CENTRE A BLOG

By Naomi Horii

As a closing public program to the recently-past exhibit at Centre A, artists Glen Lowry, M. Simon Levin, and Henry Tsang with many members of the Centre A community gathered before the holidays for an artist talk to reflect in depth the ideas behind the Maraya project. It was a kind of send off to what the artists plan to be the project’s new beginnings. I don’t attempt to cover the evenings’ lively discussions, as there were many points of interest leading you in tangential directions. Just go to the Maraya website, and you will see what I mean. Each of the artists presented a thick and juicy bite of project.

One I want to bring to focus here though is M. Simon Levin’s investigation on the concept of mirroring.  Using Caravaggio’s painting of Narcissus and Echo, Levin looks at subjectivity / objectivity with idea of yearning as it relates to the idea of space.  Members of the audience had insightful comments and questions to Levin’s Lacanian discussion about ‘city-thinking’ as we imagine what a city ‘should be like’ in the surface-reflection of Dubai-Vancouver developments. One member of the audience asked the artists how they deal with the dangerous echo-and-loop of narcissism in the Maraya Project itself— and how to move beyond the ‘surface sheen’ of the project. Another member commented on the spatial-temporal performances of history in various waterfront locations of the city: Stanley Park versus Maraya’s focus in Yaletown. With this in mind, artists and members of the audience looked at how settler or military versus indigenous history and culture is performed on the two Vancouver waterfront public leisure walkways. Time ran out quickly and after the talks there were still many discussions. Later, I asked Rita Wong, and Ashok Mathur, two of many present at the talk, to respond to the question, “What struck you as an interesting moment or point during the artist talk, or what strikes you in general about the Maraya Project?” or to respond in any way they liked.

Here was Rita’s response:

“I was struck by Simon's retelling of the Narcissus and Echo story as a way of thinking about art, and specifically, the Maraya project. In particular, I return to an ambiguity that arises: does art play the role of Narcissus, reflecting the human ego back to itself, or does it play the role of Echo, a wild nymph trying to connect with a beloved, but unfortunately ignored?  I could see, and have seen, both scenarios play out, generally.  In terms of the Maraya project, one of the things it reflects is a view from above, a question as to whether this is the joint future of Vancouver and Dubai, designed for those who can afford to live there (to keep seeing a world made in their own image reflected back to them), but inhospitable for those who can't afford it and perhaps for those who previously lived in these spaces. 

A much longer part of False Creek's history has been as a home for Coast Salish peoples who lived with and on the salmon, salal, sea asparagus, wild cabbage, oysters and clam beds in or near the waters of Senakw, the village that was here (see Lee Maracle's short story, "Goodbye, Snauq" on this). The Maraya project makes me think as much as about what's missing as well as what's there now. The loud absence of biodiversity reminds me of David Abram's suggestion that "we are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human."  Perhaps we as a society have a long way to go yet, before we mature into humans who are good neighbours for one another and for other forms of life.  A cool eye reflects this back to me and asks how people might respond to reinvigorate such spaces. When the view is framed from above by the privileged, what happens to the diverse forms of life and cultures that remain, often struggling or excluded, on the ground? What processes of collective dialogue, redistribution of wealth, and collaborative action will strengthen social and natural capital?  In a time of global warming and ocean rising, meaning and wealth cannot be measured in money only, but need to take into account forms of resilience and community building that actively care for the ecological commons we share.”

I shared Rita’s response to Ashok Mathur, and he responded and wrote a post on the Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada (CiCAC) blog, which I invite you read it in full here in a post called, Contemplating Maraya.

Thank you to Rita Wong & Ashok Mathur for your thought-provoking responses, and thank you Henry Tsang, Glen Lowry, and M. Simon Levin for facilitating the insightful discussions. It will be interesting to see how “the activity” of the Maraya Project unfolds in the years to come.

 

By Jessa Alston-O’Connor

Taking in the Maraya project in the gallery space or on the website, a vast number of critical discussions come to mind surrounding any one of these photos and clips. In their talks at Centre A on November 24,2011, Am Johal and Eugene McCann presented on some of the lines of questioning that Maraya had inspired for them. Am Johal is a Vancouver-based writer and community social activist. Eugene McCann is professor in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University, focusing his research on urban politics and urban development. For both speakers, the Maraya project has inspired different but overlapping avenues of questioning and exploration.

Johal’s talk focused on his background and interests in civil society, and how the Maray project made him wonder about the role–or space for–civil society, public gathering and demonstrations in Dubai. Instead of trying to speculate or speak for Dubai, he instead reflected on key periods of civil unrest that have been a thread throughout much of Vancouver’s history, and the role it continues to play.

Moving to Vancouver, this history of political activism was a strong history I already associated with what I knew of this city, bringing to mind the political activism of the ‘yippies’ in the late 1960s for instance, rallies in support of InSite, or demonstrations against the 2010 Olympics. This social history is not part of the Concord Pacific model of city building, therefore I find unpacking what we don’t see reflected there becomes even more pertinent.

Johal’s story of Vancouver began in 1922 when UBC was part of McGill University and classes and resources were stretched to the limits, he showed archival photographs of angry students demonstrating on foot and in trucks clag in signage. Numerous protests were held against the conditions and loss of civil rights in relief camps during the 1930s, the On to Ottawa movement of 1935, and the many pro-communist rallies.  Johal compared how public squares in Vancouver were used for official ceremonies, parades, and municipal or national events that are intended for “societal cohesiveness”, and how these same squares and public spaces take on completely different meaning when they become sites for civil unrest.   

