ARCHIVES

Unseen.Garden

Project by Chris Hamamoto and Federico Pérez Villoro

Software development by Greg Monroe

Sound design by Tiger Dingsun

July 13 – December 15, 2023

Web-based project 

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Check out Unseen.Garden, HERE.

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This website compiles a series of stock-image timelapses displaying flowers blooming and decaying with auto-generated captions added to them by a custom-made program. Viewers can toggle between various stages in the machine vision model’s training progress as they are presented with a new plant every time the page is loaded. 

The project explores the intransferability of meaning between text and images and the reproduction of taxonomic orders in both stock imagery and machine vision. A technical reenactment of NeuralTalk, an early model designed to write sentences that describe images’ contents, this adaptation of it for contemporary computers exposes the limits of object recognition technologies — its inaccurate outcomes make explicit the unstable relation between images and their conceptual representations.

The ability for computers to segment and operationalize visuals as textual data marks a major shift in the role of photographs today. In the case of NeuralTalk, and this derivative, the algorithms over-identifies human forms due to their architecture and training datasets. By applying the software to images of plants in stages of transformation, this exploration makes cite of the anthropocentric mischaracterization coded into machines and the capabilities of computer vision when confronted with information that falls outside of a specific worldview.

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Artist Biography:

Chris Hamamoto and Federico Pérez Villoro’s collaborative work investigates the impact of emerging technologies in contemporary culture and politics. 

Chris is based in Seoul, South Korea and works as a designer and educator. He is an assistant professor at Seoul National University, and has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, California College of the Arts, and University of San Francisco. 

Federico is an artist and researcher living and working in Mexico City. In 2019, he founded Materia Abierta, a summer school on theory, art, and technology and has served as a faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design and the California College of the Arts. 

Chris and Federico have lectured as schools such as ETH Zurich, Rutgers University, CalArts, The New School, UNAM, KARTs, and Hongik University and their work has been exhibited, published and recognized by institutions such as Printed Matter, the Walker Art Center, OCAT Shenzhen, The Serving Library, Gwangju Design Biennale, IDEA Magazine, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Poster design by Chris Hamamoto and Federico Pérez Villoro.

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Giant Dumpling Sealed Secrets Keeper by Dreamwalker Dance

June 24 – July 22, 2023 

Open to everyone during gallery hours (12 – 6 PM, Weds – Sat)

Centre A Reading Room

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Dreamwalker Dance is producing the Giant Dumpling Sealed Secrets Keeper, an installation art piece of a “giant” dumpling set upon a red tablecloth. As people pass by, they’ll notice a small slot opening in an otherwise tightly sealed ‘package’. Didactics will share tidbits of info about the significance of dumplings and the colour red in Chinese culture. There will also be a passage about the metaphor of the dumpling as a sealed receptacle for invisible or ‘silently’ held contents. Simple prompts will invite passersby to sit and reflect upon what has been held silent within themselves followed by an invitation to write, gesture, mark, speak into or stomp upon a square of paper to release a story, a secret, a memory or perhaps a burden that they are carrying that they wish to release. The paper can be folded (or crumpled) and placed in the dumpling through the slot. 

The dumpling will be in ‘residence’, collecting anonymous offerings in various spaces across the region until the end of August, and then ‘released’ through a ceremonial fire during Light Up Chinatown in September. 

This community activation is an extension of Dreamwalker Dance’s Firehorse & Shadow, a performance piece which is premiering at Left of Main in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown May 4th-6th. 

Collaborator Johnny Trinh describes the Giant Dumpling as “a manifestation of how we carry precious things, similar to how we create and consume dumplings.”

About Members of Firehorse & Shadow: 

Andrea Nann is a contemporary dance artist, arts educator, founding artistic director of Dreamwalker Dance Company, and creator of Conscious Bodies Methodology, an embodied community practice. Andrea creates activations to reach across distance, to experience others in celebration of possibility, diversity, connection and belonging; believing that dance and intentional actions can shift attitudes and ways of being, tuning us into what makes each of us distinct, to what we share, and ultimately how we can live together in wonderment and peace. Through her work Andrea enlivens Dreamwalker’s invitation to awaken and experience oneself in relationship with Self, Others, Environment and All that Is.

Annie Katsura Rollins is a Chinese/Japanese/English/Irish theatre maker, arts researcher and community artist. She incorporates ethnographic research and apprenticeship into her work, with particular interest in traditional puppet forms in Asia and their intersection with ritual practice and community building. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to canvas Mainland China for the last remaining shadow puppet artists in 2011 and named valedictorian in 2019 for her PhD on the possibilities of preserving intangible performative culture at Concordia University. Annie lives in Toronto and co-curates at Concrete Cabaret, an experimental performing object collective, and is a community arts manager at MABELLE Arts.

