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January 27th, 2pm at Centre A
268 Keefer St, Vancouver, BC

This event takes place on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.

The (post)colonial port cities of Vancouver and Singapore are built on contested lands: unceded and speculated on in the case of Vancouver, and in Singapore, ever expanding with sand taken from other countries. This talk will offer some transnational and comparative considerations of these two transpacific sites, with a focus on the new urban ecologies that are being constructed on their waterfronts. Considering not only urban planning documents but also cultural texts, Leow draws from Vancouver writer Wayde Compton’s 2014 short story collection The Outer Harbour, and a selection of Singaporean cultural texts including Jeremy Tiang’s short story “National Day” and the multidisciplinary artworks of Singaporean artist Charles Lim and Juria Toramae. Multiple connections between Singapore and Vancouver will be considered as these texts think through the impact of land reclamation, environmental manipulation, “green” urban planning, migrant labour, and sustainable development—issues that are embodied by the recent social and economic trajectories of the two cities even as they are connected by flows of capital (with the most recent developments in North False Creek being helmed by Singaporean billionaire Oei Hong Leong, including a proposed new island called “Habitat Island”).

The idea of a wholly new island erupting in the Burrard inlet and its geopolitical, social, and material implications are taken up Compton in his 2014 work The Outer Harbour. The volcanic island is promptly named Pauline Johnson and the contested “new” land is a recurring backdrop in Compton’s interconnected speculative short fictions. How do these acts of re-imagining and re-writing unceded indigenous land produce new and uneasy spaces for both contact and solidarity? Turning the trope of terra nullius on its head, this talk explores how Compton’s work spatializes the indigenous and diasporic struggles for land rights in the face of capitalist encroachment and xenophobia. In reshaping the city itself with this imagined island, Compton’s work will be read as an attempt to think through the contested Canadian urban in terms that are at once contemporary and historical, indigenous and diasporic, prophetic and material. His efforts find transpacific connections with the future islands of Singaporean writers and artists. Jeremy Tiang’s “National Day” re-envisages the exceptional city-state through the eyes of migrant workers observing its independence day celebrations from an offshore island, while the unsettling works of artists Charles Lim and Juria Toramae challenge the city’s maritime borders and its obsessions with endlessly expanding its territory through land reclamation. Taken in their polyphony, these artistic and imaginative renderings of lost islands and future islands give us ways to think beyond land as property, waterfront as investment, ecology as recreation.

This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Dr. Joanne Leow is assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan. She is working on a book manuscript on authoritarianism, cartography, and cultural texts from Singapore. She is also undertaking a SSHRC funded research project on urban ecologies and ecocritical literature and art from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Vancouver. Her work has been published in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature, and the Journal of Asian American Studies.

The TARP Institute is a Vancouver-based art, event, and reading group.

This is a free event. Please note the new location of Centre A on the second floor of the Sun Wah Centre. The space is accessible by escalator and elevator. E-mail [email protected] with any questions.

From October to December, Danelle Ortiz, Y Vy Truong, and Simon Grefiel are hosting a weekly reading group at Centre A, Tuesdays 7-9pm. We will be reading a variety of texts that include fiction, poetry, and critical theory. Broad issues and areas of study will include Asian diaspora, decolonization, cultural criticism, and art criticism.

For the month of October, we will be examining the relationship between history and academic/artistic practice.

Week 1 (October 3) — We will be discussing Vinh Nguyen’s essay, “M?-search, Hauntings, and Critical Distance”, explores his relationship to the archive and the materiality of history as an academic and researcher. Where is the I in research? How can we link personal and collective histories with pedagogy? : https://www.dropbox.com/s/fa29ofnr6z87wna/M%20search%20Hauntings%20and%20Critical%20Distance.pdf?dl=0

Week 2 (October 10) — We will be hosting a film session. Rithy Panh’s film, The Missing Picture (2013), asks: how can one investigate missing histories? Why is history so connected to images and how can history be reconstructed from sutured archival material? Are memories enough? Can archives and memories themselves experience violence?

Visit our Facebook group for more information about the upcoming readings and meet ups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1279881315456182/

Saturday, Sept. 9th, 2 pm
Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings St.
2270 Sauder Industries Policy Room

Join us for a talk with Ying Tan, curator at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), as she shares in detail about her curatorial practice, the history of the CFCCA in the diverse art ecology of Manchester, and its place in a global contemporary art context.

Please remember to register online for this free talk.
Light refreshments will be served.

