The Foreshore

Join celebrated local artist Dana Claxton and art historian Jaleh Mansoor as they debate the following questions, prompted by Claxton’s new series of photographic works: do unresolved aboriginal sovereignty and economics, a housing crisis precipitated by tectonic shifts in global wealth distribution and finally culture, a genre nested within lens-based practices responsive to the collapse of medium specificity, have anything to do with one another? Does the international dispersal of swelling wealth, of surplus value generated elsewhere, have anything to do with the decomposition and re-composition of a local aesthetic? Who or what stands at the vanishing point of two seemingly unrelated phenomenon that locate Vancouver on the GPS of global culture?

This event is part of The Foreshore, presented in partnership with the multi-disciplinary artist collective Other Sights for Artists’ Projects. The Foreshore hosts a series of roving discursive events held at community centres throughout the city of Vancouver, aiming to generate questions and confluence inspired by the conditions of the foreshore, the land along the edge of a body of water that is repeatedly submerged and revealed by the tide. In Vancouver, the term conjures specific histories of trade and exchange, habitation and nourishment, resistance and violent erasure. It might similarly evoke our contemporary lived situation in this city. Considering the potential of this zone as both a metaphor and physical site, year two of The Foreshore initiative pairs together returning speakers and guests of their choosing to deepen a generative and cross-disciplinary conversation around the following questions: Can there be land that is not property? How do we bring the centre to the edge? What is, as yet, unseen?

An image of baseball caps, helmets, gloves and multiple used materials pilled up on a flat white surface. 

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Foreshore.jpg

Dana Claxton with Jaleh Mansoor: Subterranean Weaving: On the Entwinement of Indigeneity and Hidden Labour in the Making of Contemporary Vancouver

Creating home and a sense of place means building relationships. How well do we relate/give back/listen to the land and waters that are our home? Vancouver is so often seen as an international city belonging to no one/everyone. Its landscapes and narratives have been transformed and framed in ways that showcase the Anglo-colonial culture as the founders and caretakers of this coastal city.

How are newcomers/settlers/guests/visitors complicit in this overwriting of Coast Salish people and their continuity on this land since time out of mind? How do the stories (re)emerge and remind us all that this is a place with ancient laws, relationships, histories, ancestors, cosmologies which are in fact the guiding frameworks for life on this Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish place? This is a conversation towards decolonizing the city, asking questions about learning the laws and expectations and responsibilities before we assume permission and right mindedness to “come ashore” and be good visitors.

This event is part of The Foreshore, presented in partnership with the multi-disciplinary artist collective Other Sights for Artists’ Projects. The Foreshore hosts a series of roving discursive events held at community centres throughout the city of Vancouver, aiming to generate questions and confluence inspired by the conditions of the foreshore, the land along the edge of a body of water that is repeatedly submerged and revealed by the tide. In Vancouver, the term conjures specific histories of trade and exchange, habitation and nourishment, resistance and violent erasure. It might similarly evoke our contemporary lived situation in this city. Considering the potential of this zone as both a metaphor and physical site, year two of The Foreshore initiative pairs together returning speakers and guests of their choosing to deepen a generative and cross-disciplinary conversation around the following questions: Can there be land that is not property? How do we bring the centre to the edge? What is, as yet, unseen?

### Biographies 

Coll Thrush is Associate Professor of history at the University of British Columbia, where he teaches Indigenous, settler colonial and place-based histories. He is the author of *Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place*. He is also the co-editor of *Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History* (2011) and *Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire* (2016). His current project, entitled *Slaughter Town*, focuses on landscape, trauma, and memory in his hometown of Auburn, Washington, formerly known as Slaughter.

Kamala Todd is a Metis-Cree community planner who makes films and writes about the stories and cultures layered within the Indigenous lands upon which she is a grateful guest. She has a Masters degree in Geography (UBC) and is the author of numerous documentary films and community arts projects. For six years she was the City of Vancouver’s Aboriginal Social Planner, and she continues to work with the City as an independent consultant to help build relationships within the context of (re)conciliation. She writes and directs for children’s television, including the Indigenous science series Coyote’s Crazy Smart Science Show and the Cree language series Nehiyawetan, both on APTN. Todd lives with her partner and two sons on the Sunshine Coast.


An image of a person writing texts on the whiteboard with a red marker. 

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TFS Sesssion 16c.jpeg

Coll Thrush with Kamala Todd: Land Language: Land Responsibilities

Carmen Papalia and Joulene Tse Parent will discuss issues of cultural accessibility and human rights in the city, including Tse’s ongoing research on the history of Indigenous workers on the waterfront, as well as Papalia’s projects leading up to and including his recent conceptual work *Open Access*, a new, relational model for accessibility that sets a precedent for considerations of agency and power in relation to the disabling social, cultural, and political conditions in a given context.

This event is part of The Foreshore, presented in partnership with the multi-disciplinary artist collective Other Sights for Artists’ Projects. The Foreshore hosts a series of roving discursive events held at community centres throughout the city of Vancouver, aiming to generate questions and confluence inspired by the conditions of the foreshore, the land along the edge of a body of water that is repeatedly submerged and revealed by the tide. In Vancouver, the term conjures specific histories of trade and exchange, habitation and nourishment, resistance and violent erasure. It might similarly evoke our contemporary lived situation in this city. Considering the potential of this zone as both a metaphor and physical site, year two of The Foreshore initiative pairs together returning speakers and guests of their choosing to deepen a generative and cross-disciplinary conversation around the following questions: Can there be land that is not property? How do we bring the centre to the edge? What is, as yet, unseen?

### Biography 

Born in Vancouver in unceded Coast Salish Territory in 1981, Carmen Papalia is a social practice artist and non-visual learner who makes participatory projects about access to public space, the art institution and visual culture. His work has been featured at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; Tate Liverpool, UK; and locally at Gallery Gachet and the Surrey Art Gallery. Papalia is the recipient of the 2014 Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary and the 2013 Wynn Newhouse Award. His current work includes the multifunctional acoustic mobility device produced with Sara Hendren’s Investigating Normal Lab at Olin College of Engineering and *Let’s Keep in Touch, a collaboration* with curator Whitney Mashburn that sets a precedent for haptic criticism to become a viable practice within contemporary art.

Joulene Tse Parent’s maternal lines come from the Indigenous Dene Nation of Northern Saskachewan, and paternal lines from a father who was a working immigrant from Canton, China. Most of Joulene’s childhood was raised in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, the unceded territory of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is an active Union Member of the International Longshore Warehouse Union, and currently holds a two year Executive position for Local 500 Vancouver. She also sits on the Vancouver District Labour Council, as a Delegate and Co-Chair on the Women’s Committee.


A photograph of Carmen Papalia speaking into a white megaphone on a street. 

The Foreshore

Talks & Events