the closure of the S. W. Welch bookstore following a huge increase in its rent. A group of citizens then created the Facebook group Mile End Ensemble, then after demonstrations and protests, the owner of the building decided to backtrack, or at least to give the independent bookseller a two-year reprieve (ultimately , Stephen Welch decided to retire last summer and close his bookstore).
The owner in question is Shiller Lavy, a company owned by Danny Lavy and Stephen Shiller, which owns a vast real estate portfolio in Montreal. The company regularly makes headlines for renovations or rent hikes, as does Hillpark Capital, the company founded by Brandon Shiller (the son of Stephen Shiller) and Jeremy Kornbluth. You may have heard of the Cagibi café (which moved) and the Ateliers at 305, rue de Bellechasse (which closed).
Mile End Ensemble strongly denounced Shiller Lavy’s practices. In the meantime, the Commission on vacant premises took place, but the City of Montreal rejected the idea of introducing a tax on vacant premises as is the case in Paris.
It takes about 15 minutes to walk through the posters. You can start on avenue Bernard at the corner of Jeanne-Mance, walk to boulevard Saint-Laurent, then walk south to turn west on Saint-Viateur.
The smaller posters trace the evolution of the urban landscape of Mile End based on Google Street View images produced between 2007 and 2022. Nans Bortuzzo skillfully demonstrates that the life of a neighborhood is not fixed in the weather.
If it is inevitable that businesses will close, Nans Bortuzzo reminds us how essential a café and a bakery can be to the social life of a neighborhood.
