Le Merle

Le Merle is an artist-run edition / zine melding art and ideas with a political direction. Together we explore pathways and exits, ways of listening in, of dissembling, attentive to transversal, decolonial and anti-disciplinary knowledges and practices, in and around the arts.

Le Merle is invested in a kind of roughshod approach to research, putting pieces into circulation that incite us to reconsider our ways of doing, living, and dying — an epistemology of scraps... Slight, it is also a protective circle traced across artistic and political ecologies. Fragmentary and partial, Le Merle goes hand in hand with this fitful world, making it quiver, undoing some of its violence; it imagines and makes place for ways of learning and living that are more desirable and just.

This publication effort is made on the unceded lands of several Indigenous nations. Settlers from Europe gradually took over these lands, which today continue to be claimed by and destroyed with the consent of the Canadian federal and provincial governments. If they are still inhabitable despite centuries of spoliation, it is thanks in no small part to the struggles and care of Indigenous peoples. This reality holds an important place in our thinking: we hope it will accompany you in yours.

**

I would come as an individual artist / founder and co-editor / publisher, and possibly accompanied by Mirna Boyadjian, co-editor of the issue on Lebanon/Québec.

François Lemieux’s post-disciplinary approach brings together practice, publishing and research in the form of exhibitions, documents and situations that address language, space and power. Recent projects include : Organ of Cause and Effect (2022-24) Künstlehaus Bethanien, Berlin / SP2, Berlin / bb15, Linz; Désoeuvrer la Valeur / Derivative Value, curated with Erik Bordeleau, Marilou Lemmens & Bernard Schutze, VOX—Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal (2022); Going to, Making do, Passing Just the Same, with Edith Brunette, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Montréal (2021) / Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine, Trois-Rivières (2022) / Espace Mach, Université de Sherbrooke (2022); Variations autour d’un Patio, curated by Pavel Pavlov, Le Patio, Aylmer (2021); Primary attempts and related materials, Sapporo Tenjinyama Art Studio, Sapporo (2019); Un soleil difficile (2017) VOX—Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal. Publications Le Merle, Journals of words and deeds [online: lemerle.xyz] (2011-...); and Going to, Making do, Passing Just the Same, edited with Edith Brunette, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University Press, Montréal (2021). He is currently enrolled in the Phd-in-Arts program at Salzburg's Mozarteum University, Autstria.