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.
Group Search & Memory Palace: Book Launch
Other Sights for Artists’ Projects and Doryphore Independent Curators, the Vancouver Public Library and the City of Vancouver Public Art Program are delighted to announce a new publication that documents Group Search and Memory Palace, presented as part of Inside the Library Curatorial Initiatives. In a program running from September 2006 to February 2010, these distinct projects commissioned artists to investigate the potential of the diverse public space of the Vancouver Public Library’s Central Branch while addressing the broader philosophical and symbolic meanings of `the library’.
The Future is Floating 4
As a lead up to the launch of the Bomford’s Deadhead (working title) , a floating sculpture commissioned by Other Sights and Presentation House Gallery, Other Sights’ Communication Office presents the first of a series of conversations about building structures, imaginary, physical or social, at the artists’ GNW studio.
In the research phase of this project the Bomfords initiated a discussion with Geoffrey Carr about his insight into the relationship between the built environment and colonial power on the west coast. For this event, Carr will present some of his research and insight into the authority implicit in the design and construction of residential schools. A discussion between Carr and the Bomfords will follow.