Vomiting Flowers is a multimedia installation that incorporates two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces made by hand that give life to a playful, speculative, whimsical, and familiar environment. Hea R. Kim seeks to dramatize and rethink the notion of artistic value through the exploration of yesterday’s craftsmanship, today’s mass production, and the potential use of tomorrow’s technologies.

The exhibition will be available until September 4 at Chicoutimi’s Centre des arts et de la culture.

Festival Accès Asie offers you a screening of the movie Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes. This Japanese fantasy comedy tells the story of Kato, a small coffee shop owner in Kyoto, who discovers one night that the system linking the surveillance camera of his establishment to his upstairs apartment allows him to see two minutes into the future. Stunned by this revelation, the owner, who is also an aspiring musician, tells one of his employees and his friends. They quickly encourage Kato to take advantage of this phenomenon, which turns out to be far more complicated (and dangerous) than anticipated.

Genre: Fantasy comedy
Year: 2020
Length: 70 min.
Direction: Junta Yamaguchi
Script: Makoto Ueda
Photography: Junta Yamaguchi
Music: Koji Takimoto
Editing: Junta Yamaguchi
Country: Japon
Actors: Kazunari Tosa, Aki Asakura, Gôta Ishida, Riko Fujitani

Double Tigers is a contemporary dance performance, a meeting between Montreal-based dancer Claudia Chan Tak and Toronto-based dancer Naishi Wang. Both were born in 1986, the year of the tiger according to the Chinese zodiac. They share the same cultural background, yet at the same time everything separates and distinguishes them. Born in Quebec City, Claudia is looking to find her roots in southern China while Naishi is from northern China, a country he left.

She stammers a clumsy Cantonese, while he speaks Mandarin perfectly. He studied Wushu, a martial art in the North before starting ballet. She has been practicing Hung-Gar, a southern martial art style for only a few years. Each with their own history and perspective, they do share the same trajectory: their goal is to confront through dance the imprint of the Chinese body in their movements. What is left of their ancestors, their country of origin, and the places where they grew up? How does this color their bodies, their beings, their presence? Once they are on stage together for the first time, will their identity stories meet, intersect, or evolve in parallel?

The performance will be followed by a discussion with the public.

The Festival offers an introductory workshop to shadow theatre for children between 7 and 10 years old. They will learn more about the history of Chinese shadow puppetry and how it works, and will be able to make their own puppet and stage it according to the rules of this art.

This will allow participants to develop their creativity, their manual skills, as well as their general and artistic knowledge.

This workshop is presented by the Théâtre Everest, a theatre company founded in 2016 by co-artistic directors Chloé and Jade Barshee. Born from a Québécoise mother and a Tibetan father, the Barshee sisters have always felt a struggle at the core of their identity. Their theatre practice is part of the social context as it is today: a contemporary Quebec in which different cultural realities coexist and intersect.

This concert invites you to come and meet the sacred arts through the repertoires of Persian, Kurdish and Arabic music, performed by exceptional singers and instrumentalists. As a trio, they share their stories as well as their ancestral poetry.

The concert will be followed by a discussion with the public.

In this participative performance, An Laurence tells the story of her adoption, from her birth in China to her arrival in Quebec. The performance personifies a collective memory belonging to those adopted in China under the family planning policy, better known in the West as the one-child policy.

In a space filled with artifacts, the artist will perform stories she has created from this collective memory. The audience is invited to listen to her stories and participate in their telling. 

Through performance and media creation, An Laurence seeks to solubilize her current identity with her forgotten experience. A delicate and contemporary reflection emerges from the complex identity of those who have been adopted.

Hea R. Kim, born in Korea and based in Montreal, is a multidisciplinary artist who likes to create playful installations that are more sophisticated than they first appear. Her work intercepts emerging subcultures and creates hybrids between contrasting emotions, materials, and concepts. She tries to visually verbalize a complex dream world by mixing fantasy with everyday life, from the heroic to the adorable, and the playfulness of popular culture with more serious concerns.

