BERLIN, GERMANY.- Montreal’s pulsating poetry scene will be on show on 25 June 2007 in the multimedia performance “Multimedia by Montreal. Room of Lost Steps” as part of this year’s poesiefestival berlin. Montreal is one of the liveliest, most experiment-friendly and most innovative cities in North America. The “Multimedia by Montreal. Room of Lost Steps” project will be presenting Montreal’s pulsating poetry scene on 25 June 2007 as part of this year’s poesiefestival berlin. Dance, music and video projections are fused with text and spoken word. Voices are electrified and the poetic becomes automatic. Poetry and electronics merge into a single entity. The four Quebecer poets D. Kimm, Alexis O’Hara, Fortner Anderson and Michel Vézina produce their texts on the basis of dramatic effect and emphasise the performative aspects of language. They will be performing with musicians Bernard Falaise and Michel F. Côté and dancer Luciane Pinto.

The performer-artists remain in constant communication with one another, equally with the musicians and the dancer. During their performance, they alternate constantly between English and French. The hierarchy between text, voice and gesture is dismantled, as is the hierarchy between languages and accents. The musicians speak, the poets move, the dancer sings. The performance is synchronized with projections, film scenes and a live on-stage camera and all these elements are fused together via text fragments translated into German.

“La salle des pas perdus” (Room of Lost Steps) refers to a waiting hall, a passage in which individual people stay standing for a moment and come into contact with one another. The “Room of Lost Steps” therefore represents the pulsating, lively and multi-cultural life of the city of four million people that is Montreal. In these respects is Montreal Berlin’s natural relative. The eighth poesiefestival berlin takes place from 23 June to 1 July. This year’s theme is the poetry of Canada and Quebec.