Territory
"Territory" by Aaron Peck, Winter 2006, pp. 79-80
As I drove home from work on a pleasant summer Vancouver evening, a billboard at the corner of Nelson and Expo caught my eye. I parked and walked over to see what turned out to be a photograph of a billboard but which still seemed to advertise something— an advert for real estate? A few weeks later I discovered that the billboard was a work called Condominium Advertisement, Vancouver, BC (1992), by Roy Arden, and part of “Territory,” a city-wide exhibition co-sponsored by Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery. As I unknowingly stared at the billboard/ photograph, “Territory” had already succeeded: I was exploring and thinking about the city.
“Territory,” an ambitious exhibition with works from both local and international artists that considered the state of public space and globalization, had big aims and did well in executing them. Some works were public. Others, such as Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s whimsical film of turtles watching shipyards in the Pearl River Delta, were installed at the presenting galleries. There were also two days of films at the Vancity Theatre and seven walking tours. Expansiveness was one of “Territory”’ s strengths.
Other highlights included Cao Fei’s COSPlayers (2004), a short film projection at Artspeak. In it, teenagers from Guangzhou dress up as their favourite anime figures and wander about the city in character (an originally Japanese subculture known as “cosplay”). The film, with its global pop-culture references, was by turns playful and eerie. At one point, a cosplayer ends up in a public fountain inexplicably accompanied by a cow.
The Atlas Group/Walid Raad’s images of Beirut at Presentation House Gallery were particularly affecting at a moment when Hezbollah and Israeli bombs volleyed across the border of Israel and Lebanon. Raad’s work, however, is not only about archiving and politics. It is also about the art of representation. As has been noted, fact and fiction are blurred by Raad’s creation of an archive, but they are also blurred by the way the work considers representation. In the DVD projection We Can Make Rain But No One Came To Ask (2005), moments of beauty—such as near-abstractions of clouds—were juxtaposed with documentation of urban destruction in Beirut. The contrast left one caught between bewilderment and awe.
Whether or not one enjoys art with a critical edge, “Territory” was a successful project for two reasons—the quality of the work exhibited and its inspired curation. For some reason or other, it’s been hard lately to find those two things concurrent in group shows.
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