Laurence Ly is a director, editor, and screenwriter of Cambodian and Vietnamese origin. Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, he has been a Canadian citizen since the age of two. After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) in 2014, Laurence began a self-funded feature film, Marche avec moi (Walk with me), and participated in the “Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma”. In 2017, he obtained a master’s degree from UQAM in communication with a concentration in film and moving images. A devoted filmmaker, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer, Laurence was also a programmer of films for the Festival Nomade de Montréal from 2013 to 2018. Today, he is a videographer and photographer for Festival Accès Asie.

Claudia is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal. In 2009, she graduated with distinction from Concordia University in Intermedia/CyberArts, Department of Studio Arts. Three years later, she received the William Douglas Scholarship for her Bachelor of Contemporary Dance at l’Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2017, she concluded a memoir-creation that questions the links between documentary film, cultural identity, and contemporary dance. An autobiographical solo entitled Me, a little Malagasy-Chinese girl, was born out of her research and performed at the MAI (Montréal, arts Interculturals) in December 2016. In January 2018, she presented her first choreographic installation at Tangente where she combined visual arts, dance, and video mapping that retraced the process of creating this solo piece. Thanks to this project, she became the winner of the prestigious Patrons Award, Mécènes investi pour les arts, to highlight the quality and innovation of her artistic approach. Her choreographic projects have taken her to the stages of Tangente, OFFTA, ZH Festival, Phénomena, Short and Sweet, La Petite Scène, Edgy Women, Art Matters, Toxique Trottoir, not to mention the Festival À Corps in France and the Théâtre de Liège in Belgium. Claudia Chan Tak performs for several contemporary dance companies and also stands out on the theatre scene, while remaining active in the visual arts and video production.

Born in Changchun, China, Naishi Wang  began his dance training at Jilin College of Art and the Beijing Dance Academy. In 2004, he joined the Toronto Dance Theatre, where he stayed for nine years. From 2009 to 2010, he was commissioned by the SXMs to create storytelling works based on concepts, including Split and Avatar’s Tree. In 2015, he worked extensively as an independent dancer with various talented artists and choreographers in Germany, Cambodia, China, Japan, and Canada. He has collaborated with the Berlin artist of Tanz-Theater, Christoph Winkler, and co-choreographed two solo and duet projects:  Can Asians Dance? Crossing Half of China to Sleep With You, and Tale of the Dragon and Lion. In 2017, he joined the Dancemakers Peer Learning Network (Toronto) and did a studio presentation at the Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa). In 2018, he premiered his solo Taking Breath at the  Kinetic Studio (Halifax), presented in Toronto at Citadel + Company as well as at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturals), followed by a European premiere at the Monsun Theatre, Hamburg, Germany. In 2019, Naishi was commissioned to choreograph for the Toronto/Halifax-based Nostos Collective and is in preparation for his new creation Face to Face.

A self-taught and versatile actress, Jade has studied in Saint-Hyacinthe, at Omnibus, Les Ateliers Danielle Fichaud, Studio 303, and is now communications manager at Festival Accès Asie. She is the co-founder of Théâtre Everest and writer of their first original creation, Bâtardes. The piece was presented at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) and has toured cultural centers in Montreal and surrounding areas. She has also appeared in Duos en Morceaux with Theatre Ink, in SEX(E) at the Théâtre La Risée, in Soleil d’Artifice at Festival Plein la rue, and 2h14 at Art Neuf, in Indiscrétions publiques which toured Montreal’s park, and in Le Confessionnal, a play for teenagers that toured high schools. On screen, she has participated in the documentary, La fin des terres by Loïc Darses, and she plays Ms. Tran in the television series, L’effet secondaire on Radio-Canada. She can also be seen in two web series, La loi c’est la loi and Je voudrais qu’on m’efface .

