An art wave hits Granville and Robson
he two giant video screens at Granville and Robson normally snap and crackle with quick-hitting, colourful ads for companies such as Telus, Fido and WestJet. But next week, they’ll be showing something something completely different: two short films by internationally acclaimed artist Antonia Hirsch.
Zero in on a new wave
Nestled among flashy ads and quick-bite movie trailers at Robson and Granville is a new experience from visual artist Antonia Hirsch called Vox Pop. The Video project features two separate sequences, one in which the camera pans the stadium at the same rate as the sporting-event fans’ wave would be followed. The camera then rests on a sole male spectator, who rises as if taking part in the wave. Both one-minute sequences are inserted between ads.
Shaun Gladwell: Storm Sequence Video (excerpt)
Other Sights presents Storm Sequence (excerpt), a video project by Shaun Gladwell, displayed every 3 minutes on dual urban screens above the intersection of Robson and Granville Streets in Vancouver, Canada from January 15 to 25th, 2009. In Storm Sequence, the drama and grandeur of a traditional painting of a storm at sea is integrated with …
Pipilotti Rist: Open My Glade Video
Other Sights is pleased to present Open My Glade by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. The artwork consists of a series of 9 one-minute videos inserted into the flow of outdoor advertising screens. The works sardonic humour and insights intrude on our encounter with urban social space and exert a powerful and sensual presence.
What Are We Now?
Lynne Marsh’s Stadium (2008) and Antonia Hirsch’s Vox Pop (2008) revolve around solitary figures within sports arenas. Grid-like formations of fixed, empty seating serve as both backdrop environments and the presence of absent crowds. Each work adopts the seamless production values and structural familiarity of contemporary advertising and televisual entertainments. Vox Pop is a silent two-channel video work one minute in duration.
Olympic Village Discards Recast As Public Art
It’s really the last place you’d look for art: Behind barbed wire, on the back corner of an abandoned industrial lot, tucked in behind a big pile of dirt and gravel sprouting scrappy clumps of grass. In the movies, this would be the place to dump a body. In Vancouver, this generic strip of halfpaved wasteland next to the Olympic Village has become a piece of interactive public art.
From Bars to Brollies, Bright Lights
When independent curator Patrik Andersson invited T&T to create a sustainability-themed exhibition for the Pendulum Gallery during the Winter Olympics, he made this request: “Think about what happens when the Olympic countdown clock goes below zero.” Tony Romano of Toronto and Tyler Brett of Bruno, Saskatchewan—who often make art together under the sobriquet T&T—responded with a cheery, postapocalyptic vision of Vancouver called False Creek. Specifically, their installation is a kind of after-the-gold-rush imagining of the area.
Finn Again Awakes every three minutes
ears ago, I went on a James Joyce tear. I started with Dubliners, worked my way through Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and then Ulysses. The last challenge was Finnegans Wake. Full of puns, verbal wordplay and made-up words, Joyce’s last book has a reputation as a notoriously difficult book to read.Undaunted, I read on. Or, at least, I tried. Again and again, after a few pages, I was completely lost, unable to figure out what I’d just read.
‘Digital Natives’
If you’re crossing Vancouver’s Burrard Bridge and glance at the electronic billboard that rises at its Kitsilano end, you may notice something different. Amidst the Guinness and Jack FM ads will flash the occasional message on a red background. Some of them will seem to be about native issues
Twitter-like messages highlight Vancouver billboard
Interspersed with ads for Air Canada, Starbucks, cars and wine on the controversial electronic billboards adjacent to the Burrard Bridge, new messages are provoking thought in a different way.