Juan Gaitan\, a PhD candidate in art histo ry at the University of British Columbia and the co-curator of Exponential Future at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery\, participate.
Thur
sday\, March 27\, 8pm
Juan A. Gaitán (curator)
Speakeasy: Fronti erism is a series that addresses notions of unchecked urban expansion withi n a larger consideration of the city. Vancouver has often been characterize d as a boomtown that has yet to bust\, but the rapid and rabid growth of th e city reveals an unhealthy appetite for unchecked development. The frontie r is a physical\, technological and intellectual place of possibility\, an outer limit away from the known centre. While the frontier is often underst ood as a site of opportunity\, frontierism has long been critiqued for its potential repercussions: environmental destruction\, racism\, poverty\, dis ease and humanitarian regression. Contextualizing this discussion within th e past two incarnations of Speakeasy - Serial Space and Territory - the ser ies continues to articulate how civic space is defined and questions whethe r the urban frontier is spatial\, geographic\, political\, social or econom ic.
Notes on the Speakers
Thursday\, March 27\, 8pm
Juan A . Gaitán will participate in a dialogue with Brian Jungen on the production of community through radio\, particularly in rural\, frontier settings suc h as Colombia where he is curating an exhibition on the topic.
Gaitán is a Vancouver based art historian and curator. His research interests are the Americas in the post-War period\, religious monuments in the early mid dle ages\, and contemporary art. He is a PhD candidate in art history at th e University of British Columbia and is the co-curator of Exponential Futur e at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
Brian Jungen will speak with Juan A. Gaitán his interest in radio's galvanization of community\, s pecifically in northern\, rural communities where he is undertaking a radio project.
Jungen is an internationally acclaimed artist who has solo shows at the Tate Modern\, London\; Museum Villa Stuck\, Munich\; Vancouver Art Gallery\; Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal\; New Museum\, New York \; Witte de With\; Vienna Secession\; Contemporary Art Gallery\, Vancouver\ ; Casey Kaplan\, New York\; and Catriona Jeffries Gallery\, Vancouver\, amo ng others.
Lee Henderson will read from his ahistorical novel\, The M an Game\, about the origin of a sport invented in Vancouver in the 1800s th at combines wrestling\, street fighting\, ballroom dancing\, martial arts\, and gambling\, and is played by unemployed lumberjacks. The novel follows Vancouver's founding fathers\, race riots\, red light districts\, opium tra de\, and deforestation.
Henderson wrote The Broken Record Technique (
2002) and his fiction and visual art journalism has been published in numer
ous journals and magazines.
The Man Game will be published by Viking/P
enguin (2008). He is a contributing editor to Border Crossings and Contempo
rary\, and has curated exhibitions in Vancouver and New York. He is the dir
ector/curator of Attache Gallery\, a portable art gallery that shows emergi
ng artists.
Friday\, March 28\, 8pm
John Atkin will speak about Vancouver from its inception to the present\, identifying relationships bet ween developers and the City in order to define its "frontier" nature.
< p>Atkin is an author\, historian and heritage advocate who offers offbeat i nsights into Vancouver's architecture\, history and neighbourhoods. He has created\, and conducts\, unique and popular walking tours throughout Vancou ver. He is also the editor of British Columbia History: The Journal of the British Columbia Historical Federation.Mari Fujita will discuss Vanc ouver via various readings of territory to understand how Vancouver engages with larger spheres of influence.
Fujita is a designer and educator. Her research examines material processes\, the shifting role of the archit ect in the present cultural\, economic\, political\, and technological clim ate\, as well as notions of territory and emergent forms of urbanism in dev eloping cities. Her design practice FUJITAWORK pursues a diverse range of p rojects\, including projects small-scale gallery installations\, building d esigns\, and urban scale interventions that have been exhibited at Cooper H ewitt Museum\, Storefront for Art and Architecture (NY) among others.
Meredith Quartermain will read from her forthcoming collection entitled Ni ghtmarker (NeWest\, 2008). Against the ghostly presence of George Vancouver 's explorer narratives\, Nightmarker finds interest in the city and its ear ly histories. In expeditions to City Hall\, the police station\, the sugar refinery\, and the courthouse\, and ramblings in between\, Quartermain expl ores the human city as an animal behaviour\, a museum\, and a dream of mode rnity.
Quartermain's Vancouver Walking won the BC Book Awards 2006 Pr
ize for Poetry. Books include The Eye-Shift of Surface\, Wanders [with Robi
n Blaser]\, and A Thousand Mornings\, prose poems about old Vancouver's doc
kside area.
Her work has appeared in The Walrus\, Canadian Literature\
, the Literary Review of Canada\, Matrix\, The Capilano Review\, West Coast
Line\, filling Station\, Prism International\, and other magazines.