In more recent memory, Johal highlighted the Operation Solidarity strikes of the early 1980s, when the province was on the brink of a general strike and upwards of 60,000 gathered in solidarity, from teachers and government employees to firefighters, banding together against controversial provincial labour legislation. Environmental movements like Green Peace are rooted in Vancouver and are noteworthy, as  are movements for low income citizens of the city and the homeless not only with the Olympics in 2010, but also during the lead up to Expo 1986, First Nations land claim disputes and the support for projects like InSite.  In reflecting on civil society and unrest here, and their messages, he left open the question “who is the civil society in Dubai?”

During the Q and A, Glen Lowry offered to partially answer that question, explaining that there had been workers organizing years back, before citizenship and immigration policies were finalized but that its illegal now. It is also illegal for non citizens to work in NGOs, which further limits the impact of that sector on society. A former employee of Concord Pacific who was send to live in Dubai was also in the audience, and he offered his insight into the view from Dubai.   He pointed out that 92% of the city’s residents are foreigner, and that 1/3 of the world’s population lives within a 6 hour flight from Dubai–it is a major international hub for business, oil, and travel, and for literally a “window to the world”. Dubai wanted to change their state and liked the Vancouver model, and the project to build Dubai worked, because despite a recession, they managed to build a city in 10 yrs. 

McMann’s reflective talk on mirrors, models, and Maraya offered more questions about sameness and difference for the group to consider than it did answers. He saw Maraya as a provocation to probe these questions and more.  McCann musings on the concept of mirrors made me wonder about these cities of glass as mirrors fueling narcissism and paranoia, reflecting ourselves back to us: Their glass can entice like a mirage, but also exclusion and alienation: “am I being watched?”  They can be cruel–“is this how others see me?”

Later, during the Q and A Johal added further to this idea of narcissism, musing that people who lived along the Seawall wanted to perform their residency by walking outside in their slippers, and that people walking by might in fact enjoy getting a peak at those who live here in this pristine urban setting.

Unpacking the idea of model cities and model designs he complicated the trend to seek out global models to manage local conditions. I appreciated this emphasis on looking at the local, what is happening here, and questioning just how well foreign models really work, or if they don’t? Why do we think a global design would fit or fix our local issues and conditions? Who do they benefit or hurt?

Is it a form of blindness, this seduction of clean lines, and less mess of people and social ills within the pristine place? McCann made it clear that thinks the Maraya project is smarter than that, but I couldn’t help but feel that the seduction for the pristine and luxurious urban living with the difficult social realities edited out is nevertheless a part of the appeal of this design for many people, not only in Vancouver but in these kinds of designs around the world. 

As Johal touched on Insite, McCann also brought it in as an example of human approaches to drug issues, of the coalitions and alliances surrounding these and other social issues that disrupt the pristine city that the Maraya photographs shows. He proposed that Maraya allows us to think through which model we want to be associated with, learn from, and that learning from these decisions comes through discussion, not isolation. Together Johal and McCann created a thought provoking presentation of the social experiences and histories that are not reflected in the photographs of Maraya, and prompted the audience to reflect provocative questions about these urban models and the many facetted implications of these global designs on the local social fabric in Vancouver, and also Dubai.  

 

By Stacey Ho

 

Last Thursday, Centre A hosted two presentations by Am Johal and Eugene McCann, part of Maraya Projects, an exhibition, website, and series of events by artists M. Simon Levin, Glen Lowry, and Henry Tsang. Taking a cue from a diverse range of movements, projects, and organizations such as the Depression-era On to Ottawa trek, Vancouver's Insite program, and even Maraya Projects itself, the speakers examined the fluidity of history and ideas as forces of social change. Juxtaposing video, oral narrative, and archival photographs, Am Johal's talk on civil unrest and society building constructed a history of popular public demonstrations within Vancouver that stretched from the early 20th century to the present. Eugene McCann used Maraya's critique of master-planned urban development models as a starting point to talk about models, both positive and negative, and how they shape geography and shift according to contexts.

 In an effort to actively distort history, Johal's talk linked together a stream of images from a disparate selection of recent and historical Vancouver demonstrations. He put forward that within the context of this city, with its lack of institutionalized legislation and infrastructure compared to municipalities such as Toronto, there is a greater possibility for dramatic social change. By agitating in the public sphere, demonstrations, which he framed as PR tactics, shift the balance of power and alter the course of history. Though these political actions often exist outside of state sanction, if sustained they eventually coalesce into institutionalized organizations, such as NGOs, that take root in civil society. And civil society itself, Johal argued, is the driving force behind history.   

 Clearly inspired by the city's unique relationship with industrial unionism, Johal revisited many early struggles in Vancouver. Images of post office sit-ins, sandwich board advertisements for public meetings on Hastings St., demonstrations against Asian-discrimination, and rallies on the old Cambie Street Grounds evoked a deep-rooted struggle for equality and worker's rights in Vancouver. Especially moving was a dramatic recollection of starvation and police brutality by Al Dugas, who as a seventeen-year old relief camp worker participated in the 1935 On to Ottawa trek.  Johal linked this history to a longer tradition of protest in Vancouver that addresses not only labour, but ecology, land development, poverty, and First Nations rights through organizations and movements such as Greenpeace, Operation Solidarity, activism against Expo '86, and the Clayoquot Sound logging protests. Recent images from the Insite court hearings, Olympics protests, and Occupy movement were also included in Johal's radical lineage.