Sarah Chase has performed her dancestory work across Canada and Europe. She also toured with both Benôit Lachambre’s Dance par B. Lieux, and with German choreographer Raimund Hoghe. Her many works created for Canadian artists include Toronto Dance Theatre, Peggy Baker, Andrea Nann, Theatre Replacement, AntonijaLivingstone, Montreal Danse, and Marc Boivin. She is the recipient of the Jacqueline Lemieux Award for Excellence from the Canada Council for the Arts, and received the Prize of the Festival at the Munich Dance Biennale. The solos she created for both Peggy Baker, and Andrea Nann won Doras. She is an associate dance artist of the Canadian National Arts Centre.

Cindy Mochizuki creates multi-media installation, audio fiction, performance, animation, drawings and community-engaged projects. She has exhibited, performed and screened her work in Canada, US, Australia, and Japan. Recent exhibitions include the Nanaimo Art Gallery, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Vancouver Art Gallery, Frye Art Museum, and Yonago City Museum. She received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award in New Media and Film (2015) and the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts VIVA Award (2020).

Wen Wen (Cherry) Lu is a multimedia artist interested in exploring the hidden, the small and the forgotten through installation, illustration and animation. Taking inspiration from family history, she seeks to combine it with the present experiences of culture, nature and community to create something that questions.

Kelsi James (she/they) is a white queer and asexual theatre creator, producer and performer, currently working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh. Kelsi has a degree in Musical Theatre (Sheridan) and a certificate in ASL & Deaf Studies (VCC). Kelsi is honoured to have had their work performed nationally and internationally, in over 30 ‘Canadian’ cities, and most recently in Manila, Philippines as part of the Asian Consultation on Gender. Kelsi is passionate about new work and its capacity for tender, human-to-human social change.

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected]. 

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Screening and Panel Discussion: Down a Dark Stairwell (2020)

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Screening: Down a Dark Stairwell (2020)

Thursday, June 1, 2023

4 PM

as part of The Living Room 2.0: Intimate Entanglements

Register HERE. 

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Panel Discussion: Ursula Liang, Rachel Lau, Tonye Aganaba

Friday, June 2, 2023

1 PM PDT

Zoom 

Register HERE. 

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Join us for a free screening of Down a Dark Stairwell, the critically acclaimed documentary feature by Ursula Liang which takes an intimate look at the 2014 incident and its aftermath. The screening will be followed by a virtual panel discussion, with the filmmaker and artist-organizers Rachel Lau and Tonye Aganaba. 

The killing of Akai Gurley in 2014 by the police officer Peter Liang, and Liang’s subsequent conviction, incited protests from Black and Asian communities across the United States and Canada. Today, almost ten years later, the story remains relevant as ever in the wake of COVID-19, with the rise of anti-Asian sentiments and continuation of anti-Black police violence. What can we learn from revisiting this historical case? How can our communities take care of one another in the spirit of collective justice and solidarity? 

About the film:

When a Chinese-American police officer kills an innocent, unarmed Black man in a darkened stairwell of a New York City housing project, it sets off a firestorm of emotion and a passionate quest for accountability. When he becomes the first NYPD officer convicted of an on-duty shooting in over a decade, the fight for justice becomes complicated, igniting one of the largest Asian-American protests in history and disrupting a legacy of solidarity.

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Speaker Biography:

Ursula Liang is an award-winning director and producer with 25 years of experience in storytelling. Her debut feature, 9-Man, was broadcast on public television and called “an absorbing documentary” by the New York Times. Her second film, Down a Dark Stairwell, had its premiere at True/False and was called “a vital picture of a tumultuous time” by Vox. Her latest documentary, Jeanette Lee Vs., is part of ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 series. Her work has been supported by ITVS, Ford Foundation, Sundance Institute, Firelight Media, and the Center for Asian American Media. Before becoming a filmmaker, Ursula held staff positions at The New York Times Op-Docs, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Asia Pacific Forum and Hyphen magazine. She also produced for television (UFC Primetime, NBC Spartan Ultimate Team Challenge). Ursula is a member of Film Fatales, A-DOC, IDD, and is the Vice President of Brown Girls Doc Mafia. She is from Newton, Mass. and currently freelances from Oakland, Calif. 

Rachel Lau is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and radio producer based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, colonially known as “Vancouver”. Inspired by the tenderness and strength of queer and racialized communities, they create work that embraces feeling and communality. Their current practice includes sound art, poetry, photography, drawing, and zine-making. With friends, they organize Queer Reads Library, a mobile library of queer books and zines based in Hong Kong and Vancouver.

Tonye Aganaba is a Black African immigrant and uninvited settler living on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. They were born and raised in London, England but have always called the lands of their ancestors colonially known as Zimbabwe and Nigeria, home. Today, Tonye is one of two Criminalization & Policing Campaigners at Pivot Legal Society – working alongside an incredible team of lawyers, campaigners, and organizers grappling with the contradictory and colonial nature of Canadian law, and using it strategically to bring cases that will help us co-create an equitable and just society. 

Poster of film image from PBS. Photo of Rachel Lau and Ursula Liang, courtesy of respective speakers. Photo of Tonye Aganaba by Lorne Clarke.

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected]. As the workshop will take place in the format of a Zoom Meeting, audio transcripts will be available upon request.

