Programs & Events
Programs & Events
Centre A presents a series of events leading up to the May 7th Closing Reception and Exhibition Catalogue Launch of Patrick Cruz’s Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise).
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Monday, February 29, 2016 | 6:30-8:30pm
Patrick Cruz: Homecoming Artist Talk
at Multipurpose Room, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia
Open to all
The UBC Philippine Studies Series and Centre A is pleased to present a talk by Filipino-Canadian artist Patrick Cruz, winner of the 2015 Annual RBC Painting Competition. Cruz will present a chronology of his works leading to his ongoing project Kamias Triennale, a tri-annual event that fosters dialogues between local and international artists. Dada Docot and Makiko Hara will respond to Cruz’s talk, relating his works to the artistic productions in the Philippines, in the Filipino diaspora, and in Canada. This event is held in conjunction with Cruz’s first solo show since winning the RBC prize that will be held at the Centre A, curated by Makiko Hara, and that will open on March 4, 2016.
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Thursday, April 28, 2016 | 8pm
A sound performance by Andrew Lee Perpetual Gong Machine of Peace
at Centre A
Using Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise) as a departure point, Andrew Lee deploys multiple cymbals and gongs wired in an automated system to generate a meditative and temporal sonic landscape. Akin to Cruz’s installation, Lee’s auditory and performative intervention materially echoes the symbolic decay and permanence inherent in Cruz’s work. Perpetual Gong Machine of Peace possesses neither a beginning nor an end; instead, it attempts to communicate the interstitial space of constancy and flux.
ANDREW LEE is a Vancouver based artist. His installations, sound compositions, music and photography have been exhibited in Vancouver, Malmo and New York. In 2010 he was a part of the exhibition First Nations/Second Nature at the Audain Gallery and in 2011 was asked by artist group Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries to compose a sound piece that would exhibit formally the characteristics of seeing. In 2012, Lee was invited by the Vancouver Art Gallery to perform new work responding to the monochromatic paintings and photographs of Ian Wallace. Andrew has performed and presented sound works at The Centre for Performance Research in New York (2012), Kunstradio in Vienna (2013), The Vancouver Planetarium (2015), The International Symposium On Electronic Art (2015) and, most recently, a sound installation at Surrey Art Gallery (2015).
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Saturday, April 30, 2016 | 6pm
A screening of Lav Diaz’s 2013 film, Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte, End of History)
at Bestway (21 E Pender St.)
$10 admission
Visionary Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz’s films centre around life in rural Philippines. Considered a leader his field, Diaz’s films are audience-testing, running between four to nine hours. In an interview, Diaz commented,
“The concept of time was imposed by the West, the Spanish. Go to work at nine, go home at five… Filipinos don’t actually follow that. People think it’s indolent, or lazy. It’s not. This is our culture.” – Diaz.
Patrick Cruz cites this in the title of his 2015 RBC Canadian Painting Prize-winning work, ‘Time Allergy’,
“We were kind of allergic to this idea of modernity and modernization.” – Cruz.
At a four hour run time, Diaz’s 2013 adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Norte, End of History), is his shortest film yet.
Many thanks to Moira Lang and Elisha Burrows.
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Saturday, May 7, 2016 | 4pm
Closing Reception and Exhibition Catalogue Launch, Birds of Paradise
at Centre A
Celebrate with us at the closing reception and the launch of Birds of Paradise, an exhibition catalogue for Patrick Cruz’s Bulaklak ng Paraiso (Flower of Paradise).
Organized by Cruz, Birds of Paradise brings together diverse texts and essays from 12 local cultural producers from Vancouver, Canada. Curators, artists, creative writers, anthropolgists, poets and social workers were invited to generate and contribute a text that loosely responds to our ever pervasive cult of globalization. The texts in the book attempt to grasp the complex, mobius and hybridized nature of globalization. The book serves as a space for inquiry and experimentation as well as a catalogue for the exhibition. Birds of Paradise includes contributions from Allison Collins, Nathan Crompton, Dada Brina Docot, Chaya Ocampo Go, Paul de Guzman, Makiko Hara, Jenn Jackson, Steffanie Ling, Heidi Nagtegaal, Jasmine Reimer, Charlie Satterlee and Jacobo Zambrano, and book design by Jake Lim.
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Saturday, March 5, 2016 | 7pm
1981 Main Street
Support our 2015 Seoul Residency program
In 2015, Centre and the RAT school of ART (http://www.ratschoolofart.com/ratschoolofart.html) (Seoul, Korea) agreed to establish an annual exchange and residency program (http://centrea.org/support/seoul/) to help build collaboration and friendship between art scenes in Seoul and Vancouver, creating new opportunities for ongoing dialogue and cultural productivity.