Analogous with this turbulent timeline, Eugene McCann depicted Maraya as yet another form of political provocation, arguing that the project simultaneously points at and critiques master-planned models of urban development. He expanded on Maraya's ideas in a talk presented under the themes mirrors, models, and movements. Playing off the word m'raya, Arabic for mirror, McCann explored how mirroring functions as an illusory device, flipping reality backwards so that one's flaws are glaringly visible. The effects of the mirror were described as alienating, exclusionary, narcissistic, and cruel. He argued that a disruption is implied in Maraya's reflection, one which disturbs our readings of the polished images of Concord Pacific and Dubai Marina.

Drawing together ideas around models and movements, McCann outlined how urban models are transported and translated from city to city. He described these models as trends in urban development that promise economic success and an enhanced quality of life to a city and its citizens. Municipal leaders, designers, developmental planners, and activists all look to models across locations to shape and envision their cities. Maraya itself is a depiction of one such model, the slow-released master-planned condominium complex, inspired by Hong Kong, and transported from Vancouver to Dubai. Other trendy models such as 'the Barcelona model' or Charles Landry and Richard Florida's 'creative city' propose that the secret to building a successful city involves bringing together the right elements, a premise that negates the fact that cities are built by and made for people. Congruent to this alienating approach to city planning, the photos exhibited for Maraya Projects depict the human figure as a tiny negligible creature seen from a distant top-down perspective.

However, McCann pointed out that models need not only measure success by competitive achievement on the global market. He cited Vancouver's Insite safe injection facility as a positive urban model. Based not on capital but saved lives, Insite is also a moving and mutating model, one borrowed from drug programs in Frankfurt and Sydney. With a precedent set by the new Supreme Court ruling, this model can now be translated to other Canadian cities. Models, then, imply that there is more than one path to take, and more than one place to learn from. However, when asked which model Vancouver should base itself upon, both Johal and McCann agreed that a single model  could not address all the problems and complexities of an urban metropolis. Rather than seeking a comprehensive solution in urban development, a more productive and realistic tactic is to address the local: examine the problems specific to individual cities, and address issues within the context of their own history, politics, and environment.

By Naomi Horii

 

As part of programming for the Maraya Project, Centre A hosted a public talk by Christos Dikeakos. In this talk, Dikeakos examined “the historical mirroring of land speculation and the building and rebuilding of the city in what he calls “a systemic 'Frontier-ism' of economic behavior” (Dikeakos bio, Maraya Website)

Dikeakos contextualizes the Maraya Project from a heavily researched and personal, artistic perspective. He begins the talk by reminding us that the False Creek mud flats before colonialism was kept and used as fishing and hunting grounds for indigenous communities here. Vancouver’s False Creek ‘frontier’ projects, whether Expo 86, the Olympics, or the Concord Pacific Developments, has been in the rapid practice of ‘clearing’ or ‘erasing’ of original histories. His documentation work in the late sixties, as he put it, started out as speculative and sometimes conceptual photography, but became an important part of historical documentation of Vancouver.

Christos1 by naominaomi

 

Dikeakos’ work documenting the “shapeshifting” mudflats—the demolition piles, the detritus of urban renewal projects for, as one audience member added, “a one year warranty” invites us to look to the ground once again. Where Maraya artists Lowry, Tsang, and Levin place the viewer to look down from the glassy buildingtops, Dikeakos also invites us to view the shifting shorelines, the clear-cuts, and the toxic soil upon which Vancouver is rapidly changing and building upward.
I had historical and archival images of False Creek in my mind as I walked home. I walked through Chinatown, and then to the False Creek waterfront, crossing Pacific Blvd to the Concord Pacific presentation centre. Focusing my eye upward to their billboard: “Shaping Horizons for the Future” A kind of ‘clearing the slate’ with clean glass, and concrete. ‘Shapeshifting’ the skyline.

Christos Dikeakos peeled back many layers of Vancouver history: from industrial sawmills and abbatoirs, migrant workers, to the old waterway and cedar-block hand-made roads of Chinatown: he remembers and uncovers stories of False Creek, without romanticizing it, but by sharing personal stories, collaborative projects, and reflections. He invites us to share in this poetic story.

Christos2 by naominaomi

by Stacey Ho

When I first moved to Vancouver just over a year ago, I was told of a "rare bird" that I might find in the city: the Vancouverite who did not migrate here from Calgary, Japan, Portland, or Iran, but is actually from Vancouver, was raised in this place. For the newly arrived like myself, negotiating the divisive politics and deeply rooted emotions surrounding the rapid land speculation and development of Vancouver has been a tricky task. Even more daunting is to imagine the context of how this landscape even came to be.

Luckily, there are those like Christos Dikeakos, for whom the trajectory of Vancouver's development has been the focus of a forty year photo-based art practice. As a part of Maraya Projects, which explores the model of False Creek's Concord Pacific Place, Dikeakos gave us an idea of what existed before the green glass towers. Through a presentation of archival images as well as his own work around False Creek, Dikeakos told us of the area's erased history that is, in his words, "beyond the colonial master narrative".

