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ProjectsThis page will be a working space for research undertaken while resident in Vancouver from Jan-Aug 09. I am a Visiting Scholar at UBC, based in both the Centre for Cinema Studies and the Department of Anthropology. I am grateful to UBC and my colleagues there for their support. These months represent the final research period of my RCUK Fellowship at University of Bristol. Send me an email if you wish to contact me about any of the above: a.a.piccini AT bristol.ac.uk. I'm also Skypeable.... And I've wound up falling into Twittering on all of this (search my name) and sharing web content via F/book. My activities fall in to the following areas:
N.B. This working site out of date by about a month. Also requires reorganising to reflect current state of research. But priority between now (12 July) and return to UK (20 Aug) is finishing interviews and other writing, so this space has to continue in this scrappy form.
The headline summary of this research: While on research leave I am looking at Vancouver filmmaking practices that are in conversation with the 2010 Olympic context. These might be moving image practices that are produced/commissioned/acquired through 2010-related funding or works that are in some way about the Games and the city. I am specifically interested in how Vancouver is mapped, marked and enacted through the moving image - with a focus on different conceptual-aesthetic regimes and production contexts. So, I'm not looking at sport, per se, but at how this specific mega-event engages with and produces experiences of the city space via the moving image.
From January I will begin research into the ways in which television and the internet mediatises archaeological heritage to produce the City of Vancouver as an Olympic City. This is part of my wider work on archaeology and the media. The next 9 months will also see me writing up a couple of conference papers on this subject and preparing a draft monograph on contemporary archaeological imaginations on screen.
The definition of 'archaeology' that I work with is in keeping with recent departures from the traditional idea that it studies the past through the medium of material things. Instead, I am interested in how material traces have residual afterlives in living communities (following Lynn Meskell at the ASA conference). Those afterlives are enacted variously, and are entangled with policy, power and control networks. It is a matter of archaeology both in and of the world, which calls for practices that acknowledge the fact that 'archaeology' is always-already reliant on co-production. Participation and collaboration have attracted much academic attention across the arts, humanities and social sciences and are ideas that run to the heart of popular Web 2.0 rhetoric. It is an important ethical move, which can all too easily be flattened. Archaeology as a stance in the world attempts to work through relationships among human and non-human actors in order to maintain some sense of the unknowability of fundamental otherness. And yet, I need to remain alive to specific cultural context. Here in Vancouver archaeology is still seen to be about the traces of 'the past', where pastness is left other than it is not-now-ness. The kind of contemporary archaeologies that we practice in the UK do not grab people's imaginations here. That has something to do with the political stakes of archaeology here. First Nations archaeology is still seen as distinct from Historical Archaeology. There are both good and not-so-good reasons for this, but I am an incomer and don't wish to set myself up as a critic of that structure. The point is that most people I speak with see archaeology as distinct from cultural heritage or contemporary material culture. So, there is a need to reframe this as more of an archaeo-graphy? Will material culture and urban space make more sense to people? By focusing on the 2010 Games I am keen to work with many communities to think through the contemporary relevance of archaeological heritage as it is co-produced via screen media practices.
The research focuses on the many ways in which Vancouver's built environment is presented across a range of screen media practices in the run-up to the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Winter Olympic Games. That means I'm looking at everything from activist documentaries to social and independent media to the official representations from CTV and Vanoc. I'm interested in the kinds of locations, buildings and artefacts that are used to construct a sense of the city as an Olympic space. This obviously touches on a number of issues from Vancouver as Coast Salish territory to questions about gentrification and displacement of peoples. It also grapples with how Vancouver is 'framed' - in terms of documentary practice, which locations are being chosen, how are they composed, who is asked to participate and so on. This research combines 'conventional' survey research that leads to writing with my own documentary practice that explores relationships between fact, fiction and archive.
Where some may see this work in the context of 'representation' and 'ideology' - and I refer above to the mediatisation of archaeology - I am especially interested in how media technologies actually propel and enact what we come to understand as heritage. There is no such thing as 'archaeology' out there. It is a co-production that relies on specific, material relationships - especially relationships (networks) among media. It emerges from the specific, yet multiple and shifting relationships among the local TV and documentary film landscapes; individual reporters and filmmakers; Olympic organisers and anti-Olympic activists; First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities and multicultural settlers; traditional media practitioners and social media advocates; museum curators, archivists and tourism offices.
Because I seem to appear to people as stateless, or British, and because of the always-present politics of entering situations as a 'researcher' there are various things that require succinct statements and public reflexivity. While I do not necessarily hold that biographical information amounts to research reflexivity, it seems appropriate in this research context:
1) I was born in Vancouver and lived in the city til 1991, when I was 23. My father came on a ship from Italy in 1956 and worked as a broke beater up in the mill at Ocean Falls and as a navvy on the CPR before beginning a successful career in bars (The Inquisition, The Cave, The Penthouse, The Villa, The Airport Inn). My mother came from Chile in 1948 and worked as a secretary for years before the 1980s recession and illness put her out of work. She was involved in SPEC (Society Promoting Environmental Conservation) in its first years in the 1960s and in early Greenpeace actions, but disliked the politics of most organisations. She was a very active member of her downtown Vancouver co-op from 1988-2002 and was an extremely proficient electrician, plumber and fixer-upper. I went to 8 different schools and lived in 8 different houses/apartments (a downward move from Kerrisdale to East Van to Marpole to downtown), moving around a lot due to our economic circumstances.
2) I left to do an MA in Archaeology in the UK, in order to pursue what I thought would turn into a career making documentary television. I failed to realise then that I should simply have got a job as a runner and by the time I discovered that, I had debts to repay.
3) And they gave me money to do a PhD so I became an academic, but that has given me some space and resource to develop different kinds of documentary practice that sit between doc/art + fact/fiction. I wound up watching too many TV archaeo-historic documentaries for my PhD and other research so I find it difficult to enjoy them now.
4) This 2010 project allows me to revisit the city and consider it in terms of a UK-engendered archaeological imagination. What happens to a city when you consider its built environment and material culture from an archaeological and documentary practice perspective, rather than through the various lenses of geography, architecture, social policy and so on?