The program’s inaugural artist, Alex Grünenfelder is helping us kickstart this initiative through an extension of his Cube Living Project, a project he first initiated in Vancouver as a means to engage the public in an important dialogue about the creation, exchange and value of urban space. Now, with Cube Living CA/RAT Seoul he is enabling supporters of the Centre A – RAT school of ART Residency and Exchange Program to create literal cubic feet of artist residency space in Seoul through a simple online purchase. By engaging in this project you not only support the creation of an artist residency, but you become an integral participant in Grünenfelder’s Cube Living Project. To support go to www.centrea.org/support/seoul or join us on Saturday March 5th, 7pm at 1981 Main Street, as we launch Cube Living CA/RAT Seoul and host a send off reception for Alex.
Saturday, January 16, 2016, 2 PM
at Centre A
Free admission
Centre A welcomes architect Joe Wai, urban planner Nathan Edelson, community builder Doris Chow, academic/community activator Melissa Fong, community planner, Kathryn Lennon, and others to engage in a conversation specifically addressing the challenge of 105 Keefer as we reflect on past experience and contemplate ways forward for Vancouver’s Chinatown.
Vancouver has been a diverse city since its very inception. Experiences of linguistic and cultural diversity in BC urban environments have been mentioned in writing ever since the days of the gold rush. For the most part the story has surrounded the co-habitation struggles between a largely Cantonese/Toisan speaking Chinese community and a predominantly English speaking European community.
Over the decades, as these communities have struggled over the bounty of colonial exploitation, it can be said that the English speaking European community held the upper hand. However, at the same time they expressed a persistent anxiety that if not made subject to moderation, control and even exclusion, the Chinese community might one day overwhelm the English speaking community’s perch of cultural power.
A product of this anxiety and the struggle for Chinese community’s survival despite racist pressures is Vancouver’s Chinatown. It is unique both in urban experience and in built form. The era that, through racist policies, contained a community and produced Chinatown has passed. Today, Chinese businesses, residences, and cultural and linguistic expressions can be seen prospering throughout the metro area. However, Chinatown remains a site of linguistic and cultural diversity and its heritage is expressed as much in the people who populate the Goldstone Cafe as it is in the neighbourhood’s built form.
With the emergence of more professionalized urban planning after WWII, in the 1960s and 70s, Chinatown found itself having to struggle against public policy aimed at its destruction. Through the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, while Chinatown faced decline and a host of related problems, the City of Vancouver made accommodations and sought ways to acknowledge and celebrate this unique aspect of our urban environment. Today, in the throes of a seemingly never-ending condo-boom, Chinatown faces new challenges to its social and architectural make up.
Recent activism has been focused on a proposal by the Beedie Group to develop a condo tower at 105 Keefer across from the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden. Many community members have not been satisfied with recent condo developments along Main Street and see the current proposal to develop 105 Keefer as a “red line” that if crossed will mark the moment when Chinatown was demoted to the status of a gentrified tourist and real estate marketing commodity; a significant loss in the cultural diversity and heritage of Vancouver.
With the backdrop of Walking On The Line, Seung Woo Back’s ongoing exhibition at Centre A that explores archive, urban form and trends of standardisation, we invite a public conversation to discuss the current challenges facing Chinatown and our approaches to heritage, diversity and urban change.
About the Panelists
Joe Wai
Joe Wai is a Vancouver architect who has been actively engaged with protecting and promoting the community and the culture of Vancouver’s Chinatown since the mid 1960s. His imprint on Chinatown is undeniable. Along with being the architect of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, the Chinatown Millennium Gate, the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum and Archives, the Chinatown Parkade and Plaza, and the Commemoration of Block 17, Wai has been involved in the many restorations of the neighbourhood’s historical Society buildings. Known for his activism, Wai got his start volunteering with the Strathcona Property Owners and Tenants Association (SPOTA), saving numerous families from the perils of land expropriation and demolition, while weaving fifty some homes into the neighbourhood.
Not just limited to Vancouver’s Chinatown, Joe Wai’ s architectural career has spanned over 50 years and two continents. He worked with both Arthur Erickson and Thompson, Berwick and Pratt in Vancouver as well as Denys Lasdun and Partners and the Greater London Council in London, England. In 1978 he established Joe Wai Architects.
Nathan Edelson
Nathan Edelson is a Senior Partner with 42nd Street Consulting which supports inclusive planning for diverse communities. He has worked on projects linking government and community organizations in a variety of settings including Delta, Fort Saint John, Haida Gwaii, Johannesburg, Regina, Sao Paulo, Toronto and Vancouver. He is also an Adjunct Professor with the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning and a Bousfield Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto.