For Dikeakos, there is no comparison between Vancouver and Dubai. Contesting the parallels drawn by Maraya Projects, Dikeakos drew upon the histories of the each city to argue that the link between the two sites is spurious at best. Opening his talk by playing "They Call the Wind Mariah" from the hit 1951 cowboy musical Paint Your Wagon, Dikeakos used this ditty to illustrate that the true origins of Vancouver's development is not master-planned condo culture, but good old fashioned frontierism.

An image of a muddy pool at a Vancouver construction site is overlaid with a drawing by August Jack Khatsahlano, showing how the Squamish once fished for sturgeon in this same area. Traditionally inhabited by the Coast Salish, False Creek was once an ecosystem of mudflats and waterways that stretched all the way to what is now Chinatown. With the arrival of settlers, merchants, and Gold Rush prospectors, this area was filled in to build sawmills and shipping ports, the first of many changes to False Creek's environment. Dikeakos depicts not Li Ka-shing, but CPR president William Van Horne as Vancouver's original land developer, razing the forests of Shaughnessy Heights and Mount Pleasant to build the city's first affluent neighbourhoods.

Dikeakos himself is an inexhaustible resource on Vancouver's history, cultivating a keen interest in the city at an early age. As a youth, he would take the bus through a downtown full of down-and-outs to sneak into the City Museum. During this time in the 1950's, Dikeakos remembers Vancouver as a mixed middle-class neighbourhood, quite different from what he calls the "gentrified, commodified" Vancouver of today, which favours high-rise buildings over public housing. Though sparkling condominiums now stand at False Creek, Dikeakos recalls that this site was once the "blue collar job market of Vancouver", the place where he worked as an Afro-haired oiler at a sawmill in the 1960s. Through sharing his own history, Dikeakos shows that the history of Vancouver is inextricably tied to the shifting and personal memories of citizens like himself.

Much as the photographs of Eugène Atget give us glimpses of an Old Paris that no longer exists, Dikeakos uses the photography of WH Moore and Fred Herzog to show a Vancouver from a "near past that seems so far away now". Two images of the West End by Herzog, taken from the Granville Bridge in 1957 and 2004, dramatically illustrate the great leap from this near past to the present. The direction is, uniformly and consistently, up, way up. The economic forces behind this growth are also recorded through Dikeakos' collected archive of images. Distinctly dated advertisements for False Creek condos from the 1990s push readers to buy, buy, buy with cheesy, yet aggressive taglines. One ad reads If Only I'd Bought!, another From Sawmills to Sophistication.

Dikeakos' own practice also functions as a document of the changes Vancouver has undergone. An image from the late 1960s pictures CPR tenement homes set for demolition at what is now McLean Park at Venables St. Another photograph shows old cedar paving blocks dug up around Georgia St. in Chinatown. Dikeakos pictures more recent developments as well: a flooded and decimated expanse of land from the 1985 construction of Expo '86; contaminated dirt piles from the building of Coal Harbour condominiums in 1993; a foreground of massive broken concrete slabs piled up behind a chain link fence, with Olympic Village looming in the distance. Cutting across time, these images leave us with an impression of relentless and continuous change.

Nowadays, since just about every swath of land along False Creek has been built upon, the massive transformation of Vancouver's landscape, so much a part of Dikeakos' practice, has almost run its course. In this new world, a poetic memorial to Vancouver's past, made in collaboration with architect Noel Best, stands along the seawall. "Lookout" is a post and lintel structure made of sandblasted one-inch thick steel plates. Carved into its surface are silhouettes of boats and workers, pigs and portly businessmen, native wildlife and aboriginal traders, accompanied by loose, evocative text. Inscribed into the environment, Dikeakos' words, Labour Has Sweated Here and All Built and All Rebuilt, remind Vancouver's inhabitants of the many ghosts that lie just underneath the surface of their city.

Click here to watch the video recording of the talk.

By Naomi Horii

Last Friday, on November 4, arts-interested communities of Vancouver welcomed Haema Sivanesan to the Centra A family as the new Executive Director. She is the second executive director since Centre A’s inauguration in 2000, and she is bringing 18 years of experience as a curator, writer, researcher and administrator in the visual arts (Click here for the official Executive Announcement)

After toasting Haema with a glass of bubbly, and in keeping with the celebratory air of the evening, Centre A presented the Maraya website launch and exhibit opening. A project five years in the making, and still five years to grow into full realization, Maraya’s interactive website is the exciting new commissioned work by artists M. Simon Levin, Henry Tsang, and Glen Lowry. They invite you to explore the site, with its huge collection of images, and contribute to the conversations and developments of the site material. 

I was taken aback to learn about the depth of Maraya’s commitment to collaborative creation and community vision-building. As I took-in the installation of the Maraya exhibit, it became clear that the concept behind Maraya is nauseatingly huge.  With so many moving images at different perspectives, I felt a bit dizzy by the end of the evening.  Kirk Tougas, the project’s external cinematographer (in Glen Lowry’s words, Maraya’s secret weapon), asked me with a joking smile as I was leaving, “did you get the feeling that you wanted to barf at any point in the night?”  We laughed about how the camera perspectives really throw you for a loop—in the best way possible. Since then, it has taken me a while to process my own responses, so I want to share with you some feedback from a couple of the people that night. These folks like to remain anonymous. I asked them “what strikes you about tonight—about the project, or about the evening in general?”