5) This is also an attempt to make the familiar strange and vice versa. I feel the city in my bones and muscles. I know how to get around and which of the one-way streets will get me to bridges or avoid jams. I am guilty of simply taking the Downtown East Side at face value as it just always seemed to be part of my landscape, whether as a child walking with my mother and volunteering at what were then called soup kitchens, or as a teenager shopping in the second-hand stores and going to galleries and gigs. I only notice the mountains when there's a particularly fine sunrise/set. Instead, it's the muffled sound of crows and ravens when it rains and the seaplane engines that remind me that I am of this place. I've re-discovered my old running practice, too, so am gulping in the city in great lungfuls of moist sea-air.
6) My project isn't really an anthropology project and I can be easily criticised for being interested in how the traces of people - buildings, litter, curbs - make the city as much as the people do themselves. My politics are disorganized but I do have a commitment to communities' self-determination and to critical engagement. My involvement with Brislington Neighbourhood Partnership (www.brislington.org) occupies the difficult space between independence and working with the very systems that we might oppose. This is inconsistent and emergent but aims to remain alive to change and collective responsibility.
7) I am interested in diverse groups across the city who specifically tackle the 2010 olympics through a focus on place/space/heritage. This obviously touches on different First Nations issues as this is Coast Salish territory. It also collides with questions about homelessness and poverty. It definitely engages with discourse around the DTES as a woefully ignored historic landscape and living place. The work also returns me to social media - and Vancouver is teeming with video journalists and social media companies and charities. The project needs to discuss diasporic, settler communities of all kinds. Their Vancouver heritages - whether the disappeared Italians of Commercial Drive, or the slow decline of Chinatown, or the erosion of Ukrainian culture on South Main - tend to be ignored in the march of gentrification and demolition.
8) Although my research does not involve human subjects, as such (according to the definitions set out by University of Bristol), I aim to comply with the university's research ethics policy. I am committed to sharing interview notes and any other materials generated with communities and individuals, prior to any form of dissemination. This means that information continues to be owned by contributors and that any subsequent use by me in any format needs to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Participants are free to withdraw from this process at any time.
How are different communities' screen practices - from broadcast TV to Florence Debeugny's video installation about Maillardville at the Evergreen Cultural Centre - making the city, right now? And to what extent are these activities informed by, or are in response to, 2010?
So far, we were greeted at the airport by the 2010 Winter Olympic Games logo, which uses the Inukshuk that was donated to Vancouver in 1987 by the Inuit people of the Northwest Territories following Vancouver's Expo '86. In other words, nothing to do with Vancouver or with Lower Mainland First Nations communities, but a highly recognisable image of Canada's indigenous cultures. Most conversation about the Games is overshadowed by the economic chaos rocketing through the nations.
The plan for Jan-March was to get to as much of the Cultural Olympiad as possible: [link]. There's a huge amount of performing arts work happening (112). Only a couple of film-related things: the film festival theatre is screening films about hockey and its place in the Canadian national psyche and in Whistler Village there are 2 nights of outdoor screenings of sports-related films, projected on to a screen made of ice; ContaineR - the shipping container showing sporting films outside the public library downtown. Lots of outdoor, mixed-media things too. But surprisingly few aboriginal contributions, which I'll need to explore. Among the reasons are protests against the Olympic commodification of aboriginal culture and land, financial/cultural/social exclusion of First Nations communities from the Olympic discourse, lack of interest, feelings of lack of relevance, the use of 'native' as an Olympic brand rather than living urban communities.
Michael Shanks talks about this here, but Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, made for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, harnessed the power of archaeological practices and outcomes:
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30 Nov 2005 the Four Host First Nations (Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh) signed a protocol which marks the first time that an Olympic organising committee has entered into partnership with an indigenous people.
'The Protocol supports shared collaboration that will:
Map showing First Nation territories and Olympic venues
Aboriginal involvement in the Games is, unsurprisingly, hugely controversial within the communities. Obviously, the Host Nations see this as a unique involvement opportunity to raise the international profile of aboriginal peoples, nations and enterprise. Others see this as 'selling out'. There are the Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories who protest capitalism and colonialism and the Four Nations participation full stop. Redwire Native Youth Media Magazine's Oct 2007 edition covered issues around defending the land, which looked at the Olympics. No Vancouver 2010 Olympics on Stolen Native Land sits more within an established activist framework. These are all different modes of engaging with the question of what 'Vancouver' might mean and espouse different politics and aspirations. Yet, the city's name is performative of the act of colonisation, named for Captain George Vancouver. The history of its occupation by settlers is a familiar story of expulsion and destruction. Each time we mark the name of the city we repeat that history. Young native leaders call variously for reoccupation - whether than means squatting or a more conceptual focus on the need to enact the city as indigenous territory. I know that I am not qualified nor have any ancestral claim to take any kind of position on this. But I worry that my own 'interest' in Vancouver as lived space wavers around the responsibility I have as a researcher to not shy away from the complicated politics and ethics of place. I'm aware that my intellectual tendency towards place/space as multiple, intersecting and performed may seem to some to deny the importance of a more stable politics. While I may have been born and raised here, I rely on the hospitality of many: of the Coast Salish peoples, of my family, of institutions and of all of the people who spare the time to participate in this work.
Unveiling of Four Host First Nations emblem:
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When I titled this section I didn't know about Kamala Todd's initiative 'Indigenous City'. Waiting to hear from her about an interview.
Between May and June am working with Musqueam-UBC Archaeology Field School to make documentary about archaeology practice in the community. Camera troubles this week...
Things moving swiftly at Musqueam, which is really enjoyable. The material from that is for Musqueam so I won't discuss in any detail here. But continue to be struck by Vancouver context in which cultural heritage and archaeological practices are still seen to be somewhat distinct. Certainly what the FS does doesn't feed in to 2010 activities. That may, however, be strategic....
Jennifer Kramer at UBC and some of her students are working on Olympics and First Nations issues. Also met George Nicholas from SFU and heard him speak about IP and First Nations issues. The use and abuse of aboriginal material culture in the branding of space is clearly a significant topic here, which reminds me of my PhD research on the Celts. However, I'm struck by how this kind of 'superficial' imagery may actually serve a useful purpose in terms of protecting the more vulnerable, significant and sacred material culture. Are the Olympic mascots, for example, useful gatekeepers to stop non-native people from appropriating the things that matter more to First Nations communities? Certainly people have developed a usefully wary attitude to questions of access due to the long history of exploitation. An interesting thought, anyway.
