It’s the site of what is arguably Vancouver’s most notable event, a bitter battle between the Non-Partisan Association and an alliance of Strathcona activists and Chinatown business people – the Georgia Street Viaduct. Built as a first phase of a planned interurban freeway system, this minute stretch of freeway reaches like a tree root from the downtown core to Chinatown a now-gone neighbourhood of Vancouver known as “Hogan’s Alley” and home to the city’s only black church, the African Methodist Episcopal Fountain Chapel.
On the one hand, the viaduct is considered the single most ‘convenient’ way out of downtown. On the other, a complete waste of incredibly valuable space. It’s an unwanted shrine to a battle that kept the freeway from being built through downtown, allowing the city to become what it is today.
The City of Vancouver has decided it’s time for this shrine to go – though when and how and what will go there is yet to be determined.
It’s Fashion Week in New York, so it’s an appropriate time to ask the question: Can fashion be truly sustainable? Sure, clothes can be manufactured from organic cotton and recycled pop bottles, but is the use of such green materials simply putting a soul-soothing face on consumerism? Or are environmentally-conscious designers bringing about measurable change in an industry that produces an incredible amount of waste?
“Don’t think Sinkhold is a bookcase because of its shape and contents. Owing to its stainless steel construction from a series of sinks, it holds many things an ordinary bookcase cannot. As such, it is useful in a number of post-bookcase scenarios: terrorist attack, GMO crop blight, even zombie apocalypse.
“Just toss those books, pull the shelves and invert the sinks over up to three infants, cats or purse-dogs: instant individual bunkers! Or use it to carry your produce to the farmer’s market in the parking garage after the widespread failure of Monsanto’s platypus-corn causes mass starvation! And when everyone’s burned their wooden bookcases to cook food or scare off zombies, you’ll still have this to shove against the windows when the hungry hordes come a-knocking!
“The shelves are held in place with only spring tension, so they can be slid up or down when empty and brace more firmly against the sides when loaded. Welded from parts of a fun-park carousel, restaurant sinks and a roll-down gate, this post-industrial, post-consumer furniture is easy to lift, even fully loaded, and as such is perfect for itinerant students or that literary bedouin in your life.”
Approached by the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe to produce a public work for their event, South African designer Heath Nash built shade structures using scrap materials — largely discarded beverage containers.
From a 1981 newspaper after Operation Soap, a police raid on Toronto bathhouses
A new mapping project by Julia Hoecke,Fran Schechter and Susan G. Cole (at Now Magazine) has compiled a fascinating collection of cultural, political, and social spots relevant to the LBGT present and past in the Toronto area.
Maps can transform and, in their own way, create knowledge — new juxtapositions, new proximities, new inclusions and exclusions. They are as much art as science, and Mapping Queer Toronto renders visible a vibrant LBGT community in spatial terms and in time. From the website:
The LGBT community’s roots run deep into the city’s history. We’ve charted the sites where essential events took place and the locations of key organizations that still thrive. This is not a survey of queer bars and clubs. Not every gay organization is here – we couldn’t include those without a permanent address, for example – and it doesn’t record every moment that changed the landscape. But it does represent the power of Toronto’s LGBT history and the strength and influence of present-day queerdom.
Do Royal weddings and indeed all the incessant chatter about the upcoming April 29 Royal wedding make you sick to the stomach? Feel the need to expel the grossness that has entered your being by way of absurd attention paid to an absurd group of elites whose only claim to fame and fortune is hereditary theft and bad haircuts? Then look no further! UK artist Lydia Leith has created the “Royal Wedding Sick Bag” for the occasion. “Throne up” into yours today!
This month’s mainstream magazine cover winners: Rolling Stone magazine for worst cover (above left) of reality TV drunk Snooki. And for best cover, Wired magazine’s (above right) cover taking Apple to task. While it may not be surprising that RS, having jumped the progressive shark decades ago, is sinking to the LDC by gracing its cover with Snooki, we have been pleasantly surprised with Wired magazine’s daring provocation to poke at Apple’s gateway gadget – the much-loved iPhone (you can read the article here). Boo RS (but continue your descent into redundancy as you see fit) and bravo Wired.
Vancouver, globally speaking, is barely more than a teenager. A young city nestled at the very Western corner of the nation, flung far from the battles and outposts and trade routes on which our shared myths rest. As such, it’s often thought of as part of an entirely different era, aesthetic, and mindset. Vancouver is not of Old World sensibilities. With the possible exception of Gastown, one isn’t likely to find the snaking, dead-ending avenues and cobbles of London, nor the broad, sweeping boulevards and gut-wrenching (to Canadian tastes) roundabouts of Paris. In Vancouver, we find instead mere traces and fragments of these worlds nestled into tidy New World grids.
Marcel Walldorf’s life-size sculpture of a policewoman in full riot gear pissing on the floor has some Germans “pissed”. The sculpture, entitle “Petra”, which has already captured the prestigious Leinemann Foundation Award for fine arts, was put on display in Dresden last week. Local security officials were not amused. The artist has received letters of condemnation from state security services and local officials.
The gallery located in the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, however, told AFP news service that despite official outrage, response from the public has been “overwhelmingly positive”.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Graphics of the Black Panther Party USA opened on January 8 at the ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse, NY. The exhibition brings together movement posters and newspaper graphics from the 1960s and 70s. From the ArtRage website:
The exhibition highlights the artistry of Emory Douglas, and documents the Panthers’ involvement with a broad array of causes, including opposition to the Viet Nam War and solidarity with the United Farm Workers movement. With documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, All Power to the People! also illustrates efforts of the United States government to destroy the Panthers as part of wide-spread efforts to stifle oppositional political movements. The social programs of the Panthers and the powerful images of armed party members had a strong impact on the public consciousness of the time, and their efforts to combat the oppression of racism and poverty still resonate today.
Contributors
Stefan Christoff, Colin Horgan, Julia Pyper
Michelle Siobhan Reid, Valerie Cardinal, Race Capet
Laurence Miall, Terry Fairman, Tyler Morgenstern