“Alfred” said he found it interesting how the perspectives are all looking down. (You can read more about the down-looking perspective and approaches of Strand and Rodchenko on Glen Lowry’s blog.) Alfred pointed to the little boy who was present; and said, “in a way, we are reflecting the moving images as we look at him. Here this small boy is getting the closest to the pieces, touching the Halliburton cases, the screens, almost sitting on the edge of the hidden, high-top camera perch.” As we watched him, Alfred said, “perhaps this is what is effective about the perspective: one can imagine where you are, whether here or Dubai, it’s somewhere, high above, watching. We paused, and watched the boy, looking down, watching the people below pass by. Alfred said then, “To me, the artists are bringing up the observations and conversations of leisure-front condo development, but it kind of stops there. There are many conversations about development in Vancouver, but where do we go from here?”

I thought: what a great question. I think the Maraya project aims to ask open questions and invites folks to engage and interact with the website to spark discussion.  M.Simon Levin, when talking to the crowd with collaborators Tsang and Lowry, says, “Let’s free up the conversation!” Tsang explains that Maraya “is a bleeding of the margins—of class, people, places, ideas,” Lowry, began the microphone speak, by asking: “what kind of city do we want to live in? How do we find that city?”

The Maraya Artists giving a short speech for the crowd.

 I talked with another person, “Optimus”, who said he noticed an amazing cross-section of people present this night. Optimus said, “I notice ‘high-art scene’ people and City representatives. I am observing the demographic here: it’s really a broad spectrum of people. A lot of rich-looking people, and a lot of familiar Centre A community people. It is a bit surprising to see such rich-looking people here! It’s interesting that if a gallery puts a certain message out, that message will reach certain people.  I don’t think it’s a bad thing: I think it shows a range for the gallery.” Optimus went on and said “It’s nice to see Centre A focus on the Middle East, on Dubai; it feels like a geographical broadening for Centre A. Asia is a huge idea. As Vancouver’s demographic is broadening and changing, Centre A is reflecting that.” Optimus also commented on the how the evening is a beautiful mix of an exciting new large-scale project and the welcoming of a new ED.  Not only does the Maraya project send out the warm- feeling: the invitation to collaborate, Optimus says, “I’m excited for the future of Centre A: the new director seems really warm and really experienced. I look forward to seeing how Centre A changes.”

Photos: Debra Zhou

by Jessa Alston-O'Connor

Before the walk began on that cool Saturday afternoon, artist Jean Routhier asked our group of soundwalkers “are there sounds that tell you where you are?”  What city sound markers could we hear, in place of land markers? What sounds uniquely like Vancouver? The city, he suggested, offers an orchestra of sounds 24/7, and along our soundwalk Routhier would share with us a memory road so that we may see Vancouver as those who are not from this town.

In my case, I’m not from Vancouver. As I moved here only a few weeks ago, I embarked on this soundwalk with truly fresh eyes and ears. What visual stereotypes of Vancouver are invisible when we document only its sounds? What of Vancouver clichés that I had seen before moving here– picturesque images of glass condominium towers with snow capped mountains in the distance, a city that loves yoga fashion and ipods, and where lattes joints beckon on every corner?

This soundwalk took our group through the very areas under investigation by artists Glen Lowry, Henry Tsang and M. Simon Levin in their interactive art project Maraya: through the marina, along the seawall of False Creek, and finally through Chinatown to Centre A.

As we began walking along the seawall, I was struck by how quiet it was. The low roar of traffic from the Cambie Bridge was constant, but my ears focused instead on the wind through the yellowing leaves overhead, and the clang of a gate as someone left their home in neighbouring tower.

Click click click from the wheel of a bicycle being walked beside me.

A crow’s caw echoed nearby.

The wind sighed again, and the crosswalk light beeped to tell pedestrians it was safe to cross the street.

To actively listen to one’s city, to pause and truly focus on being fully present in the moment sheds light on parts of urban life that are not visible from a car or a postcard, and that are missed entirely when our cell phones and ipods are our sounds of choice. To listen, as Jean led us to do, is to take in the environment at that precise moment instead of moving through it towards a future place and time.

At the marina, the only music came from a terrace of a nearby restaurant, with a few outdoor diners braving the late October breeze.  The water was silent, the many white boats were silent. The green glass towers above us loomed in silence.  These icons–the water, and the condo lifestyle–made no sound, and had little impact on the sounds of Vancouver.

Instead, I heard the dogs. The merry jingle of dog collars and tags was a reoccurring sound throughout the walk. Dogs of all breeds and their owners of all ages passed us by on the seawall, in the marina, and on the grassy yards of the condo towers, proving true the stereotype that Vancouverites really do love their canine companions.

Dogs, and the low, monotone road of the Cambie Bridge were the main sounds of the marina, except for one couple who poured water from a canoe off the bow of their white leisure craft. A car alarm sounded briefly, and children played in a playground between two towers. Sea gulls called to one another, but the rise and fall of the waves was remarkably silent.

Past the marina, we came to the rocky shore where one could climb down along the boulders to the water’s edge. Here, finally, the lapping of the water was loud enough to be heard. Soon the sounds of shoes and rain boots grinding on the rocky beach, and the clack of rock on rock mixed with the sound of the water.

Listening to the city, all other senses feel heightened, and I really began to notice the salty smell of seaweed in the water.  

A 3^rd dog jingled past.