Waiting to meet with Kamala Todd, a Vancouver-based documentary filmmaker. Here's Our City Our Voices, a short NFB/Storyscapes documentary, devised and directed by Todd, about aboriginal youth media training - particularly interesting in terms of the focus on the built environment of Vancouver and its hidden archaeologies:
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Problematic to separate television, film and new media, so doing this at the moment simply to organise materials. Need to rethink classificatory practices - perhaps around official media, social media and arts practices. But here's a YouTube channel (which now counts as TV for many people) serving 2010 promo content.
Knowledge Network plays late-night material from aboriginal communities in BC but other than that seems to be rehashed UK docs. Good docs - need to arrange interview with schedulers there to get a sense of the extent to which the Olympics is shaping programming.
The CBC shows things like:
Being Erica (a cute 30-something drama about a woman dissatisfied with life who is given the opportunity to go back in time and re-live high school and university) and Wild Roses (Alberta's version of Dallas) are this season's new programmes on CBC.
CTV beat the CBC to obtain the Olympics. CTV currently facing massive write-downs. Same drastic falls in advertising revenue in Canada as everywhere else will see media go to the wall. Canadian television particularly vulnerable. Little public support for publicly funded TV even though the CBC seems to be the only channel worth watching in the morass of cheap US cable.
It's all news media and stories about the budget. Lots about the social housing and green housing in the Olympic Village overrunning in terms of cost. But still little sense of this built environment. Nothing about the historic landscapes on which the village stands.
Have contact 2 CTV journalists but await replies. Following ctvbc on Twitter and it's now following me, which I guess is interesting.
Canwest close to bankruptcy. Local news via CTV's A channels being axed (relevant one for me is the Victoria station).
CBC's Hubert Lacroix announced yet more massive budget cuts and the loss of possibly 800 staff. Good news is that the priority will be maintaining local content. CBC once again having to justify existence in climate of loud conservative criticisms of public subsidising of media. Some think CBC should be able to compete with the commercial outfits. Same arguments have been rolling around since the 1950s as Canada is always in difficult position competing with cross-border TV content from States. Rather than focus on distinctive broadcasting across the board, Cdn broadcasters continue to buy up cheap US exports to duplicate endless repeats of Seinfeld.
...Given the repeated response to my requests for just short conversations I'm either on someone's blacklist (can that really be so?) or the economics of the television and Olympic industries are really so dire that no one's giving out anything.
No work from Knowledge Network on the simple question of whether the 2010 Games in any way informs current commissioning and scheduling.
Arts Partners in Creative Development 'is a strategic investment partnership to assist BC arts and cultural organizations in creating and developing new works, or to further develop existing works, with the intent of producing, presenting or exhibiting them at the highest standard. Partners include the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia, the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver Foundation, the 2010 Legacies Now Society and the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games'. Here are 2 film based projects that have been funded:
*ContainR* has further life for 2010 Cultural Olympiad and I'm wondering if its success in 2009 informed the body-in-motion theme of CODE? Lead Organization: Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society Project Title: containR Amount Awarded: $50,000 Town/City: Vancouver Project Scope: Canada, International Partners: Springboard, Bravo!FACT, Banff New Media Institute, eatART, VANOC/Cultural Olympiad Discipline(s): Media Arts Start Date: 5/1/2009 End Date: 5/30/2010
Key Artists: Nicole Mion – Artistic Director and Curator (Vancouver) Evann Siebens – Artistic Director and Curator (Vancouver)
Project Description: Cineworks will commission a series of short films to be screened in reconfigured, recycled shipping containers as part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and for broadcast on Bravo!FACT. The short films will feature Canadian media artists visually addressing the themes of winter sports, performance, dance and the physicality of the body whether it be an Olympic athlete, a dancer or a person with a disability.
Funded: Summer 2009
Not really film, but *Althea Thauberger's* work is cinematic. Carrall Street project funded by Arts Partners in Creative Development, a branch of Cultural Olympiad: Lead Organization: I.E. Artspeak Gallery Society Project Title: Carrall Street Amount Awarded: $57,000 Town/City: Vancouver Project Scope: Lower Mainland Artist Reach: Lower Mainland Discipline(s): Visual Arts Start Date: 01/01/2008 End Date: 30/09/2008
Key Artists: Althea Thauberger – Visual Artist (Vancouver/Berlin)
Project Description: Artspeak will commission Canadian visual artist Althea Thauberger to create a site specific work in collaboration with community members in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Carrall Street is a unique, process-oriented project that will culminate in a performance, forum and publication. Thauberger will probe the vital questions and distinctive stories that are important to people who live in this neighbourhood and consider how creativity can enhance, enable, or complicate the way a person or group finds their place in a community. Stories explored in the script may include personal histories gathered from, and enacted by, local residents. A wide cross section of community members including artists, addicts, homeless people, social workers, politicians and developers will participate in the process. With the street as a stage, the interweaving and spontaneous interactions between organized performers, audience and random passersby will form an integral part of the final performance.
Funded: Summer 2007
Rework this section to reflect discussions with Kika Thorne at VIVO, Randy Lee Cutler and Ron Burnett at Emily Carr. Also visiting the Vancouver archives to view Expo and Olympic documents, plus Expo-related Centennial films. There are filmmakers in the city now who are looking at this. Stan Douglas, Klatsassin, Mapping and Marking. List of artists below in comments boxes.
2-5 April Projecting Change Film Festival. Of particular note:
Saturday April 4, 10:00am BROKEN DOWN 60 minutes / 2008 / Canada Director: Harold C. Joe Speaker: Harold C. Joe, Judy Graves and David Chudnovsky Sock drive for the homeless - Bring a pair of new socks and receive free breakfast!
BROKEN DOWN is a gritty, compassionate film that follows BC aboriginal filmmaker, Harold C. Joe, as he explores homelessness in Vancouver’s downtown eastside and the Cowichan Valley. Harold spends four days living on the streets in order to reveal some of the reasons why individuals become homeless and how drugs and alcohol keep them that way.
SPEAKER: Director Harold C. Joe, Homelessness Advocate Judy Graves and local MLA David Chudnovsky will lead a panel discussion on current conditions and solutions to Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Engaging and thought provoking this is an event NOT TO BE MISSED.
Saturday April 4, 12:00pm MARCH POINT 53 minutes / 2008 / USA Director(s): Annie Silverstein, Tracy Rector, Cody Cayou, Nick Clark, Travis Tom
MARCH POINT follows Cody, Nick and Travis, three teens from the Swinomish Indian Tribe, want to make a gangster movie, but instead they are encouraged to use video cameras to investigate the impact of two oil refineries on their tribal community. March Point follows their journey as they come to understand themselves, the environment and the threat their people face. Ambivalent environmental ambassadors at the onset, the boys grapple with their assignment through humor, sarcasm and a candid self-knowledge. "This was a beautiful film. It somehow managed to be about growing up, native american issues, environmental issues, the process of making a film, and the transformative power of art - seamlessly." - Robert N.
