Le récit de la controverse autour d’une œuvre d’art public à Montréal : les publics de La vélocité des lieux (2015) de BGL, de la commande à la réception médiatique

Abstract

The integration of public art into city gateways, as public spaces of representation, contributes to the construction of the city’s image and its imaginary, which is intended to reach out to a vast public. This case study looks back at the first city gateway created in Montréal, in the Montréal-Nord borough – considered one of the most disadvantaged in the city – where the monumental work La vélocité des lieux, by the visual-arts collective BGL, was installed in 2015. Commissioned following a Canada-wide competition, the work had a production budget of $1.1 million – an amount that gave it high visibility, as suggested by the media attention it received when it was installed. After a short analysis of the discourse on public art conveyed in municipal cultural policies, the study examines the publics for this work. The conception of the audiences for the work formed by public bodies and the artists is compared to that formed by reception of the work in the media. The hypothesis is that there is a conflict of scale between the publics envisaged for the work and certain publics from the neighbourhood.

Keywords

• cultural policies
• Public art
• city gateway
• BGL
• Montréal