A graduate of the UQAM École supérieure de théâtre, Chloé Barshee has appeared in many stage productions. She is a cofounder of the Collectif Grande Surface with whom she performed “Et quand vient le silence” at Théâtre La Chapelle in 2015. Chloé is also cofounder of Théâtre Everest and creator of its production “Bâtardes”, which was presented at the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) in 2018, and then toured across cultural centres in Quebec and as part of the Rencontre Théâtre Ados in 2017. In 2017, she interpreted the role of Adsila in “Molière, Shakespeare et moi”, presented at Théâtre du Rideau Vert. Her talent allows her to obtain the role of the Muse in the creation “Nous serons éternels” which was presented in April 2019 at Théâtre La Chapelle. She also participated in the play “Le vent va tourner”, directed by Myriam Fugère and presented at the Îles de la Madeleine in the summer of 2019. In 2020, she is part of the theatrical productions “Guide d’éducation sexuelle pour le nouveau millénaire” (at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier and Théâtre Catapulte) as well as “Splendide jeunesse” (at Théâtre aux Écuries and Maison Théâtre). We were also able to see her perform in another creation called “L’amour au 21ème siècle (selon WikiHow)” presented at Théâtre La Chapelle in 2022. She can be seen on television in the series “Nous”, broadcast on Club illico in 2021.

Born in the heart of Iran, in the city of Isfahan, Elham started playing music at the age of 15. She continued her apprenticeship with Ali Ghamsari, Arshad Tahmasbi, as well as virtuoso Hossein Alizadeh. Self-taught in classical Persian singing, Elham has also mastered traditional lutes such as Târ, Setâr, Shourangiz and Rabâb. She has performed in concert in Iran and France. Since arriving in Montreal in 2014, she has performed in many concerts. More recently Elham performed with the musical ensemble Constantinople for the Chants d’espoir concert at Montreal’s Bourgie Hall at the Musée des beaux arts. She has also participated in the project Des mots sur mesure VII organized by the Maison de la culture Ahuntsic-Cartierville. Elham is a singer and permanent member of the musical collective DIBA.

Lebanon-born singer Lamia Yared is passionate about the Arabic, Ottoman, Sephardic, and Greek musical traditions of Asia Minor. During her research in Lebanon, Turkey, and Greece, she was trained by renowned masters of these traditions to hone her technique of Eastern chant and oud playing. 

With the help of various grants and bursaries for development and production from the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Conseil des arts du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts, she was able to produce the concert Récits du Levant, the album Chants des Trois cours (which was recommended by the British magazine Songlines in 2020), as well as her latest album, Fréquences de Byzance. She also presented a workshop on classical Arabic music for the inauguration of the Labyrinth Ontario Musical Workshop. 

Working with outstanding musicians from diverse cultures, Lamia performs at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, with the Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal, the Canadian Arabic Orchestra, the Labyrinth Ontario, with the Vancouver Island Festival, with Festival Accès Asie, in Montréal’s Maisons de la Culture (art centres), as well as the Festival du Monde Arabe. Lamia Yared has also participated in several international events, including at the Institut Français de Turquie and in the Netherlands.

Born in 1982, Pooria Pournazeri started learning tanbur from his father, a maker of musical instruments, when he was six years old. Four years later, he started learning setar from Afshin Ramin. In 1997, he gained the 3rd place in vernacular music at the Young Musicians Festival. He then continued learning tanbur from his uncle Keikhosro Pournazeri. In 1998, he became a member of Shams ensemble with whom he toured in Iran and created album projects. Pooria also teached at the Shams Music Institute.

In 2000, he joined a rock band named Public Voice and he started learning percussion and drums. As a member of this group for five years, he participated in concerts in Tehran, Rasht, Isfahan, and in the Scape from Darkness album.

In 2006, Pooria Pournazeri started working on his first album Zhoor which combines elements from folklore music and tanbur. In 2010 Hermes Company released this album which received great attention and was also selected and rated as the top music album in Songlines, a well-known music magazine.

An Laurence is an artist and musician whose practice integrates performance and multimedia. Since a significant event compelled her to reassess the place of her adoption in her life, she has used art and auto-ethnography to explore her identity and seek meaning in her adoption experience, notably by creating the interactive multimedia installation Confidences en trois temps (2018) and the performance Approchez, je vous raconterai ce que j’ai oublié (2020-2021). An Laurence is also active as a performer / guitarist in contemporary music. Mainly interested in the relational aspect of art work, and the creative process, An Laurence is inspired by subjects such as identity, communication, and living together.