Anti-Poverty Committee Olympics film night on 20 Feb. Excerpts from Five Ring Circus; screening of Olympiad, by Cowboy SmithX about the way in which resistant aboriginal voices argue they have been silenced by the Four Host Nations.
Film festivals for the Cultural Olympiad include: Rendez-vous du cinema quebecois et francophone school matinees programme; There's a Hockey Film Festival coming up at the Vancity theatre; Films about sport are being screened at the Whistler Winter Festival, on an outdoor screen made of ice.
ContainR was a shipping container installation outside Vancouver Public Library, which showed films about movement, sport and dance - ranging from archive footage to contemporary dance-for-camera. It's now being installed at the Midforms festival.
Five Ring Circus
Thanks to Rachel Walls, a PhD student at Nottingham, for bringing Five Ring Circus to my attention.
27 January: Free screening of Five Ring Circus at UBC Student Union cinema, part of its Cinema Politica strand (next week a documentary on 'that totally amazing feminist Riot Grrrl movement of the 1980s and '90s', said by an enthusiastic whipper snapper who made me feel old. Intone in a granny voice: 'I remember Dickless, L7 and Kreviss like it were only yesterday'). That context, however, pretty much says what I needed to know about the event. Director Conrad Schmidt was there to answer (obliquely) questions about the film. Didn't have too much to say about his own position vis a vis anti-Olympics activisim or about how he's framing the film in terms of copyleft. As I was struck by the similarities between the Expo 86 protests (squaters occupying empty buildings; protests against Downtown Eastside gentrification, landgrab issues, environmental issues) and what Schmidt was documenting + the protests against the commodification of land/identity/poverty I wondered why the filmmaking team weren't doing more to use he film as an activist tool through innovative distribution routes. Also interesting that Schmidt noted that he'd like to do more on First Nations views on 2010, which seemed to me a significant gap in the documentary's narrative. The cinema was fairly full (c 100?) so it's good to see this level of student interest, although based on appearances most seemed sympathetic to the film.
The screening was from a DVD copy. DVD menu used a low-angle shot of the inukshuk in the foreground, with mountains and cargo ships in the background. inukshuk almost in silhouette, filling space top to bottom and half horizontal space. Menu button to play film is a photograph of a Greek temple. Opening sequence largely w/out narration, montage of news footage and footage from film crew of various public events and press conferences. Scenes of kids singing Oh Canada! Plays on nationalist imagery + archaeological discourse that underpins games. 2 core themes are environment and homelessness and the broken promises of the VANOC committee, city hall and the province of BC. From my particular perspective what was interesting was the exclusive focus on the 'natural' environment of Eagleridge Bluffs and the pushing through of the highway. Interesting background to some Eagleridge Bluffs issues from a German website (remember the WAC paper on German 'indians'). The industrial and labour history of this area is framed entirely in terms of environmental degradation rather than in terms of its material role in the development of the province and the various complex relationships developed between First Nations communities and the myriad immigrant communities over the 19th and 20th centuries. With regards to the Downtown Eastside issues, same old gentrification story with old hotels being closed and people thrown out on to the street. Young activists agitating, but never clear as to how 'representative' they are of residents. Is their activism middle-class appropriation of others' poverty? Does that matter? Why? What's the relationship between the Downtown Eastside Residents' Assn and the Anti-Poverty Coalition. Is it a productive relationship? Aren't there arguments to be made about retaining this significant built environment in planning terms? This part of Vancouver and its various residents have a long, illustrious and infamous history in the development of Canada. Are there options for conserving this urban landscape without gentrification? What are the contemporary options for continuing to house its long-term residents while bringing housing stock up to health-and-safety standards? How might we remember these stories?
While the narrative was activist, as documentary it fits a conventional format - mix of expert interviews, voice over, archive and actuality footage. Shot on low-end dv and edited conventionally. No obvious jump cuts, dissolves, wipes, etc. Even pace, but manages to build some suspense through its coverage of City Council meetings.
Aim to interview Schmidt.
tx on Sunday, 8 Feb, Fearless TV on Shaw Community Channel 4 @ 10pm. Shorter edit, and then followed by a short edit of the big Clayoquot Sound protest of 1993.
Here's the opener: []
Super8 from Vancouver is Awesome website:
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Vancouver Late 1960's early 70's from Deer Head on Vimeo]
DOXA festival, end of May 2009, but nothing Vancouver-related. A few films to go to, though.
But very pleased to have been welcomed by Cineworks and cheyanne thurion. Excellent Cinematic Cartographies workshop led by filmmaker-academic Roger Beebe, University of Florida. Friday, 1 May was an orientation seminar/screening. Meesoo Lee: Pop Song 1; Roger's films, Save, Strip Mall Trilogy; Bill Brown, Hub City; Lisa Marr, Vancouver Special, Jorge Furtado, Island of Flowers. Met Vancouver filmmakers: Randy Lee Cutler, Che Campbell, Mark Penner, Hari and Chris. They spent the weekend shooting and editing short pieces for the screening on 5 May, co-curated by cheyanne and roger. Last night we saw Wishlist (filmmaker and date?), which was an interesting composite that visualised people's wishes for Carrall Street in the DTES, with their v.o. interviews; Nelson Henrick, Legend; Jacqueline Goss's There There Square, which explored the performative acts of map-making that we all engage in and how we might visualise those on the map; Bill Brown's, Confederation Park (1999), a sweet, slightly Ross McElwee-ish essay about Canada by the Texan filmmaker. After intermission we settled in to watch the workshop films. Mark used his existing footage from NY to construct an interesting map of the city in the week that the credit crunched. Some of the expected NY footage (big advertising boards with endless M & Ms) nicely underscored by v.o. while the layering of Natural History museum exhibits worked well with musings about alternative economic forms. Che's film riffed on Lisa Marr's Vancouver Special to present a hard-hitting critique of the real estate market as driven by drug money and the alienation of Vancouver residents from this market - even professionals can no longer afford the VanSpec. Relied heavily on TV/film theme tunes to drive point about commodification and branding, but I liked the use of text and mathematics. Hari's work was a short meditation on hospitality and Vancouver as unceded Coast Salish territory. An effective juxtaposition of poetic address with politics, which presented a welcome alternative view of 'the city'. Chris managed to shoot, develop, digitize and edit his screenwork, which referenced Roger's Strip Mall Trilogy. Taking Richmond as his focus, Chris looked at numbers and text in that new city. Randy's work aimed to explore her research focus on digestion and sustainability in the arts through a video practice. Drawing on Benjamin and Derrida, the work intervened in the debate around systems of production and consumption - where Derrida meets Arjun Appadurai. Mapped the digestive system onto a map of Strathcona and then told a story that juxtaposed slow food with big food production and distribution. All the works were really interesting beginnings - Vancouver as outward looking, rather than the beautiful (yet closed?) systems of Stan Douglas, Jeff Wall and the various Vancouver artists who use film and photography to have a conversation about landscape and the city.
