The Foreshore: Session 4
Taking Habitat Forum 1976 as a model for the confluence of design, politics, art and community, Brown will look at the current situation in Vancouver regarding public space, land use policy and political maneuvering by our civic government and real estate developers. She will contrast approaches to land use and speculation in UN Habitat’s “New Urban Agenda” of 2016 and its more radical predecessor, the Vancouver Declaration of 1976, to provide context for Vancouver’s increasing abdication of meaningful, politically potent public spaces and public art practice.
The Foreshore: Session 3
Chris Williams is an environmental scholar and activist based in New York and focused on the topic of the eco-socialism. His talk assesses the interrelationships between our economic system and the environmental crisis, between the convergence of planetary and social degradation, and offers suggestions and insights into possible alternatives. This talk was originally aired on Alternative Radio and recorded in San Luis Obispo, CA on May 15, 2016.
The Foreshore: Session 2
Justin Langlois and Holly Schmidt will share their research into the creation of The Floating School, a multi-year artist-led research, production, and programming initiative that will explore retreat as both a theoretical and methodological proposition. From its physical infrastructure to its curricular framework, The Floating School will examine retreat as necessary indulgence, retreat as long-term strategy, and retreat as active movement in an opposite direction.
The Foreshore: Session 1
Stephen Collis, Genevieve Robertson and Jay White will talk about their ongoing shared investigation into the actual physical places the existing and proposed gas, oil and fuel transmission sites along the local shoreline (from Woodfibre Liquid Fracked Gas at Squamish to the Westshore Coal export terminal in Tswassen). It is a project that integrates their practices as poet, artists and activists.
Kimberly Phillips will talk about Access Gallery’s current traveling artist residency, Twenty-Three Days at Sea, particularly questions it provokes about definitions of emergence, risk, and the role of the artist as “witness.”
Double Book Launch: The Games Are Open and Deadhead
The Games are Open documents the transformation of Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser’s bulldozer sculpture that occupied interim lands on the edge of Vancouver’s Olympic Village, while Deadhead explores the process and ideas behind Cedric, Nathan and Jim Bomford’s ambitious floating artwork.
Slow Dirt: A Multi-Site Public Art Exhibition
At the invitation of The Western Front, Vancouver, Other Sights presents a three-part artwork created for Urgent Imagination: Art and Urban Development, a multi-site public art exhibition and 2-day conference that focuses on development in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.
Tailgate Event: Monument to Mysterious Fires
On the occasion of the Capture Photography Festival, Other Sights has transformed 4 billboards at Quebec Street and East 5th Avenue into a temporary monument, commemorating the mysterious fires that have taken place in the Main Street vicinity of Mount Pleasant. Addressing the east/west and the north/south axes of the city and how they factor in the currencies of ‘views’ as well as the escalation of property values creeping eastward, Monument to Mysterious Fires triggers historical and recent memories of the neighbourhood. The billboards, set perpendicular to one another, carve out a sculptural space within a parking lot, in which to gather and reflect on the transformation of the city.
Narvaez Bay: Tidal Predictions performed aboard deadhead
“Deadhead” is a large-scale sculptural installation mounted to a barge and towed by tug to different locations along Vancouver’s waterways. Created by Cedric Bomford in collaboration with his father Jim Bomford (a retired engineer), and brother Nathan Bomford (an artist and builder), the sculpture is constructed primarily from salvaged materials, with some sections wrapped in photographic murals. A curious aquatic outpost, Deadhead’s enigmatic spaces are designed for public access.
Grow diy Manual: Book Launch
From May 1st to November 30, 2011, Other Sights for Artists’ Projects presented Grow, a project by Vancouver artist Holly Schmidt. Grow was a public art project, teaching tool and creative laboratory for ecological and social sustainability practices. Situated in Vancouver’s Olympic Village, which was intended as a model for sustainable development but surrounded by much debate; this project brought together different interest groups, creative practitioners and publics to address issues of ecological and social sustainability.
I Know What I Want: Open Studio (Event)
This summer Other Sights is collaborating with The Western Front and 221A on a publicly-sited research intensive about the possible futures of the Kingsway, Broadway and Main Street neighbourhood in Vancouver. In addition to conducting interviews with local independent business people, cultural leaders and members of the design and planning community, we have gathered and circulated ideas from neighbours at the recent Western Front 40th Anniversary party.