He was Planner with the City of Vancouver Planning Department from 1983 to 2008. For 15 years, he was the senior planner focusing on the many challenging issues facing the Downtown Eastside – including historic Chinatown, Gastown, Strathcona and Victory Square. Prior to that, he was the planner for Downtown South, Granville Street and the Joyce Station SkyTrain area (Collingwood Village). He also led initiatives on the Central Area Plan, Secondary Suites and Liquor Licensing Policy. Before joining the City, Edelson was the founding Executive Director of Little Mountain Neighbourhood House, a community-based social service agency.
Through this work, he has managed the development of innovative Community Building policies and programs involving Arts and Culture, Economic Revitalization, Health Care and Social Services, Heritage Conservation, Housing, Public Safety and Public Realm Improvements and Programming. On many initiatives this has involved extending the municipality’s zoning, permitting, policing and purchasing powers to support community identified objectives.
Doris Chow
A co-founder of the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown and a board member of the century old Hoy Ping Benevolent Association of Vancouver, Doris Chow is a community builder with deep Chinatown roots who has been actively involved in social activation and heritage preservation efforts in the neighbourhood for nearly a decade. Also actively involved with human rights and social justice issues in the broader neighbourhood, Chow is the manager of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Kitchen Tables Project with Potluck Café Society, through which she successfully launched the first non-profit food buying group in Canada.
Chow holds a Bachelors degree in Sociology and a certificate in Community Economic Development.
Melissa Fong
Melissa Fong is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto in Planning and Geography. She is investigating revitalization planning in Vancouver’s Chinatown with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Fellowship. Her research interests include gentrification, spatial regulation of the dispossessed, and equity politics. She is also interested in applying the lens of critical race theory and intersectional analysis as basis for her research methodology. Most of her recent work has focused on the racialization of urban inequality and displacement.
Fong is also a post-secondary educator and advocate for special needs education. As a former middle and high school teacher, she became passionate about equity education. She is an advocate for accessible education and curricula reform to meet the needs of marginalized students.
Kathyn Lennon
Kathryn Lennon is completing her Masters at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning. She moved to Vancouver, from Edmonton, in 2013 and her curiosity pulled her into art, heritage, and community organizing undertakings centred around Chinatown. In 2014, she co-founded the Youth Collaborative for Chinatown, a network of youth doing awesome stuff in, for and with Chinatown. She is interested in intercultural and community-rooted planning and design, and culturally-based placemaking and public space activation. She worked with Centre A in the spring of 2013 on the exhibition M’GOI/ DO JEH: SITES, RITES AND GRATITUDE, running a temporary Saturday School Cantonese Class with Zoe Lam.
PRESS COVERAGE
“Chinatown development to be publicly debated”, On the Coast, CBC News, January 16, 2016
“Chinatown development to be publicly debated”, News Canada, January 16, 2016
“Chinatown gathers over development concerns”, Trevor Jang, Roundhouse Radio, Jan 16, 2016
“Discussion: Diversity and the Built Environment: The Case of 105 Keefer”, Vancouver Biennale, January 16, 2016
Title: Walking On the Line (2015)
Year: 2015
Price: $20.00
Size: 5¾ x 4 inches / 14.7 x 10 cm
Description: Seung Woo Back’s first Canadian solo exhibition, Walking On the Line (2015), investigates the precarious nature of the medium of photography, while offering an opportunity to gain a fresh perspective regarding our relationship to our built environment. Published by IANN Magazine, each page of this mini-book features a segment of Back’s Re-Establishing Shot and includes a print of the full work within the dust jacket. Walking on the Line also contains an essay by the exhibition’s curator, Jeong Eun Kim.
Title: 18 Buildings Postcard Book
Year: 2015
Price: $15.00
Size: 5¾ x 4 inches / 14.7 x 10 cm
Description: This postcard book was published by IANN Magazine and printed in conjunction with Seung Woo Back’s exhibition, Walking On the Line (2015), which exhibited at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. A set of 18, each card is connected by a perforated edge and features Back’s 18 Buildings.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
2 to 4 PM
at Centre A
Free admission
Facebook event page
Centre A invites Refugee Advocate and Writer Zool Suleman to host a discussion in response to the works of an anonymous collective of volunteer, self-taught artists, Abounaddara. Their weekly short films offer a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Syrians without restricting them to political or religious affiliations, focusing rather, on the details of daily life. While employing the aesthetics of cinema in an open-ended DIY spirit, Abounaddara provides an alternative to the customarily extremely violent representation of the Syrian condition.
