Collective Collective and Parker Mah
© Photo Credits: Collective Collective, Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, 2024.
Terms of Engagement: a workshop and discussion
— Montreal Monochrome XI — TRANSIENT
A workshop and discussion with Collective Collective and Parker Mah.
Sunday, September 6, 2026, from 1:30 to 4 PM.
Montreal Monochrome is an annual conference series for Indigenous, Black, and artists and cultural workers of color, organized by articule's Fabulous Committee. This 11th edition, which will take place from September 2-6, 2026, will expand to welcome guests from across Canada to explore our theme: TRANSIENT. Details about this edition of Montreal Monochrome and the full program.
Collective Collective invites cultural workers and artists to collaboratively write the Terms of Engagement that we would like to insist upon when working with institutions as BIPOC workers, radical organizers, and artist-parents. As a tool to negotiate for what we need, this drop-in workshop is an opportunity to share our experiences within institutions, and to propose what terms of engagement might be helpful to build better ways of working in our sector.
Artists
Collective Collective is a project between eight visual arts collectives with majority-racialized members in Tkaronto (Toronto, Canada) as a response to the systemic racism and exploitative labour conditions in the arts, as well as the interrelated lack of sustainability within the sector.
Parker Mah 馬世聰 is a fourth-generation Chinese Montrealer of Toisanese descent, based in Tio’tia:ke. Multimedia artist, musician, and DJ, his diverse body of work tackles themes and realities of migration, hybridization and identity. He is also active in different cultural and activist spaces as a curator, moderator, trainer and community organizer.
MMXI Schedule
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Opening Reception & Performance
— Starting at 5:30 PM: presented by BLK D’OR featuring Jahsun, Engone Endong, and Cabral Jacobs.
Thursday, September 3, 2026
Threading Frequencies: Longtable discussion
— At 1:30 PM: Featuring artist-run centre leaders: Abedar Kamgari (SAVAC), Sanaa Humayun (Hamilton Artists Inc.), and Alana Traficante (Gallery 44), co-facilitated by researchers Madeline Collins and Suzanne Morrissette (OCAD University).
Open Discussion
— At 3 PM: Open Discussion, continuing on with the themes from the long table discussion all participants are invited to contribute to an open discussion.
Performance
— At 6:30 PM. Amanda Préval — What Remains…
Performance
— At 7 PM: Dani Carter — SWIRL/SADDLE.
Friday, September 4, 2026
Keynote Address
— At 5:30 PM: Keynote Address featuring Daniela Andrade & Fern — p(B)ajubá e a proteção de pessoas trans e travestis. In French but live translation to English will be available.
Performance
— At 7 PM: Joliz Dela Peña — Trespassing the Timeline
Saturday, September 5, 2026
Collective pottery patchwork II
— At 1:30 PM: With atelier clé (facilitated by Laura Leong)
Performance-Workshop
— At 6 PM: Sabina Gámez Ibarra — Desire Paths
Sunday, September 6, 2026
Terms and Conditions: a workshop and discussion
— At 1:30 PM: a workshop and discussion presented by Collective Collective and Parker Mah
Clay Re:Gathered
— At 1:30 PM: : Hand-on workshop with Babita Sharma
Three artists will present their installation works during Montréal Monochrome: Maya Amoah, Nathalie Batraville, and Anna J. McIntyre.
TRANSIENT
TRANSIENT refers to what circulates under pressure: diasporic bodies, minoritized languages, unstable archives, trans/queer and racialized practices that resist regimes of fixation, measurement, and categorization. Against colonial, institutional, and statistical logics that flatten difference into acronyms, metrics, or singular narratives, TRANSIENT foregrounds relational, embodied, and collective forms of knowledge. It creates a space where identity is understood as a process rather than a stable fact, where memory is activated through use and gesture, and where movement becomes a strategy for survival, care, and continual remaking.
TRANSIENT names a situated condition shaped by movement, constraint, and political timing. It is neither a temporary state nor mobility for its own sake, but a mode of existence formed in the in-between: between appearance and disappearance, inside and outside, visibility and erasure. Perhaps we all find ourselves there—in the liminal, fuzzy, and fluid—either momentarily or temporarily. What have we been doing in the interim.
Montreal Monochrome is an annual conference organized by articule's Fabulous Committee (anti-oppression). It addresses the misrepresentation and under-representation of Indigenous and racialized people in the current Montreal arts scene. The event aims to imagine and nurture new and existing connections, solidarities and friendships between Indigenous artists, thinkers, cultural workers and racialized allies. Artists, cultural workers, researchers, community organizers and others are invited to apply. The selected projects may take the form of workshops, round tables, debates, collective works, actions in the public space, interventions, performances, demonstrations, lightning gatherings, among others.
The Fabulous Committee is a space for Black, Indigenous and/or racialized articule members, as well as Black, Indigenous and/or racialized queer and/or trans members, to come together, to have a space to care for each other, to exchange ideas, to share their practice and to see art together. The activities of the Fabulous Committee change according to the needs and desires of the members.
This year’s edition of Montreal Monochrome is made possible, in part, by the Government of Canada, and by the support of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
The Canadian Race Relations Foundation is committed to building a national framework for the fight against racism in Canadian society. The CRRF will do this through knowledge-sharing and community support in the pursuit of equity, fairness, social justice and systemic change.