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Art
They’re in the wrong line of work
Video realism drops in the lap of two now ex-journalists, paralyzed by protocol
By Kevin Potvin
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There they sat, the accomplished CBC journalist and her husband, the dashing documentary maker, both staring helplessly out the floor-to-ceiling windows as the journalist documentary moment par excellence transpired before their very eyes. But neither of them could whip out their cameras now. She, Michaëlle Jean, had become, two-and-a-half years earlier, the Queen of England’s representative to Canada, the Governor General, and he, Jean-Daniel Lafond, by stint of being her partner, the Viceregal Consort of Canada. They could only look wistfully on, bound to their chairs now by the thick ropes of protocol. The occasion was a visit to Centre A, the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, situated across the street from infamous Pigeon Park at Hastings and Carroll Streets, ground zero in Vancouver’s nightmarish downtown eastside. It was the Vancouver leg of the pseudo-royal couple’s cross-Canada check-up on the state of the arts, with special regard to the interests in particular of Canada’s urban youth. Some of those very same urban youth put on a hip-hop break-dancing show for the dignitaries and then the MC for the evening called on the assembled audience to relate the problems urban youth face, to speak about what in the realm of art they were doing to combat these problems, and to think out loud about how these efforts could be joined to reinforce each other. It was while one member of the audience was describing to Jean a native youth education program he worked in that had had its funding cut when the fourth wall of this stage production was breached. A woman barreled in through the glass door yelling about police brutality. Out the windows, where all eyes turned, including those of Jean and Lafond, a man had been tackled to the ground in the middle of Hastings Street by six police officers who then proceeded to punch and kick him before unsheathing a taser and zapping him. Centre A is a new installation on a street that for going on twenty years has been almost entirely boarded up and abandoned. What there is of business on this, what used to be the centre of bustling downtown Vancouver, is dominated by dodgy pawnshops, pizza slice joints, cheque cashing outlets, and single room boarding houses. The area of the city is essentially a vast outdoor psychiatric hospital completely lacking doctors, nurses, orderlies and security as much as it lacks walls. Centre A marks one of the early attempts by the city’s developers to begin reclaiming the land to turn it back into profit-generating property. According to the latest model, new arts centres should make the area more attractive for art-set types to move in, and in their wake, the young urban professional types who seek “edgy” lifestyles but who expect security and safety, would follow—bringing with them their pockets brimming with income. After them would come stores and store-front services to serve them, thus rejuvenating the streetscape with high-rent paying hip wireless cafes, clothing stores and swish lounges. Centre A’s website says “An attempt is made to connect the artistic program [of the centre] to the life of this interesting and rapidly changing area.” To help expedite that rapid change is part of its raisons d'être. The interior of the former BC Electric Building features all the expected elements: exposed brick walls, tall beam-laced ceilings, and huge white walls suitable for wine-and-cheese gallery showings. But a quarter inch of glass separates this ultra-swish interior from an exterior that is utter chaos. For the other part of the developer’s program is to rid the area of its current residents who hold up the unfolding of the grand plan by scaring the hell out of the young artists, not to mention the urban professionals and the lounge and café owners waiting to move in behind them. Thus, the fire department closes the boarding houses one after another on the pretense of fire and electrical hazards and the police department works day and night to make the already unbearable lives being lived out in this area even more unbearable, with one consistent message to those wondering what’s behind all this “rapid change”: just beat it. The same week of the Governor General’s regal visit, the Vancouver Board of Trade, the local chapter of the Chamber of Commerce, took up a collection of unused airmiles among globe-trotting members to donate to police to put rule breakers big and small on the next airplane out of town. The taser take down outside Centre A’s windows that so pulled the faces of the regal couple down was par for the course. While developers measure and survey by day, by night a constant scream of cops, ambulances and fire trucks chase patients around in madcap mayhem like a Benny Hill show gone completely out of control. Adding urgency to the nightly chaos is the approaching D-Day: Vancouver will be host to the 2010 Winter Olympics in February that year, when 15,000 media personnel will arrive toting cameras, note books and a penchant for snooping around. The streets, by request of the Governor General’s office, were not hosed down the way they were for the previous Governor General’s visit, but we can be sure they’ll be well hosed down for the big Olympic media visit.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers
problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of
both kinds as well, and we are trying to do both things at the same
time.
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