Two months and a lot of reflection have convinced me that my attempts to legitimate my research by focusing on traditional tv/film forms is unsustainable. While my research has never been particularly interested in maintaining such distinctions, I had thought that was to my my detriment and that I should be more like colleagues and settle in to medium specificity. I could do this for the Olympics research, but that would be a history of a disappearing industry in Canada. The 2010 Games might just be CTV's swan song, and certainly they're not covering much in the way of pre-Games culture except within News contexts.
And so I find myself back in the world of the socially-generated. There are so many groups in Vancouver uploading video content about the city as direct and indirect responses to the construction of the 'Olympic' city. With Vancouver a well-known hub for the gaming and 'new media' industries what's interesting (but not surprising) is that this energy is not tapped in to in the same way that we're seeing for the 2012 Olympics. Despite the slash-and-burn economics of the UK, the London Games seem - publicly at least - to believe in the remnants of 'Cool Britannia', in a Britain that embraces and immediately institutionalises the new. Vancouver seems a little wary of its creative energy. Just as there's this huge gap between rich and poor, there's a huge gap between the official cultures of jazz/pacific fusion food and the really exciting arts practices that take place in spite of the city. However, impact and empowerment remain important subjects for debate. When is participation meaningful and how? What are the mechanisms by which change can be actualised?
Rework this section to reflect importance of W2 in terms of galvanising a lot of energy in the city. It's a massive undertaking to develop an administrative and infrastructural hub for community media and arts practices in the DTES. Inhabiting the new Woodward's development is symbolic, strategic and important. Given the city's revisiting of its protected 'view cones' and the outline planning permission for towers in the DTES, this may mean the end of the the historic environment in this incredibly important landscape. Perhaps not Bath-like World Heritage status, but in terms of the history of Canada as a nation the DTES as the site of Vancouver's labour history is very significant. But few seem to care because the neighbourhood has been pathologised as a cite of poverty, addiction and crime. Once Vancouver loses the built environment here, then it's difficult to think about what heritage the city retains. Incredibly short-sighted. Whatever one feels about the politics of W2's working with SFU and the Cultural Olympiad, at least it keeps DTES diverse and has the potential to pilot new creative economic models. It's absolutely leading-edge digital economy and you'd think the City would jump at that....
As of 12 July 2009 - True North Media House launched.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
As part of the Cultural Olympiad a small number of events have been taking place that directly engage with the archaeo-geographies of Vancouver through media and these intersect with ongoing concerns in the city:
Cheryl L'Hirondelle's Nikamon Ohci Askiy (songs because of the land) combined walking, singing, engagement and media in a durational performance with several material and ephemeral outputs. This happened as we arrived in the city and I missed the live events. But Cheryl kindly gave me Giveaway, the 5 song EP and interactive CD associated with the project. The online version is here. The project presents a hope-filled interaction with Vancouver's Downtown Eastside that touches on the city as Coast Salish territory and the DTES's complicated present.
TechForms 09 is part of the Midforms digital culture festival. Fearless City, as part of the W2 cluster, is contributing live video feeds of the Woodwards exterior from cell phones, which VJs at Great Northern Way will mix with feeds from SAT in Montreal. The Woodward's building had iconic status in most Vancouverites' memories. For me, I remember my mum buying me malts in the basement, Friday-night shopping in the rain and dim recollections of Santa. We were a Woodward's/Hudson's Bay Co family and never shopped at Eatons. The company went bust in 1993 and the vacant building was later squatted by anti-poverty and homelessness activitists to protest Vancouver's failure, yet again, to consider social housing in plans to transform the building into more luxury apartments. Although I left Vancouver in 1991, my visits home were always marked by Woodward's news and my returns to the UK included boxes of kraft dinner wrapped in Woodward's plastic bags. New development is controversial but includes a mix of housing, retail, arts and education space. All this is a long-winded way of making my point that any mediation of the site calls up the continuing material presence of Woodward's in people's lives. Tied to the Cultural Olympiad, this event both comments on and reminds us of protest and resistance and engages with broader debates about Vancouver's relationship with its built heritage.
I was privileged to attend a Fearless City meeting yesterday. Thanks to everyone there for the hospitality: Irwin, Hendrik, Jon, Lani, Robert, Mo, Rob and to Rachel for paving the way to show the group that not all academics live in ivory towers. Discussion mainly covered the logistics and planning for TechForms. Interesting issues for me about lighting and the HDC phones - how LEDs are the best lighting option for mobile video. Made me think about portability and the way in which nighttime shooting will need to create an almost Guy Maddin aesthetic with close-up spotlights, flare and deep shadow. Am planning to tag along for the shoot but completely forgot about double-booking. A key outcome for the night will simply be testing the tech.
From Vancouver I Am site, A Piece of Glass:
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Recent YouTube video about the close of Vancouver institution, Save-on-Meats:
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Very interesting video about the relationship between photography, the city and ideas around 'heritage', by the same filmmaker:
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Social media, independent media, convergent media, new media, small screens - London 2010 goes for it. Here's their community map. Vancouver sees competing media outlets jockeying to be the non-accredited voices for Vancouver 2010. For more on NAMCs, see Garcia and Miah references, below. Am bookmarking but need to organise, using Zotero.
A table of all events taking place during the Feb-March Cultural Olympiad 
olympiadevents.doc.
Streams of History live opening. Have only just found out about this and have to be somewhere at 12 on 7 Feb but need to get to this.
Update: Jem, Milo and I attended the breakfast and live streaming. Questions for conversations:
Downtown East Side walking tour
Currently scheduling interviews....
Will update this as per above.
RFP nº 2010-533 Archaeological Consulting Services Successful Proponent: Arcas Consulting Archeologists Award Date: April 26, 2006
RFP nº 2010-533 Archaeological Consulting Services Successful Proponent: Millennia Research Limited Award Date: April 26, 2006
RFP nº 2010-533 Archaeological Consulting Services Successful Proponent: I.R. Wilson Consultants Ltd. Award Date: April 17, 2006
RFP nº 2010-533 Archaeological Consulting Services Successful Proponent: Golder Award Date: April 3, 2006
Grand March for Housing, 4 April, http://www.citywidehousingcoalition.org/. BC-wide marches and protests. Vancouver will see a large march from various locations at noon to end up at rally outside Vancouver Art Gallery for 1.30pm. Various DTES organisations, housing advocacy groups, plus the no2010 group are calling for action. Seen to be tied in with protesting the Games because of the backtracking on providing social housing.
The big January 2009 news is about Vancouver being placed on a credit watch due to the way in which the previous city officials exposed the city to enormous amounts of risk in the building of condos at False Creek for athletes, to be sold on as luxury flats. The developer pulled out after costs escalated, the city guaranteed completion and now it looks as though the city residents are now 'on the hook' for $300m. In real estate obsessed Vancouver, this is big news. It also means that if the city can't actually raise the funds to complete the Olympic Village the building will stop. Potentially an enormous ghost town.
22 January: Planning series of city walks, beginning with Olympic venues, to consider trace. While I need to focus on official media discourse, also keep thinking about potential practice-based work.
Cuts in legal aid staff and funding. Minimal snow pack on mountains despite all that snow on the ground. Snowmobiling deaths now outnumber skiing deaths from avalanches. Concerns about snow for Winter Olympics.
Focus on over-running budgets and the cost of social housing ($300k per unit rather than $200k).
Gangland shooting epidemic in Vancouver being used to argue for stepping up law and order rules. The BC gov't looking at increasing powers to surveil.
Am sharing relevant online news via Delicious, F/book/ Twitter
CBC News report, 30 June 2003 on Olympics and social change:
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The Secretariat oversees the strategy and directs Vanoc, City of Vancouver, Resort Municipality of Whistler, etc. They commissioned a whole range of videos, which were put on their website as BC Stories. These are billed as news items for rights holders to download and use, so akin to Tourism Vancouver Barberstock b-roll. However, the Secretariat's materials include both main stories and b-roll. Interested to see that the 10 most popularly viewed videos are:
Closer to Asia than any other port, Prince Rupert is fulfilling a century-old dream of becoming one of North America’s pre-eminent container ports. ... view story »
British Columbia is the largest new media cluster per capita in the world. Rapid growth in game development is capturing the attention of large international game publishers and start up companies alike... view story »
The world’s biggest social networking/games website for children is based in the British Columbia resort city of Kelowna. Club Penguin was founded by three Canadians in 2005... view story »
British Columbia is known internationally for its forest industry, but it is also home to the fastest growing biotechnology cluster in Canada. It makes sense that two of British Columbia’s most innovative companies are using the forests and the trees to create exciting new products... view story »
BC’s billion dollar wireless industry is developing technological innovations that are gaining global attention. More than 5,500 people are employed by BC wireless companies; many moving to the province from abroad... view story »
Dockside Green is the first community development ever to target LEED Platinum certification for buildings developed in a master planned community. ... view story »
The BC Wood industry believes that there is a strong environmental argument to be made for the use of more wood in housing construction in the world’s fastest-growing economy, China... view story »
Forestry has long been the lifeblood of the Vanderhoof region, but with the recent high Canadian dollar sending shipping costs soaring, innovations in transportation have become the saving grace for a hard-hit industry... view story »
High Tech Timber... view story »
The Osoyoos Indian Band, a small first nations community in British Columbia’s south Okanagan, has embarked on an ambitious program to create an entirely sustainable economy...
VANOC YouTube account.
2010 bid film, Inspired by Dreams, produced by Ace Film.
Infinity Films, Gryphon Productions - very helpful meetings. Specific issues to consider have to do with the uneasy interface between VANOC and BC Secretariat and the professional filmmaking sector. Perhaps confusion within VANOC about differences between corporate video and documentary? Also questions of image control and tensions between 'showing it like it is' without turning off potential BC investors. It all comes back to productivity...
Here's the latest from London2012 on archaeology and the Olympic Games.
June update: have at last managed to make positive contact with Vanoc and am looking forward to a meeting:
Met with Lisa Purdy and to meet Rae Hull at CODE (Cultural Olympiad Digital Edition). Can't publicise information due to commercial sensitivities.
RFP nº 038 Video Development and Production Services Successful Proponent: Hyphen Communication Award date: December 23, 2005
RFP nº 035 Brand Identity and Imaging System, including Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games Emblem Successful Proponent: Karacters Design Group Award Date: September 12, 2005
ITQ 1103 Video and Audio Production for Sport Events, City Venues Successful Proponent: AVW - TELAV Audio Visual Solutions Award Date: 20 January 2009
ITQ 1103 Video and Audio Production for Sport Events, Mountain Venues Successful Proponent: Rocky Mountain Production Services Ltd. Award Date: 9 January 2009
Funded through 2010 Legacies Now's Innovations strand:
Documentary Media Society, The Project: DOXA Networking Intensive Community: Vancouver Awarded: $16,828.00 Program sub-category: Community Initiatives Application Year: 2005 The Documentary Media Society will bring together aspiring documentary filmmakers from around BC to participate in a unique vision-building experience. Youth from around the province, aged 18-25 years, will apply to attend a forum to be held in conjunction with DOXA, Vancouver’s only annual film festival dedicated exclusively to examining the art of documentary film. Mentored by experienced documentary filmmakers, participants will gain invaluable access to the vibrant British Columbia filmmaking community. They will carry the benefits of this experience back to their own communities, where they will have the renewed knowledge and drive to pursue their own documentary endeavours.
Media Undefined Society Project: Intersections Community: Vancouver Awarded: $10,000.00 Program sub-category: Engaging Communities Application Year: 2008 Intersections is a living history project that will engage youth, seniors and artists from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds in Vancouver’s Strathcona and Downtown Eastside neighbourhoods. A team of professional artists will guide participants through an exploration of the neighbourhood’s geography, and social and cultural history. Through a process of collective creation, the project will result in multi-media works that will be projected through storefront windows and onto building facades, casting their imagery onto the streets. In addition, the works will be presented in community venues in a month-long series of screenings.
Pacific Cinematheque
Project: open i: A Digital Filmmaking Project by Youth with Disabilities Community: Vancouver Awarded: $25,000.00 Program sub-category: Community Initiatives Application Year: 2005 “open i” is an innovative digital filmmaking and media literacy program for youth with disabilities between the ages of 14 and 24. In partnership with the National Film Board, the project will help youth develop skills needed to realize their creative visions and tell their own stories in their own voices through the medium of digital video.
www.cinematheque.bc.ca
Pacific Cinémathèque Pacifique
Project: Landscapes for Every Screen Community: Vancouver Awarded: $15,000.00 Program sub-category: Engaging Communities Application Year: 2007 Landscapes for Every Screen will empower British Columbians of all ages and from diverse backgrounds to collaborate to discover and frame digital video interpretations of their landscapes and their worlds. Pacific Cinémathèque and its project partners will launch integrated media literacy and production workshops in urban and rural communities around the province. Participants will create video interpretations of their landscapes, which will be showcased at public screenings to encourage further dialogue on visual media and technology in communities and in educational and artistic forums in B.C. and beyond.
Vancouver Art Gallery Project: Urbanization and the Politics of Space Community: Vancouver Awarded: $6,800.00 Program sub-category: Creative Explorations Application Year: 2006 Urbanization and the Politics of Space is a collaboration between the Vancouver Art Gallery, King George Secondary School and the Pacific Cinematheque. It will give teens the powerful tools of poetry, film and sculpture to respond to issues of homelessness and the politics of space in their own West End community. The project will see youth design and create functional shelters for homeless people, and to document the process using video and still photography.
David Hauka mentioned Swingspan to me. After some hunting I found it at the Vancouver City Archives. They were just about to post it to the website. Here's the link. The film is particularly important as it documents the point at which Vancouver shifts radically from an industrial city reliant on resource extraction and proud of its working class roots and outsider status into a world-class city attracting offshore investment and white collar workers. This is the point at which Vancouver becomes Larry Beasley's city. Swingspan is interesting cinematically for its 1980s aesthetic - that fascination with the forensic and with the ugly-beauty of concrete and disintegrating machinery, as though the filmmakers know that everything's about to change. It's got a Sam Spade feel to it too. But what's striking is that while there is some sense of sadness about the end of the old Cambie Bridge there seems to be genuine belief in the progress that the new bridge represents. Time doesn't stand still as we see Science World, BC Place and the Expo pavillions going up in the background. The film was funded through the city's Centennial fund but part of the thinking was to create a document of the city. This is the kind of work I'm looking for in an Olympic context. The demise of the global economy and the hubris of the megaevent and its attendant construction projects would seem to warrant some kind of marker in the event that everything's going to change again.
Expo 86 is discussed in relation to the 2010 Games. Similar promises (kept and broken), similar arguments about the proper allocation of resources, evictions in the DTES, elements of window-dressing approach to First Nations involvement.
These totally amazing tourism films posted on YouTube by Sonicwolf359 present a useful context for the Olympic relationship. Telling that the Ramses exhibition gets more screen time than First Nations content, which was marginalised within 'Folk Life' and a characteristically postmodern cultural pastiche in the GM pavilion. Fascinating film (broken into 3 parts) for anyone interested in the history of Vancouver and the entanglement of the city's built environment with geopolitical economics.
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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MAPPING, MEMORY AND THE CITY An International Interdisciplinary Conference University of Liverpool, 25-26 February 2010 (clashes with the games...) School of Architecture / School of Politics and Communication Studies
initial deadline: 30 June Please submit proposals for papers (300 words maximum) by e-mail to cityinfilm at liverpool.ac.uk
Bass, A (2002) Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Beamish, R and Ritchie, I (2006) Fastest, Highest, Strongest: A Critique of High Performance Sport, London: Routledge.
Billings, A C and Angelini, J R (2007) 'Packaging the games for viewer consumption: Nationality, gender and ethnicity in NBC's coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympics', Communication Quarterly 55 (1): 95-111.
Billings, Andrew C (2008) Olympic Media: Inside the Biggest Show on Television, London: Routledge.
Daddario, G and Wigley, B J (2007) 'Gender marking and racial stereotyping at the 2004 Athens Games', Journal of Sport Media 2 (1): 29-52.
Dayan, D. & Price, M. (eds) (2008) Narrative and Counter Narrative in the Beijing Olympics: Hearts, Minds and the Projection of Modern China, University of Michigan Press.
Espy, R (1979) The Politics of the Olympic Games, Berkeley: U of Cal Press.
Garcia, Beatriz and Miah, Andy, Culture @ the Olympics
Garcia, Beatriz (2008) ‘One hundred years of Cultural Programming within the Olympic Games (1912‐2012): Origins, evolution and projections’, International Journal of Cultural Policy 14 (4): 361‐76.
Gilbert, Helen and Lo, Jacqueline (2007) Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-cultural Transactions in Australasia, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gold, J.R. and Gold, M.M. (eds) Olympic Cities: Urban Planning, City Agendas and the World's Games, London: Routledge.
Gruneau, R (1989) 'Making spectacle', in L Wenner (ed.) Media, Sports and Society, London: Sage.
Hargreaves, Jennifer and MacDonald, Ian Critical Studies in Sport series
King, C R (2007) 'Staging the Winter Olympics, or why sport matters to white power', Journal of Sport and Social Issues 31: 89-94).
Lander, Debbie, 2012 Blog
Larson, J F and Park, H S (1993) Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympics, Boulder: Westview.
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Mason, D S (2002) 'Get the puck outta here!', Journal of Sport and Social Issues 26 (2): 140-67.
Miah, Andy, García, Beatriz and Zhihui, Tian (2008) ‘We Are The Media’: Non-Accredited Media & Citizen Journalists at the Olympic Games', in Price, M. & Dayan, D. (eds) Narrative and Counter Narrative in the Beijing Olympics: Hearts, Minds and the Projection of Modern China, University of Michigan Press.
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Toohey, K and Veal, J (2000) The Olympic Games, Oxon: Cabi.
Roy, Susan (2006/7) “Who Were These Mysterious People?” ç¢sna:m, the Marpole Midden, and the Dispossession of Aboriginal Lands in British Columbia', BC Studies 152: 67-95.
Bergson, H (1912) Matter and Memory, London.
Bergson, H (2007) The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, Dover.