Underneath the Cambie Bridge more children called and screamed on another brightly coloured playground. Basketball courts sunk into the pavement, perfect for skateboarders. Today they lay gaping and empty. Instead, Jean and other members of the group began to clap, animating the space with the echo of our own sounds. I imagined the echos that might usually resonate her: the whirring sounds of skateboard wheels and boards slapping the cement in a missjudged kickflip. Laughter.   

The 5^th and 6^th dogs barked, playing with the 7^th dog on the grass near the courts.

More children screamed, playing on playgrounds built in between condo towers. Crows cawed again, and the traffic in the distance droned on.

Of all of the towers we passed, only one balcony was alive with people and voices.  Instead, the dogs and the gleeful cries of playing children were the sounds of these condominiums and the seawall that connected them.

We paused at the casino, where flocks of large seagulls strutted and squabbled for bits of bread offered to them by an older gentlemen seated on the paving stones.  Old style rock and roll riffs broadcast from the open doors of the lounge onto an empty terrace, and customers pausing for a smoking break struck up conversations with casino employees. Flags of every nationality clapped in the wind, fluttering from atop the many flagpoles that once welcomed athletes for the 2010 Olympics.

We crossed a parking lot of a future condominium project, and walked toward Expo Boulevard. The closer we came, the louder the screech of the Skytrain became, as each automatic train came and went. To me, the sound of the skytrain sounds like Vancouver. Each city’s metro system has a unique sound to it, and Vancouver’s fully automated system sounds like no other metro system I’ve heard.

The 12^th dog trotted past.

Standing on the corner of Expo Boulevard, we paused and allowed the assault of the traffic to press on our senses from all sides. Although the dull roar of traffic was faintly audible along the seawall, to stand on the curb now it felt deafening, jarring me back into chaos of downtown energy.  Traffic overpowered all of the other sounds I had heard before.

Crossing the street and passing a fountain near Keefer park, the never ending trickle of the water feature was in fact the loudest sounds of water I heard on the walk.

Scores of soccer players and families cheered and crowded the perimeters of Keefer park.

Moving through Chinatown to end at Centre A, I was crowded by the cars, hissing hydrolics of buses lowering to the sidewalk, the bustle of mothers and children, and friends smoking in doorways. The parking lot outside the gallery, enclosed by a tall black fence, allowed once again for a pause to catch the sounds of birds, but the cars and sounds of people were ever present.

Over cups of tea inside, the group shared about the experience. I was especially interested in Henry Tsang’s observation that conflict and contestation that is part of the history of this area has been designed out of the seawall, rendered absent and controlled. Soft voices are not broadcasting across public spaces the way they do in the Downtown East Side, where the traffic and loud voices may be felt as forms of conflict. Jean agreed–very little music was broadcast out into the space, except coming from the casino and from one restaurant in the Marina.

Walking along, I too noticed how in many ways the Marina and the Sea wall are spaces for calm, leisure and relaxation, part of the city yet separated from the rush and the speed. They are intentionally designed as spaces of repose in a global city, and the number of dogs, children, and people heard enjoying the seawall are evidence of the appeal of this space for urban dwellers. To walk this space, and to listen and notice how these urban sounds envelop and effect us offered a different sensory way to come to understand Vancouver, and as the Maraya Project launches on November 4th, these explorations continue.

 

 

By Stacey Ho

It is a windy Saturday afternoon. A group of twenty or so gathers at the Roundhouse Centre, the beginning of an exploration. Our journey features neither the excitement of an urban environment nor the wonders of nature. The setting of our adventure is, rather, False Creek's condominium developments. This idyllic landscape, along with a copycat development in Dubai, is the site of investigation for M. Simon Levin, Glen Lowry, and Henry Tsang's upcoming website release and exhibition, under the title Maraya Projects. Familiarizing ourselves with the exhibition's subject, artist Jean Routhier leads us on a one-hour walk to experience the area through sound.

Pausing to take in the background hum of wind and traffic in the open courtyard of the Roundhouse, our little group of listeners make their way to the seawall. At first skirting the border between traffic and park space, we soon find ourselves moving along the waterfront with other weekenders: joggers and bikers, children and dogs. With Routhier as our guide, we stop at a gazebo to take in a soundscape of the False Creek inlet before stepping down to the water, the crunch of our feet on the stony shoreline meeting the gentle lapping of the water. Under the Cambie Bridge exit, Routhier walks along the perimeter of a vacant concrete skate park, slowly clapping to activate its acoustics. The resonance creates an echo that shimmers when he reaches the centre of this space. From a playground, leisure, and off-leash dog area, we cut through a manicured alleyway of private property, ending up in a plaza bordered by the Edgewater Casino. Radio rock plays. A man feeds a flock of cawing seagulls beneath the clinking sound of flags waving in the wind. Moving on, a jogging path takes us to the sales centre of Concord Pacific Place. Some immaculately landscaped flora surrounds a decorative water fountain which bubbles merrily, if senselessly, in the centre's deserted parking lot.

As our group of soundwalkers travel through this environment, our path is marked with many different sounds. Always present though never invasive is the traffic, sounds such as the hum of motors and the gentle bump of cars as they drive over the Cambie Bridge. Birds are often heard, seagulls by the water, and crows further inland. However the sound that most often punctuates our soundwalk is that of recreation: bicycles and skateboards, snippets of conversation in various languages, children at play, dogs barking and rattling their leashes, the heavy footfall of joggers.

