![[Photos of the Powell Street Festival]](../../images/p-season.jpg)
2006–2007 Season
PSFS presents this event as part of explorAsian (Asian Heritage Month).
Access Artist Run Centre & Powell Street Festival Society present
www.vaarc.ca/lostandfound
Lost and Found Website Launch
Featuring performances by Wayde Compton & Jason de Couto
Firday, May 11, 2007, 7pm
Access Artist Run Centre, 206 Carrall Street
Free admission
Info: 604.683.8240
Media Contact: Miko at Diane Kadota Arts Management / 604.683.8240 or miko at dkam.ca.
The Lost and Found website is the second half of a collaborative project produced by the Powell Street Festival Society (PSFS) and Access Artist Run Centre (VAARC) in 2006. Lost and Found was originally a group exhibition featuring the work of Judy Chartrand, Wayde Compton and Haruko Okano. Through an artistic residency with the PSFS and VAARC, the three artists were asked to consider lost and forgotten “histories” that both linger and disappear within the context of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, BC. Each artist produced new works that examined three particular neighborhoods in the DTES. The first area was the former Japantown that had existed prior to the Second World War. The second, Hogan’s Alley, was Vancouver’s first and last neighborhood with a concentrated black population and is now gone because of the construction of the Georgia Viaduct in the 1970s. The last and largest area covers the DTES and Strathcona neighbourhoods that were once made up of land once attributed to the Squamish Nation.
The Lost and Found website echoes similar concerns and issues raised by the work of these three artists. The site not only archives the exhibition but continues the dialogue around Vancouver’s DTES as a place of intersecting and overlapping social and cultural histories. Through the use of interactive web technologies, online viewers are able to engage with the fleeting and ephemeral materials: oral histories, lost languages and personal photographs that otherwise in their material form disintegrate and disappear. As these virtual ‘neighbourhoods’ and cultural memories become concretized through technology, they are still called into question as they become accessible to many online viewers who play and engage with the materials challenging notions of history, place and memory.
Please join us in celebrating the legacy component of this very important community project. On Friday, May 11, come down to Access (206 Carrall Street) for a fun event with performances, refreshments, and a first look at the website projected on the gallery walls. Artists will be in attendance.
Haruko Okano is a third generation Japanese Canadian artist whose practice is interdisciplinary. Her installations involve audience participation in order to bring them to their fullest potential.
Judy Chartrand is an urban Manitoba Cree who grew up in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. She received a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute, and an MFA from the University of Regina. Chartrand works within a contemporary First Nations art tradition where many of her works focus on First Nations and white relations in Canada.
Wayde Compton received his Masters in Arts (English) from Simon Fraser University. He is the author of Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature, published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2002. His artistic work involves audio performances using recorded poetry and mixing with the use of turntables.
PSFS VAARC gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Province of BC through BC Gaming Commission, Spirit of BC, British Columbia Arts Council, City of Vancouver Office of Cultural Affairs, Vancouver Foundation, Hamber Foundation, our members and volunteers. Access is a member of PAARC [Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres].