In a world increasingly marked by individualism and isolation, Relational Tensions questions our ways of being together, of forming communities, of coexisting. The four performances of this festival explore our contemporary ways of interacting and relating, as well as the complexities that emerge from them. 

Elyse St-Amour calls for intergenerational solidarity, addressing the complexities of aging for feminized people in a society that champions youth. Tricia Enns invites you to explore how technology both fractures and fosters togetherness, walking the thin (and often moving) line between technological mediation that helps and harms us. Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott provides artists with a space to talk shop–taken for granted in many professions–and a reminder of the radical potential of gathering together. Belén Pedrocca and Amanda Préval weave us through the often invisible work of forming friendships, mutual care routines, and the complexities of social relationships.

Here, performance is a tool for encounters. An embodied space where bodies, ideas, experiences, struggles, and different forms of presence engage in dialogue. Join us on Friday, June 26th and Saturday, June 27th, 2026 for Relational Tensions with a finissage at 7:30pm on Saturday, June 27th.

Friday June 26
6-6:30 pm
1,8 m2 or Second Skin
Elyse St-Amour

1.8 m2 or Second Skin is a relational performance that explores the complexity of aging through encounters with others. Relational tensions are alive and well when it comes to aging, with the often associated prism of decline and sadness.

This performance revisits the norms and social pressures surrounding the acceptance of the paradox of aging by deploying a lucid corporality without abandon. Faced with the new challenges of unprecedented longevity, a new era is dawning—a time of emancipation and freedom—offering the possibility of transforming society's view of aging and thus building bridges with other generations. It is a passionate call for a genuine change in attitudes towards mature women, intergenerational solidarity, and human values beyond our societal prejudices.

Biography

Elyse St-Amour (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in photography, performance, and writing. A graduate of UQAM (M.A.), she has been conducting research on body image and the body since 1987. Over the years, her research on bodily representation has taken shape through several distinct cycles, manifesting as a multifaceted feminist ontological quest that varies according to her current projects. Her most recent works highlight the codified bodily cues associated with the final stages of life, thereby questioning female identity and gendered ageism. Her work has been supported by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and has been presented in Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, South Korea, and France, as well as within the network of Montreal’s Maisons de la culture, La Centrale galerie Powerhouse, Le Lieu centre d’art actuel, and Centre Caravansérail… She lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

Friday June 26
7-9 pm 
Ask Human Intelligence
Tricia Enns

Ask Human Intelligence is a two-hour participatory performance that explores what it means to “be together” in a time when much of our communication is mediated by digital devices and artificial intelligence. The work creates an encounter between human(s) and machine that asks how we might reclaim care, reciprocity, and vulnerability within technological systems that often distance and divide us.

Ask Human Intelligence is a space of care, discomfort, and perhaps, humour. Participants are placed within a system of technological mediation, and the work asks whether we can build trust and empathy when our presence is filtered, monitored, and anonymized.

Through this encounter, participants are invited to reflect on how technology both fractures and fosters togetherness. This performance draws on a lingering question developed during the past several years of working with the theme of care—“at what point does what cares for us harm us?”

Biography

Tricia Enns (she/her) is a material and relational artist who currently calls Tiohtià:ke/Montreal home. Her work emerges from a playful and curious approach to care, and bridges low- and high-tech approaches to reimagine how we engage with spaces, including urban areas, bodies and unrealized dreams. Through performance, counter-mapping, multimedia installations, and collaborative workshops, Enns encourages viewers and participants to explore how spaces remember, resist, and resonate. Much of Enns’ recent work navigates care through acts of repair, redefinition, and reclamation; interrogating not only material waste but emotional loss, transition, and resilience. This work has complicated her understanding of care, which has led to a search for modes of co-opting the harmful technology of today to be one of care and reciprocity for tomorrow. You may have experienced her work at Journées de la Culture (2025), MUTEK (2025), Goblin Market, NYC Trash Club, artch (2025), and Ada X (2025). 

Saturday June 27
10 am - 5 pm
Break Room
Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott

Break room is a place that fosters conversation and trust: a spot where people unwind, relax, or gossip. This setting often serves as the starting point for colleagues to discuss our working conditions, and these conversations can sometimes be the spark that leads to activism and union organizing efforts. Since artistic work is often done in solitude and isolation, artists unfortunately have little access to this kind of space to discuss the challenges they face. The artist will be on site to initiate conversations with visitors throughout the day by bringing the break room to life. By offering this space to the public and specifically inviting the artistic community to take part in this performative installation, the aim is to facilitate sincere discussions about our working conditions and ways for our community to organize collectively to address our challenges.

Biography

Camille-Zoé Valcourt-Synnott (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and arts worker originally from Quebec City and currently based in Saint-Jean-Baptiste (QC), a small village on the traditional territory of the Waban-Aki Nation. She earned a BFA in Print Media from Concordia University in 2018 and an MFA in Fine and Media Arts from NSCAD University in 2020. Her work has been featured in artist-run centres and galleries across Canada, including La Maison des artistes visuels francophones (Winnipeg, MB), the Atlantic Arts Symposium (Saint John, NB), Latitude 53 (Edmonton, AB), artch festival (Montreal, QC) and more recently, Xpace Cultural Center (Toronto, ON). She has participated in research-creation residencies at Atelier d’estampe Imago (Moncton, NB), Céline Bureau, L’Imprimerie centre d’artistes and Atelier Circulaire (Montreal, QC). Her practice has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, CALQ, Arts Nova Scotia, LOJIQ and Culture Montérégie.

Saturday June 27
5:30-7:30pm
Hold This, Please
Amanda Préval & Belén Pedrocca 

Presented by Belén Pedrocca and Amanda Préval, Hold This, Please is a participatory performance that brings together various ceramic pieces through the art of weaving. The performance is a symbolic expression of mutual listening and complicity, informed by the friendship between the two artists. The sound dimension reflects their shared experiences as transmasculine people of color and their shared hair care routines.

Characterized by the tension between risk-taking and methodical work, the search for balance and misalignment, active listening and nonverbal decoding, this work explores the complexities and beauty of the ups and downs of social relationships. In this spirit of sharing know-how and care, the work engages the audience in the act of braiding to distribute the physical strain of repeated gestures and their extension over time.

Biographies

At the heart of their work, using traditional craft techniques, Amanda Préval (they/them) creates wearable sculptures and installations from synthetic hair extensions. Préval engages in participatory projects and durational performances to explore serial work and the choreographic qualities of braiding as vehicles for empowerment and community-building, fostering moments of socialization and communion within Afro-descendant culture.

Belén Pedrocca (he/him) is an Argentine-Canadian artist based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). Through his studies in the Bachelor of Visual and Media Arts program at UQAM, he has developed a practice that seeks to critically analyze current power structures and identity frameworks from a decolonial perspective. Through multidisciplinary work and a neo-materialist approach, he devises strategies to deconstruct and then reconstruct the world around us in order to imagine and create new possible universes. Pedrocca premiered his performance Touch at Place des Arts and, more recently, at the Entractes Festival 2024.