Dani Tardif
Dani Tardif, a non-binary queer artist based in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal, sings and tells stories in many forms (stories, poems, audio art, radio art, video, performance). Through their work, Dani seeks to make porous the lines between fiction and ethnography, magic and politics. A being of nuance and hybridity, they explore grief, vulnerability, desires and everything mysterious that emerges in the interstice between the individual and the collective. Their video works have been screened in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Germany and Austria (Hron a country of ghosts 2019, bonds 2018). They are currently writing their first poetry book, Saisons, and developing a futuristic queer sound narrative project, Q_Descendants. Since 2023, thanks to the CALQ, Dani has been exploring queer storytelling (Festival interculturel du conte de Montréal, Rendez-vous des grandes gueules de Trois-Pistoles).
Descendants is a 50-minute hypnotic interactive sound art piece in which you are the hero. An original concept by Dani Tardif, a queer and non-binary multidisciplinary artist, the piece projects the audience into the rural North Shore region of Québec in the year 2203. Using speculative fiction, the work aims to create cultural models of intentional LGBTQIA2S+ communities outside the metropolis. magie_basse (Julien Simard) composes the soundtrack.
This journey through time aims to explore how our queer and trans descendants will adapt their bodies to survive the challenges imposed by climate change. With a queer, transfeminist and intersectional perspective, the audience discovers body modification, “shapeshifting“, a technology invented by our descendants to adapt and survive their environment. The public somatically imagines the modification of its cellular organization to integrate an adaptive characteristic of a plant or animal.
Collaborators
Sound research and recordings Julia Dyck
Preliminary research in collaboration with the EarthBound collective
Sound composition and mixing Julien Simard, aka magie_basse
Illustration by Dylan Lafond
Thanks to participants in the exploration labs and the collective worldbuilding workshop
Special thanks to the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the OBORO studio production assistance program and the residencies at Atelier de la 8e île.