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YING TAN is a UK-based Canadian curator with a concern for negotiating sites of cultural specificity in her practice. She is currently the curator at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA). She has curated numerous exhibitions at the CFCCA, in addition to many other off-site projects in London and internationally. This includes the co-commission of Haze & Fog with Cao Fei (2013), as well as UK premieres of What Happened in the Year of the Dragon (2014) with Sun Xun and Xu Bing’s Book from the Ground (2003-present). She is a visiting lecturer for Christie’s Education (UK) and a contributor to KALEIDOSCOPE Asia Magazine. She was also on the curatorial faculty for Liverpool Biennial 2016.

CENTRE FOR CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART (CFCCA) is the UK’s leading organization for the promotion of Chinese contemporary art, producing an internationally renowned artistic programme and developing a reputation as a centre for research. Centrally located in the city of Manchester in the North of England, the centre has a proud 30-year history of UK ‘first’ solo exhibitions, featuring exceptional artists that go on to achieve international acclaim. CFCCA work with a wide array of partners to provide audiences with a lively and innovative programme of exhibitions, residencies, engagement projects, festivals, and events. As the only non-profit organization in Europe to specialize in Chinese contemporary art and visual culture, CFCCA are uniquely placed to explore a global century where Chinese art is moving firmly centre-stage.

This event is sponsored by the SFU David See-chai Lam Centre for International Communications and the SFU Institute for the Humanities.

STATIONERY @ Chinatown Night Market
Aug 25-27, Sept 1-3

Join CENTRE A for our final two weekends at the Chinatown Night Market, where we have been hosting various events and projects by artists and curators every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 6-10pm, from May 26 to September 3.

STATIONERY pays homage to the stationery booths of night markets past, packed to the brim with notebooks, gel pens, and lucky star paper. Bringing together Vancouver-based artists, designers, and hand selected items from international brands with prices ranging from $2–$70, STATIONERY aims to fulfill your paper and desktop accessory needs.

Featuring work from:

Amelia Butcher
Banquet Workshop
Cathleen Chow
The Five15
Fox & Flourish
The Future is You and Me
Juli Majer
April Milne
Quirky Paper Co.
VITIJO Studio

And more, including:

Tombow
Milan
BUTTER

Stock is very limited. 100% of sales go to the artists and designers.

***CASH ONLY***

STATIONERY is organized by Natalie Tan.

?????/The Futures Society of Chinatown @ Chinatown Night Market
Discordant Projects
August 11-13, 18–20

Drawing inspiration from the fraternal and kinship organizations that have emerged in Chinatown over the last century, ?????/The Futures Society of Chinatown aims to explore and further understand the external and internal pressures calling for change in Chinatown, while seeking to foster connections among the social and cultural divides within its rapidly shifting contexts. Imagined as an ongoing collaborative experience, ?????/The Futures Society invites members of the community to actively engage in challenging current conventions of place-making, while interrogating new, possible futures of Chinatown on an extended time scale.

Join us August 11 to 13th and 18 to 20th for the Society’s launch, membership drive, and nostalgia-cleansing tea sale.

Discordant Projects is Nova Olson, Pete Fung and Sam Shamsher, designers/artists who have been collaborating informally on projects since 2015. Their shared beliefs, and process characterized by an interdisciplinary nature, informal research methods, and playful complexity, have led them to form Discordant Projects. Their design collective seeks to delve into actively engaging communities in discovering new possibilities in an effort to push the limits of lived experience.

Join CENTRE A at the Chinatown Night Market, where we will be hosting various events and projects by artists and curators every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 6-10 pm, from May 26 – September 3.

ZINE FAIR @ Chinatown Night Market
July 14-16, 21-23

Join CENTRE A at the Chinatown Night Market, where we will be hosting various events and projects by artists and curators every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 6-10pm, from May 26-September 3.

The ZINE FAIR at the Chinatown Nightmarket will be featuring zines, publications, and other paper-goods by local Vancouver artists. Featured artists: Kiel Torres, Vanessa Grondin, Jessica Leung, Trisha Bernardo, Grace Chang. Bailey Trotter, Eleanor Hoskins, Avery Yeung, Tracy Ma, Moses Caliboso, Y Vy Truong, a collaboration piece by Kaymi Yoon-Maxwell, Yulanda Lui, Ghada Dbouba, A Quinn, and artist collective YARD SALE. Organized by Y Vy Truong, with banner by Rebecca Peng.

Come read with us!