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Annual General Meeting 2023

4 – 5 PM PDT

Hybrid; Centre A & Zoom 

Members are welcomed to register HERE. 

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Centre A invites all our members to join us for our Annual General Meeting 2023. Join us in-person at our gallery, or online through Zoom as we celebrate our achievements from the past year and provide a sneak peek of what we have in store for the rest of the year.

Centre A memberships are available here, or alternatively, can be purchased in-person!

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Artist Conversation: TJ Felix & S F Ho

Saturday, May 20, 2023

1 – 3 PM

Centre A Reading Room

as part of The Living Room 2.0: Intimate Entanglements  

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We are inviting artists TJ Felix and S F Ho for an artist conversation, as part of The Living Room 2.0: Intimate Entanglements. The talk aims to critically examine the equity-promoting, accessibility-oriented mandates of non-profit public art galleries and the broader non-profit arts institutional infrastructure that supports them. On a secondary layer, the discussion will touch upon gentrification in Chinatown and the Downtown EastSide. 

Organized and moderated by Hania Ilahi

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Artist Biography:

TJ Felix is a two-spirit Qelmucw from the Splatsin region of Secwepemculecw as well as a musician, multidisciplinary artist, colonial law breaker, drug user rights advocate & english language unlerner amongst many other things. They are currently missing home and paying absurdly high rent on the stolen lands of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

S F Ho is an artist living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. They’re cultivating a practice of wary sociality, never finishing books, and being sort of boring.They’ve published a novella about aliens and love called George the Parasite.

Images courtesy of the artists. 

Find out more about the exhibition HERE.

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Film Screening | NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV (2023)

Saturday, May 6, 2023

3:30 – 6 PM

Centre A

as part of The Living Room.2.0: Intimate Entanglements, and in partnership with Films We Like. 

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NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV (2023)

Running Time: 109 minutes

Language: English

Not Rated. 

Directed by Amanda Kim

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We are pleased to announce the screening of NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV (2023), a film by Amanda Kim and narrated by Steven Yeun. As part of The Living Room 2.0: Intimate Entanglements, we have partnered up with Films We Like to present a screening of the documentary of acclaimed artist Nam June Paik at our gallery space.

Here is a synopsis, courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment:

The George Washington of Video Art” … “Cultural Terrorist” … “Citizen Zero of the Electronic Superhighway” … But who really was Nam June Paik, pillar of the American avant-garde in the 20th century and arguably the most famous Korean artist in modern history? Director Amanda Kim tells, for the first time, the story of Paik’s meteoric rise in the New York art scene and his Nostradamus-like visions of a future in which “everybody will have his own TV channel.” Thanks to social media, Paik’s future is now our present, and NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV shows us how we got here.

Amanda Kim’s documentary charts Paik’s artistic evolution by tracing his formative education in Munich and his life-changing encounter with avant-garde musician John Cage, through his immigration to New York City and collaboration with the seminal experimental Fluxus movement, into his revolutionary work with video art—including his radical public television broadcasts of “Global Groove” in 1973 and “Good Morning, Mr. Orwell” in 1984—and beyond into Paik’s lasting influence on the art world and his predictions of our technological future.

Featuring an extensive archive of performance footage, original interviews from Paik’s contemporaries and collaborators, and a voiceover narration of Nam June Paik’s writings read by Executive Producer Steven Yeun (Minari, Nope), NAM JUNE PAIK: MOON IS THE OLDEST TV is a timely meditation on the contradictory ways in which technology elicits both fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding.

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About Nam June Paik:

“Before TikToks and Reels there was the video art movement, massively influenced by revolutionary artist and pioneer Nam June Paik.” – Films We Like. Born in 1932 in Seoul, the documentary tells the story of the Korean-American artist who has become one of the most influential artist and pioneer of Video art, at the heart of the 20th century modern art movement in New York.

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The screening is open to all! RSVP on Eventbrite HERE.

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Artists’ Talk/ Curator’s Tour

Saturday, April 29, 2023

1 – 2:30 PM

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No registration required. 

As part of Centre A’s current exhibition, Ominous Chaos, we invite you to join artists Homa Khosravi and Marzieh Mosavarzadeh, and curator Bahar Mohazabnia for an artists talk and curator’s tour.

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Ominous Chaos looks at the peculiar, the uncanny and the grotesque through the works of Homa Khosravi and Marzieh Mosavarzadeh. Approaching the subject with levity, the exhibition interrogates mechanisms of control placed on the body. The body is malleable, constantly shifting, rearranging and reconstructing: it is a vessel of labor and memory. Situating the body through whimsical comicality, this exhibition asks: do these notions become suspended within the grotesque? Is the notion of chance a mediator in the unresolved questions of bodily autonomy and docility?

Find out more about the exhibition HERE.

Image credits on poster: Image of Homa Khosravi: photo by Niloufar Samadi (left). Image of Marzieh Mosavarzadeh: photo by Mohsen Kamalzadeh (middle). Image of Bahar Mohazabnia: photo by Adam Flewelling (right). 

Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.