Cavell, Richard (2002) McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
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Gottdiener, Mark (1985) The Social Production of Urban Space, Austin: University of Texas Press.
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Keeping track of relevant blogs, wikis, sites, artists:
And this, from Nic Clear's Bartlett course on Crash Cultures. Relationships among sound, architecture and J G Ballard:
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ABOVE: ‘The Sound-Sweep’, by George Thomson, based on the story by J.G. Ballard. A film produced for Nic Clear’s Unit 15 course, ‘Crash: Architectures of the Near Future’.
Jo Carruthers pointed me towards this as part of our preparations for workshop, below. I had a brief email conversation with Nic a few months ago after Jane Rendall recommended I talk to him. Fantastic work, but we agreed that perhaps not directly tied to our workshop. However, this film and this interview with Nic are relevant to the Olympics research.
Posted at Feb 23/2009 08:51PM:
AngelaPiccini: Went to see Laura Mulvey at UBC tonight. Speaking about flapper films and the new girl culture modernity. Not sure how this presented us with a new way of thinking about these films. Geographers and art historians have talked about popular culture, beaches, shopping and the quick movement of modernity via train and car windows. While films both presented images of modern women and played to similar modern women - living alone in lodgings and buying lipstick and thinking about their careers - I suppose the other arts were by and for men. Think Simmel and Benjamin and Marinetti.
Posted at Mar 12/2009 03:54PM:
AngelaPiccini: Fearless meeting yesterday at W2 launchpad to round up this phase of their project. A lot of discussion about what the remit of Fearless would be and how to go about actioning projects. To attract funding, Fearless artists seem to need to enter the professional artist funding circuit and compete at that level. Some discussion as to whether the media arts side could be a peer network, to workshop project ideas and exchange skill sets. Social enterprise (ie, media/tech for acceptable events) continues, but the question is how to ensure sustainability for artists involved. More on Fearless here: http://fearlesscity.ca/
Posted at Apr 09/2009 02:12PM:
AngelaPiccini: Just participated in an excellent seminar up in Education on McLuhan and biopolitics, with Kate O'Riorden (Sussex) and Stuart J Murray (Ryerson). Murray's discussion of figure-ground interfaces focused on the importance of 'revealing' the hidden ground. However, might I think of that in more non-representational terms? My research struggles with the tension between the need to refer to 'representation' in order for lots of different audiences to 'get it' and my own intellectual-conceptual desire to think about operations of visible and invisible, audible and inaudible. So, yes, it's useful to think about what representation excludes, but that doesn't necessarily equate to the revelation of an always-already or coherent and stable thing that lies beneath the surface. Surely it's the commingling, the inseparability, in fact, of the two that's of issue. For Murray, 'Life' appears everywhere in media networks. So I need to think about the ways in which the material in the form of 'Vancouver heritage' appears only tangentially, the glance again. Yet, it's that material heritage that drives the city's economy. Is 'archaeology' for Vancouver the Real?
Posted at Apr 30/2009 10:03AM:
AngelaPiccini: Security maps: street and waterway closures will constrain who, what and how of filming. Will content simply enact control? Olympics simply as Foucaultian paradigm.
Posted at May 04/2009 09:54AM:
AngelaPiccini: Jane's Walk: Andesite in Vancouver. Great tour by 2 contributors to Vancouver Matters, a 2008 edited volume that looks at the city's materiality - from building stone to blackberry bushes.
Posted at May 06/2009 09:50AM:
AngelaPiccini: Thinking while running and walking. Running and walking generating thinking. Breathing in and out as song. Singing the ground beneath my feet and the city into being as I take in the dust and transform it into CO2. Romantic commingling, sure, but an attempt to lift the map off the surface to consider stratigraphies. First thing's a map regression - plot the media and plot the olympics to emplot. How to mark the importance of those who are both visible and invisible, however, without making vulnerable? X marks the spot of something happening 'here', but perhaps even that is too literal. Perhaps X marks the spot where I recollect that thing that happened elsewhere? Or, better, X marks the spot of perception that actualises a memory of that past event. A Bergsonian map of Olympic Vancouver?
Posted at May 27/2009 09:12AM:
AngelaPiccini: UBC seminar was exciting and I got a lot of terrific feedback. Only 4 months in to the research, the seminar erred on the side of breadth rather than precision. Met filmmaker David Hauka who mentioned Swing Span and need to look at those Expo 86 films. Brian McIlroy wondered what might be surprising with the Olympics given its similarity to Expo 86. Certainly parallels, but important differences. Funding, infrastructure, contexts of new technologies and discourses of social media all differentiate. I keep returning to an archaeo-graphy. Not x marks the spot as that reifies surface forensics. Need to keep Bergson/Lefebvre/Deleuze at forefront, with John Law tapping on my shoulder. Off to Cineworks this pm to watch SwingSpan and find other Expo films.
Increasing successes in contacting people: Elvin Wyly (UBC, Geography), Jennifer Kramer (UBC, Anthropology), Walt Judas (Tourism Vancouver), Ron Burnett, Sam Carter, Randy Lee Cutler (Emily Carr), Robert Vanwynsberghe (IOCC), Kris Krug (Vancouver social media artist/advocate), Zoe Druick and Laurynas Navidauska (SFU). Saw Kamala Todd at DOXA and her practice is right at the heart of this.
Interesting thing about the Olympics research is how people I speak with direct me along their own lines of interest. But I really do keep returning to the framework of the city symphony - at least as something that people can grasp and understand. Legacy 2010 funds and facilitates a range of activities, film being only one. Funding context a useful filter in all of this.
Posted at Jun 08/2009 10:59PM:
AngelaPiccini: Check out SFU Urban Studies strand: http://www.sfu.ca/urban/events/events.htm. 15 July abstract deadline for October conference - couldn't possibly do this so soon after returning to the UK and in the midst of HoE?
Posted at Jul 13/2009 10:58PM:
AngelaPiccini: Cultural Olympiad 'Mapping and Marking'
Posted at Jul 20/2009 11:37PM:
AngelaPiccini: Bodies in motion, from CODE to ContainR. Fits with tourism brand that sees Vancouver as vibrant, young, active. Heritage = old. It's too political, uncomfortable and off-message. Movement = productivity again, it's contemporary and fits with Vancouver brand. Olympics tessellates with existing post-Expo image.
Posted at Jul 22/2009 12:07AM:
AngelaPiccini: Although BC Explorer is discussed, no link to any website. Wonder if they've heard of PARIP Explorer?