Near the end of our walk, I have a simple revelation concerning this placid setting. I remember to look up. Dwarfing and surrounding us, I view the stoic, glassy-green high rise towers, really the jewels of this landscape. The leisure zones we've been exploring for the past hour are mere accents to these costly giants. The intentionality, control, and investment put into this area suddenly feels very tangible. These gentle sounds and pastoral landscapes contribute to a carefully sculpted vision of Arcadia, one translated across the globe, and into Dubai.

Emerging from the seawall area, we return to the familiar, noisy sounds of the city. Routhier lingers for a long time at an intersection on Pacific Blvd., another at Carrall and Expo. Here, we listen to a very different rhythm: speeding traffic moving in time to traffic lights and the screech of the Skytrain overhead. Cutting through another leisure zone, this one adorned by a fountain with concrete lily pads, we find ourselves in a quiet back alley of Chinatown. Finally we are on Pender St. in the Downtown Eastside. In contrast to the static calmness of Concord Pacific Place, we are met with a flood of unstructured sound. A ghetto blaster is blaring music and someone is loping down the sidewalk shouting "BILLY!" at the top of their lungs. Outside Centre A, we stop to listen together once more in the parking lot.

Inside the gallery, Routhier leads a discussion about what we have heard. Artists Levin, Lowry, and Tsang share some field recordings from their research in Dubai. A recording of a Dubai mall sounds appropriately generic, especially when contrasted with the Muslim call to prayer, an inescapable sound played on loudspeakers and radios across the city. We discuss how cultural and biological differences between the two sites impact the sound environment. For instance, Dubai has none of the crows or seagulls heard throughout our walk. The sound of autumn leaves underfoot is impossible in the UAE. Also, Dubai residents do not share Vancouver's mania for bikes and barking dogs. And, though the Dubai Marina development is just as manufactured as Concord Pacific Place, the Maraya Projects artists observe that, unlike False Creek, the construction of the Dubai site is not seamlessly placid and tranquil. Residential space is broken up by industrial zones, accompanied by industrial noise. The two developments are compared to a tune played on, say, a violin and a trombone. Despite sharing the same blueprint, the idiosyncratic characteristics inherent in each site prevent them from completely transforming into the ideals that they were designed to be.

Click here to watch a video clip of the sound walk.

 

by Glen Lowry

How we look at the city or cities, as is the case with Maraya, is fundamental to how we go about living in them. The perspectives we bring to bear are crucial to understanding our role in an ongoing urban transformation. This was a key point in my “Maraya | Reflection” talk at North Island College (Oct. 27, 2011), part of the Speakers Series connected to the Emily Carr / NIC External BFA.

Vancouverism

For background, I showed a short video introducing the Maraya project and Vancouver and Dubai nexus with which it engages. The video (linked below) features Stanley Kwok and Trevor Boddy, along with M. Simon Levin, Henry Tsang and I, and was made by grad students Alan Goldman and Ahmad Konash.

(click on the image to watch the Maraya video)

As this video suggests, Maraya attempts to engage (or gauge) a new form of urbanism. Architecture critic Trevor Body suggests that “Vancouverism,” as it is called, is a response to Manahattanism (Vancouver Sun article; see also Boddy’s exhibition website, which pushes noun to verb: Vancouverize).

This new urbanism, of which Vancouver’s False Creek North and the Dubai Marina are prime examples, uses urban density to attract offshore investors. In Vancouver and Dubai, and increasingly around the world, waterfront neighbourhoods are seen to provide the basis for new economic programs built on the development and marketing of luxury real estate abroad.

Capitalizing on earlier networks of transportation and trade, Vancouver and Dubai have transformed themselves from colonial outposts to global players. In these model cities, residential mega-projects are produced as nodes in international networks. Their uxury condos provide haven for well-heeled migrants, globally mobile elites, who may not be interested in settling in a new city per se, but who are keeping their options open while looking for safe places to park their money. One might think of the empty, uninhabited condos in these cities as safety deposit boxes in the sky.

Down Shots
Maraya began as a wager. As a research project, we wanted to assess the nature and depth of the connection between these sites in Vancouver and Dubai.

Looking at these cities together allowed us to think about 21st century urbanization in new and exciting ways. The problem, from an artistic or aesthetic point of view, had to do with how to represent these links and the larger patterns they signify. The branding of Vancouver and Dubai has been very successful and it is easy to get lured into certain ways of seeing.

Likewise critical response to the urban disparities underpinning both cities are important and have had significant sway internationally; it is difficult to think about the politics of Vancouver without violent images of the Downtown Eastside or of Dubai outside of photographs of exploited of migrant labourers.

These are important points of discussion and need careful consideration. However, there is a danger in recirculating imagery that seems to conform to a kind of stock image bank. The appropriation of particular images/ideas often accompanies a kind of knee-jerk criticality that functions to establish or sanctify the position of the artist/critic.

Understanding the these two cities are linked and that they are part of a global flow of ideas (good and bad) and capital, we felt we needed to take a different approach. Thinking about how cities are now built by flows of digital information (email, jpgs, quicktime movies, CAD drawings), and the fact that Vancouver’s Concord Pacfic Place was touted as one of the first fiber optic neighbourhoods in North American, we decided to look down and sought to glimpse the a metaphorical of flow of urban information beneath our feet.

