other sights

Digital Natives Controversy (Vancouver, bc)

by Rob, April 7, 2011

Orig­i­nal Arti­cle | Down­load (PDF — 3.2MB)

The fol­low­ing post comes in the wake of a con­tro­versy related to an art instal­la­tion for Vancouver’s 125th Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion. Clint Burn­ham and Lorna Brown are co-curators of the project. Burn­ham had this to say about the project:

As part of the 125 cel­e­bra­tion for the city of Van­cou­ver, Dig­i­tal Natives is a pub­lic art project curated by Van­cou­ver artist Lorna Brown and myself. The project con­sists of putting twitter-like mes­sages up onto the bill­board next to the Bur­rard Street Bridge among the reg­u­lar adver­tiz­ing. We have solicited mes­sages from 30 native and non-native artists and writ­ers from Van­cou­ver and across North Amer­ica, includ­ing (asso­ci­ated with SFU) Jeff Derk­sen, stu­dent Mer­cedes Eng, alumni Roger Farr and Emily Fedoruk, and writ­ers in res­i­dence (past and future) Larissa Lai, Michael Turner, Lisa Robert­son, and Rachel Zolf.

More infor­ma­tion about the project and details of the instal­la­tion can be found in a num­ber of recent arti­cles in The Globe and Mail and The Tyee. The whole thing seems to be quite an incred­i­ble idea and is wor­thy of much atten­tion. And there has been. But not all of it has been pos­i­tive pub­lic­ity. Dr. Burn­ham states:

…there has also been cen­sor­ship on the part of Astral Media, who at the last minute (in the past week) demanded con­text for some mes­sages, at first refused to run any of the mes­sages in First Nations lan­guages (!!), and have still, as a final state­ment, refused to run a mes­sage by respected Amer­i­can Indian artist Edgar Heap of Birds and by UBC pro­fes­sor and poet Larissa Lai (includ­ing Larissa’s mes­sage in Squamish). We (includ­ing Bar­bara Cole, of Other Sights, the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion thru which Lorna and I work) have been work­ing with the City of Van­cou­ver — which has been tremen­dously sup­port­ive — and the Squamish Nation — espe­cially the for­mi­da­ble and amaz­ing Deb­o­rah Jacobs — to try to make Astral see the error of their ways.

One of the con­tentious mes­sages in ques­tion comes from Edgar Heap of Birds’:

But a lot of the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing this mes­sage involves trans­la­tion dif­fi­cul­ties. “Heap of Birds’ polit­i­cal mes­sage is almost entirely writ­ten in the (con­cep­tual) lan­guage of the col­o­nizer. His work is very pow­er­ful (he loves using the phrase ‘Impe­r­ial Canada’ and does so in a poster work that I walk by every day at SFU), and yet it owes a debt to that colo­nial lan­guage. Heap of Birds’ cri­tique is untrans­lat­able from English.”

Brown and Burn­ham write, on the Dig­i­tal Natives website:

We are dis­ap­pointed that Astral has refused to broad­cast art­works by such renowned artists. Their deci­sion com­pro­mises the intent of the project and does a dis­ser­vice to the artists, whose view­points about pub­lic space are highly valued.

“Unfor­tu­nately,” they add, “Astral’s cen­sor­ing of artists and writ­ers shows how dif­fi­cult it is for Cana­di­ans to gain access to pub­lic space, and to express them­selves in pub­lic space. This is an issue of cen­sor­ship, of the sup­pres­sion of artis­tic expres­sion, clear and simple.”

I have to say that I am extremely sur­prised and dis­ap­pointed that there would be con­tro­versy around this work of art. This free­dom of speech comes along with a sim­i­lar story where a girl was pre­vented from rid­ing the Sky­train for wear­ing a pin that stated her opin­ions about Yoga (F*** Yoga). Is this the start of a new rash of cen­sor­ship around the rights of peo­ple to express opin­ions and points of view in con­tem­po­rary Van­cou­ver? I would hope not, but this move by Astral Media con­tra­dicts my hope.

The pur­pose of the project is to engage view­ers (read­ers) in dis­cus­sions and dia­logue, and that is what is hap­pen­ing. So per­haps this cen­sor­ship con­tro­versy will help pub­li­cize the instal­la­tion? Cen­sor­ing books seems to help sales, so hope­fully this act of cen­sor­ship will bring greater atten­tion to the mat­ter. The project is, by nature, sort of con­tro­ver­sial since it deals with First Nations and Colo­nial­ist atti­tudes and opinions:

The name of the project plays off of two mean­ings for “dig­i­tal natives” –that gen­er­a­tion — like our stu­dents — who have grown up with inter­net media (as opposed to us old geezers who are “dig­i­tal immi­grants”) and the role of First Nations peo­ple in dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion (the sign, oper­ated by Astral Media, is located on Squamish land). So part of the project entailed my facil­i­tat­ing of work­shops with aborginal urban youth at the Native Edu­ca­tion Col­lege — gen­er­at­ing mes­sages from the youth. Mes­sages have been trans­lated into Squamish and Kwak’wala (and are presently being trans­lated into Musqueam).

All I can say is, “Kudos to Clint and Lorna for putting together an amaz­ing and sig­nif­i­cant project.” I’m glad it’s start­ing dia­logue, but it’s unfor­tu­nate that the dia­logue is start­ing from a point of cen­sor­ship rather than the project itself.

Thanks for listening.