Mobile Barnacle City Live/Work Studio
Located within the Site Factory bus at a contentious site of ecological transformation, historical and cultural significance, and development pressure, Mobile Barnacle City examines conditions of displacement and disparity where Chinatown meets North-East False Creek.
Laiwan is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator with a wide-ranging practice based in poetics and philosophy. Born in Zimbabwe of Chinese parents, her family immigrated to Canada in 1977 to leave the war in Rhodesia. She founded OR Gallery in 1983. Since 2000, Laiwan has been investigating embodiment through performativity, audio, music, improvisation, and varieties of media, so as to unravel and engage presence and bodily, emotional affect. Recent public commissions enable her to focus on issues of urban development, touching on poetic and philosophic themes related to current questions of environment and the built cityscape of Vancouver. She currently teaches at the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College, Port Townsend, WA, and is based in Vancouver.
Ten Different Things engages ten critically-engaged artists to investigate the role of culture as a critical ingredient in the construct and vitality of the contemporary city. What propositions, provocations, concepts or visions do artists have for creating a public sphere that promotes cultural life? How can we create structures, processes or dynamics to produce new ways of living, working, interacting, or occupying the city? Where are the intersections in public life where artists can produce alternate outcomes?
Ten Different Things is a collaboration between CityStudio Vancouver and Living Labs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, curated by Kate Armstrong and supported by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program. Janet Moore and Duane Elverum are co-founders of CityStudio Vancouver.
