General Director
Art Historian and Museologist, Marianne joined the OBORO artist-run center in April 2020. She previously worked at the Centre d’exposition L’Imagier, in Gatineau, as General Director from 2008 to 2020, where she managed and coordinated the reconstruction of the center, which opened in May 2019. Motivated by the dissemination of current art, she has participated in the presentation of some fifty exhibitions and a hundred music and performing arts shows. In 2012 and 2014-2015, she was in charge of the Permanent Collection and Public Art for the City of Gatineau. Since 2018, she has acted as a regional expert for the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications for the Politique d’intégration des arts à l’architecture. She also offers her services as a professional consultant for the organization of public art competitions and exhibitions.
Artistic Director
Tamar Tembeck, PhD, is an art historian with a professional background as a performing artist and exhibition curator. Before joining OBORO in 2018 (after many years of involvement with the organisation), Tamar held an academic appointment within an interdisciplinary university research hub in media studies. Tamar notably coedited the publications The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age (U. of Minnesota Press) and Conflict[ed] Reporting (Photography & Culture). With a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), she also led a research project on public art in hospitals. Tamar continues to be involved in both research and research-creation projects at the intersection of art and medicine, with collaborators stemming from diverse artistic and scientific disciplines. At OBORO, she has held the positions of General and Artistic Director (from 2018 to 2020) and Artistic Director (since 2020).
Communications Manager and Gallery Technician
Audrey Bilodeau Fontaine (she/her) studied visual arts at UQAM and Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. She has worked at various artist-run-centres and pre-COVID, she was enjoying the mountains, occupying the position of Curatorial Research Practicum at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She will be a candidate for the Master’s degree in Museology, a joint program between UQÀM and the Université de Montréal in the fall of 2022.
Head of Research, Audio Sector
Stéphane Claude is an electronic_acoustic composer and sound engineer. His research is based on integrating a conceptual and physiological framework of audio recording and sound installation for different diffusion contexts in the electronic arts. His interests gravitate around the communication of a formal aesthetics, as transductive experiences of the electronic medium, the exploration of digital signal processing, the parameters of acoustics and sound in spaces. His work has been published by ATAK(JP), LINE, DRAGON’S EYE RECORDINGS (US), ORAL (CA), among others. He is the co-founder of the art research unit Ælab with artist and professor Gisèle Trudel. The work of Ælab has been shown internationally. As an audio consultant, he participates in the conception, production and integration of presentation spaces, of specialized analog and digital creation and production studios for artist run centers, institutions and independant sites.
Visitor Services Agent and Directorial Assistant
A multidisciplinary artist (visual arts, new media and dance), visual programmer and cultural worker, Marcella Franca has over 15 years of experience in the coordination and production of innovative cultural projects. She specializes in the creation of engaging educational activities as well as the coordination of cultural mediation activities. During her artistic career, she has presented her work in important festivals and cultural centers around the world such as Festival Art Souterrain 202l, SATFEST 2021 at SAT – Société des Arts Technologiques, Montreal en Lumière, MAPP MTL, +Performance (Oi Futuro, BR), Optica Festival (ES/FR), and Amazonia MAPP (BR).
Accountant
Mireille N’gouan has a Master in Management Science from the University of Cocody in Abidjan, as well as a certificate in Access to the Accounting Profession from the HEC Montreal. Since 2010, she has been working in the accounting field in non-profit organizations. This is what brought her to create MyConsultants, an enterprise that oversees the accounting in a few non-profit organizations and SEMs.
Co-Head of Research, Multimedia Sector and Technical Manager (IT)
James Schidlowsky is a multidisciplinary artist creating in the domains of music, sound art, photography, collage, experimental video, code/algorithmic art, and electronic circuitry. Apart from his background as a computer programmer, he is self-taught and embraces the D.I.Y./handmade ethic. He has been active in Montreal’s experimental/improv music scene for over two decades, collaborating with a wide range of artists, participating in solo & group concerts and recordings. He also hosts shows on community radio. In addition to making art, he is also a wild mushroom and vintage pinball enthusiast.
Administrative Coordinator, New Media Lab
Speranza Spir is a second generation Greek-Montrealer, haijin, performer and a somatic educator and maunual practitioner. Her art- works are informed from the intelligent body enhancing cognition and how its relevance informs performance and authenticity, identity and emotional empowerment. Nature and the great outdoors are motivating factors for her explorations and performances. In 2002, she completed studies in Video-production at Concordia University in Montreal, and began integrating videography and photography to document body language as a tool for recording personal movement. Since, she has added to this inventory with frequent trips to Greece exploring cultural duality, existential questions of ancestral memory, knowlegde and ritual, human roots, place, migration, family secrets and belonging, taking forms in storytelling and Butoh dance. Since 2015, she is one half of the multidisciplinary duo SPY&DENY with her muse and life partner. She holds regular classes and workshops in Montreal.
Co-Head of Research, Multimedia Sector and Technical Manager (Exhibitions)
Tracy Valcárcel (she/her) is a Peruvian lens-based artist and cultural worker currently living in Tio’tia:ke (Montréal). Trained in video, dance and physical theatre, she moved to Canada in 2009 to pursue studies in Interdisciplinary Performance and Media Arts. In her practice, she uses moving images and archive to consider the body as a living cultural map, questioning to what extent our identities are shaped by memory, environment and habit. Central to her research are the broader themes of food and migration. Her work and collaborations have been shown locally as well as internationally at video and performance festivals including Kinesthesia Festival (Middlesex, UK), Rendez-vous Québec Cinema (Québec, CA), Festival de Cine Experimental Cinetoro (Cali, Colombia), REThink Art Digital Festival (Crete, Greece), Movement Research at Judson Church (NYC, US), Summerworks Festival 25 (Toronto, Canada), Szczecin European Film Festival (Szczecin, Poland), ikono On Air Festival (Berlin, Germany), ((.mov)) Videoarte en mOvimiento (Madrid, Spain) and Performance Voyage 3 (Tromsø, Norway). She is an active member of Fruition, a Montreal-based QTBIPOC collective and her video work is distributed by GIV.
Programming Coordinator
Born in Northern Macedonia (ex-Republic of Macedonia, ex-FYROM, ex-Yugoslavia), Sonja Zlatanova graduated from the École nationale supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. Since 2007, Zlatanova has curated exhibitions for institutional and alternative distribution platforms in Europe and Montreal. She was an active member of the artist center La Centrale from 2014 to 2018 and within which, with the Performance Committee, she initiated and developed a cross-residency with CRVENA, an art and social development organization in Sarajevo. Since 2013, Zlatanova has been involved in the Viva Art Action performance festival and specifically in the development of the Kitchen Residency. In July 2019, she joined the radio show Radio Atelier on CIBL 101.5, for which she hosted and curated the on-air performative creation segment. Zlatanova’s work has been exhibited in Europe, including Lausanne (CH), Paris (FR), Istanbul (TK), Berlin (DE), Sarajevo (BH), Skopje and Bitola (NMK), and Montreal (CA). The influence of migratory movements of individuals on the construction and metamorphosis of cultural identities underlies her various projects. Through edible plants, she addresses the occupation of territory, whether in symbiosis with nature or occupied by force. She also uses language in the form of poetic fragments that she disseminates through her formal and conceptual research.