“N. W-” brings together nine well-known and emerging local artists for a two-hour long project. The main space for the event in which “N. W-” was presented is a industrial delivery garage at a space previously used by a newspaper company (Le Soleil) in Quebec City, Canada. The Ad Hoc Collective was made up of myself (Hugo Nadeu), Sarah C. Poirier, Marie-Claude Gendron, Marie-Andrée Godin, Christian Messier, Marie-Ève Richard, Geneviève Robitaille, Sarah Smith and Ulysse Ruel. Most of the performance was collectively constructed and conducted at the moment of its presentation, and the actions were joined according to our prepared behaviors. Many of us had never worked together before.

We all arrived at the space one at a time in the same car, a vehicle used from the beginning to the end of the performance. Standing under huge, opened garage-doors, the audience could see the actions occur as the car moved around, stopped at the garage or rolled back to the streets. The combination of each of our own personal languages resulted in a general chaos-like ambiance made of movements, static figures, eatery, words, political symbols, water, fire, garbage, free barbecue and roller derby. An actual vision of hell on earth.

“N. W-” was largely inspired by social tensions that were raging in the province of Quebec at that very moment, like the daily protests in its cities against the increase of tuition fees (the major 2012 student strike). Indeed, the same day as this performance, the liberal government adopted the vigorously contested law #78. We noticed several verbal and visual allusions to it in the work, like a street bullfight between two performers with the famous red square, a lecture of the law’s text itself and the deployment of a red paper carpet across the street, challenged by moving cars.