Stopping people in their tracks as the jog, roller blade, dog walk around the seawall or marina walk was pleasing to us. Showing images of people along this global sea-walk who are all looking down was even better.

Strand and Rodchenko

Paul Strand Wall Street, 1916.

This approach allowed us to draw a connection to the photos Paul Strand and Alexander Rodchenko, the great urban image-makers of the early 20th century. Strand’s photos of Manhattan and Rodchenko’s of Moscow have helped establish a powerful urban lexicon. Their images provide a visual counterpoint to de Certeau’s wandersmanner who walk the city like ants, or letters on a page, constantly rewriting an illegible urban script (to paraphrase de Certeau’s “Walking in the City”).

Shooting Down on the city allows us to view:

1. Resist the normative horizontal axis of view used in real estate advertising and urban branding; glass and steal towers shimmering above an urban waterfront—Dubai Marina or False Creek— are becoming  sine qua non of contemporary urban development and its affinity with leisure.
2. The play between built environment and faceless individuals in these images creates an interesting dynamic that challenges humanistic representations of the city as the product of a rational order (human being).
3. Otherwise invisible patterns of movement: the flow or paths of different groups suggests an energy or meshing of gears, and points to larger machinations of urban development and socio-political change.
4. The street/seawall as a stage, and to focus on a salient feature of new developments and we believe a vital social space in the transition to new a new urban locus.
5. Vantage point of a powerful, global elite: and to think about our relationship to  these  expensive boxes in the sky. Looking down, we get to see how we are seen from above and to think about who we might respond.

Alexander Rodchenko, Workers, Orchestra, White Sea Canal, 1933

Paul Strand, New York, 1917

Alexander Rodchenko, “Gathering for Demonstration,” 1928

 

Originally posted on http://glenlowry.com/2011/10/maraya-refection-nic-talk/

(download)

Click here to download:

unconscious-sound-jean-routhier-and-the-history-of-soundwalks-in-vancover-mGblJAdacuhmxqIdckea.zip (235 KB)

Several years in the making, Maraya Projects opens this November at Vancouver’s Centre A. Taking its name from the Arabic word for mirror, Maraya denotes a reflection between “the largest man-made marina in the world” and its inspiration, Vancouver’s Concord Pacific Place. Many of the consultants and planners who designed the high-end condominiums on Vancouver’s False Creek waterfront later went to work on the opulent Dubai Marina. Both sites are exemplary models of the current inception of master-planned development projects that are presently changing communities both globally and within Vancouver.

To kick things off, artist Jean Routhier will lead a soundwalk highlighting the area along False Creek. Once a polluted industrial zone, Vancouver’s waterfront has been completely transformed into residential and recreational space over the past twenty years. Routhier intends to draw sonic parallels between the leisurely waterfronts of the two Maraya Projects cities. However these sounds will be contrasted with the dynamic rhythms of traffic and city life: sounds specific to Vancouver and foreign to Dubai.

Vancouver has long been a forerunner in exploring relationships between sound and environment. Even the origins of the term soundscape can be traced back to a research project from Simon Fraser University, the World Soundscape Project (WSP), which included such luminaries as Hildegard Westerkamp and Barry Truax. In the late 1960′s, concerned with noise pollution and the loss of distinct sound environments, composer and educator Murray Schafer initiated field recordings of Vancouver, later creating an archive of recordings from across Canada and Europe. The ideas around acoustic ecology sparked by this project had an enormous influence upon our current understandings of sound as a crucial part of our environment.

The WSP was also an early proponent of the soundwalker, a character much like the flâneur or psychogeographer, who experiences the city for itself within the context of the soundscape. To this day, there is a soundwalk society in Vancouver, a part of the Vancouver New Music Society. Walking together in silence through a proscribed path, soundwalk participants get together every couple of weeks to take in the many sounds around us, appreciating and moving through soundscapes that so often go unnoticed.

Last Sunday (October 16, 2011), I had the chance to tag along for a test run of Jean Routhier’s upcoming soundwalk around Concord Pacific Place. An occasion to be present and observant is always a pleasant thing, and Routhier brought some special elements to the walk, adding a sense of play and experimentation to the excursion. Without giving away too much, I will mention that there are many divergent twists and turns along the soundwalk path, and I often found myself in hidden parts of the city I had never been before. Routhier is easygoing and not afraid of becoming a ‘sound source’ – subtly shaking and tapping objects as we wander along, leading participants into situations where they can’t help but be a ‘source’ themselves. If people talk, if their cellphones happen to go off, Routhier accepts this as another element in the overall sound environment.

After our little journey, we gathered at Centre A to talk about what we have heard. One participant described how different sounds mixed together through the soundwalk, appearing and reappearing, create a symphony. I am struck by the acoustics of certain spaces, the incongruousness of composed music when heard in tandem with all other sounds. Routhier talks about how he is drawn to sound because of its capacity to convey feeling without relying on description. Operating upon the body and mind at a level we are not always aware of, the impact of environmental sounds on our experience is largely unconscious. Becoming aware of sound, bringing it to the fore through the soundwalk, is a rewarding exercise. And since each soundwalk is different, I am looking forward to hearing what the next one brings.

Jean Routhier’s soundwalk will take place on October 29th from 2:30-4:30 pm, beginning at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre and ending at Centre A.

- Stacey Ho (http://staceyho.com)