This Saturday afternoon discussion will be an opportunity where individuals gain insight on an important political art project that plays on anonymity and dis-identification to construct a space of resistance; and to relate that back to current aspects of the Canadian cultural and political climate.
Online Exhibition: Abounaddara. Right to the Image.
About Zool Suleman
Zool Suleman is a Refugee Advocate and Writer who has been involved at the nexus of law/culture/production for many years. In addition to being a lawyer, he published and edited Rungh, A South Asian Journal of Culture Comment and Criticism from 1990-1997. He has also been on the board of directors of a variety of arts groups including the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and the Pacific Music Industry Association. He has advised the provincial government on arts policy and he has been on consultative committees or juries for Heritage Canada, the Canada Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver. Since 2005, he has either Chaired, Co-Chaired or been a member of the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Working Group on Immigration. Currently he is involved with The Adhan Project, a multi – year, multi – disciplinary project exploring the intersection between the call to prayer in Islam (the Adhan), urban soundscapes, law, and the theories of immigrant belonging, portions of which will be hosted by or done in collaboration with Centre A.
Along with Zool Suleman, a panel of other speakers will also engage with the Abounaddara project from different perspectives.
Rahat Kurd is the author of COSMOPHILIA, a collection of poems which has just been published this fall by Talonbooks. She was a finalist for the 2014 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize and named Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category of the 2013 Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards. Her articles and essays have appeared most recently in Guernica, The Walrus, Maisonneuve, and other magazines and newspapers. She is now at work on a memoir about the making of Muslim culture in North America.
Alnoor Gova, PhD, is a scholar, researcher, community activist and radio host. His research focuses on the present Canadian political scene, largely in the areas of Citizenship, Multiculturalism, Immigration, National Security and Law; and specifically focuses on responses and interpretations to anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia. He is a Co-founder of the Siraat Collective and has worked with a variety of organizations including the Asian Heritage Month Festivals in Metro Toronto and Vancouver. He also serves on the Boards of Neworld Theatre, Nahid Siqququi Dance Company and Asita Infomatica.
Majd Agha, one of the first Syrian Refugees to arrive in Vancouver.
Centre A gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our media sponsor, the Vancouver Observer.
PRESS COVERAGE
“Zool Suleman hosts, ‘Let’s talk: Syrian Refugees, Islamophobia and Canadian Identity’ at Centre A”, Vancouver Observer, November 30, 2015
Artist Talk with Seung Woo Back
Saturday, November 28 | 4-6pm
Centre A: 229 East Georgia Street, Coast Salish Territories/ Vancouver
Free Admission
This Saturday afternoon, South Korean Artist Seung Woo Back will discuss the works featured in his first solo exhibition in Canada, currently on view at Centre A.
Back’s work investigates photography as a medium of “truth”; a characteristic that is continually challenged by his manipulation of the medium itself. While some qualities of Back’s work could be seen as reminiscent of the New Topographics, the notions of documentation and the archive are formally confronted anew with the rapidly transforming and globalized urban landscape.
Triggered by the continuous waves of globalization and the sense of alienation in urban cities, Back recreates convincing faux-realities that originate from his photographic documentations and archives. These constructed images distantiate themselves from the photographic truth, interestingly conversing with Vancouver’s own tradition of photographically constructed and composed realities.
Seung Woo Back will discuss his previous works in relationship to his new solo exhibition “Walking on the Line” curated by Jeong Eun Kim. This exhibition features Re-Establishing Shot (2012) and 18 Buildings (2013), as well as a related projection work. The artist talk will be followed by additional time for questions.
Born in Daejon, South Korea, Seung Woo Back is currently living and working in Seoul. He holds a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Photography from ChungAng University and, in 2005, received an additional M.F.A. in Fine Art and Theory at Middlesex University in London. Back has been featured internationally in both solo and group exhibitions in galleries across Asia, Europe, and North America. His work not only examines photography as a medium, but also as a means for which to manipulate and alter the putative truth of the archival. In the Summer of 2014 he participated in an artist in residency arranged by Vancouver Biennale.
Jeong Eun Kim is an independent curator based in Seoul, South Korea. Founder and chief editor for the acclaimed bi-annual contemporary art photography magazine, IANN, she has worked extensively in the field of photography including as chief coordinator for the Daegu Photo Biennale 2012, and curator of the Seoul Photo Festival 2010. Currently she teaches at Kaywon University of Art and Design while pursuing her PhD at Middlesex University in London.
Centre A gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Culture and Arts Promotion Fund of the Arts Council of Korea (ARKO) in making this exhibition possible. Walking on the Line is produced by IANN. Special thanks to Ken Lum and Surrey Art Gallery.
