35th Annual Powell Street Festival
Saturday, July 30th and Sunday, July 31st, 2011
11:30 am to 7 pm
Free

Oppenheimer Park (400 Powell Street)
Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova), Vancouver Japanese Language School & Hall (475 Alexander), Chapel Arts (304 Dunlevy), Japanese Canadian National Museum (6688 Southoaks, Burnaby), Blim (115 East Pender)

Reading by Nina Matsumoto, the Eisner Award-winning artist behind the Yokaiden manga series currently completing artwork for The Last Airbender: Zuko’s Story

World premiere of Tashme Project by Julie Tamiko Manning (QC) and Matt Miwa (ON), a theatrical retelling of stories from the Tashme internment camp

Cross-cultural collaboration between Chibi Taiko (BC) and the Aboriginal Youth Drumming Group Spakwus Slulum (BC)

Sei Trio, an international musical exchange featuring Yuki Isami (Japan), Keiko Devaux (QC), and Vivien Nishi (BC)

Performances by Canadian emcee Nish Raawks (ON), energetic dance troupe the 605 Collective (BC), experimental jazz band Robots on Fire (BC), electro-acoustic group Densabi (BC), and many more

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Other Festival Events
NIKASAYA AND GOH NAKAMURA
Friday, July 29th, 8:00pm

Chapel Arts, 304 Dunlevy
$15/$10
NikaSaya (Japan)—the freewheeling vocal duo featuring Saya Onodera (from Tenniscoats) and Nikaid Kazumi—shares the bill with San Francisco-based songwriter Goh Nakamura.

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MADE IN JAPAN: JEREMY ISAO SPEIER
Presented with BLIM Arts

BLIM, July 29-August 28 2011
Opening Friday, July 29, 6:30 – 11:30PM

In Made in Japan, Jeremy Isao Speier heralds consumer electronics of the 1970’s and the pre-digital age. Speier investigates the loss of space and the transformation from analog to digital.

Made in Japan was also the title of a live album by English Rock band, Deep Purple. In 1972 it was released in Europe, and in 1973 it was released in the US, and in Osaka, Budokan and Tokyo, Japan, epitomizing this 1970′s moment.

Japan was once a leader in technology but now it’s struggling to find it’s place in the digital-age. With globalized manufacturing and assembly, fewer electronics are being made in Japan. Made In Japan looks at the lie of commodity, and is a critique of consumerism.

Speier is interested in the Vancouver area of Main Street around his studio because of its industrial nature. He has been collecting fragments, bits and parts, objects from 2006 to 2009. Each object that he culls and finds speaks about the transformation of a Vancouver industrial area, and the shift to industrial, but also as Main shifts toward gentrification the less industrial it becomes. The object marks the ever-changing psychographics of this Main area. An important part of Speier’s practice is about his urban geographical vernacular of recycling and salvaging found objects and materials for reuse and repurpose in his work. Speier uses obsolete technology of the 1970’s and 1980’s to reconfigure parts and motors for hand-made and self-made technologies in Made in Japan.

Artist Bio
Jeremy Isao Speier is a time traveler – explorer and his layered kinetic work is about mobility and multiplicity. Speier is very interested in ideas around time: Newtonian-time like the frame of a filmstrip across the time line; or Kant-time as neither an event nor a thing; or Einstein-time and his special theory of relativity, and velocity equals distance over time. Speier investigates the intersection or juncture where matter and memory cross over time and perception.

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Also, have a look at highlights from past festivals here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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