The Foreshore: Session 11

Eric Fredericksen and Cissie Fu

222 East Georgia Street

Vancouver, BC

Eric Fredericksen: Dedicated to you, but you weren't listening and Dr. Cissie Fu on the political & aesthetic potentials of bodies in public spaces.

The Foreshore is a series of informal sessions of research and knowledge exchange. Join us for these brief presentations followed by discussion:

Eric Fredericksen will discuss his interest in how art becomes public, and how sites become specific, through anonymous or publicized interventions, vandalism, parody, and time.

Cissie Fu will approach questions of political art in public space along three vectors--the aesthetics of taking a stance, the politics in social choreographies, and protest as an artistic gesture--towards teasing out the tensions between presentation and representation, while attending to the resonances between community and commutiny, in the 21st century.

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Eric Fredericksen is a curator and writer in Vancouver and Seattle. He is the Public Art Program Manager for the City of Vancouver. Formerly the director of Western Bridge, Seattle, he has organized exhibitions at the Or Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, Artspeak, and the Bodgers and Kludgers Co-operative Art Parlour, Vancouver; the International Chilliwack Biennial, Cultus Lake Provincial Park, BC; What-the-Heck Fest, Anacortes, Wash.; Open Satellite, Bellevue, Wash.;and Limoncello, London. He has written catalog essays for Hadley+Maxwell, Heather and Ivan Morison, and Philippe van Wolputte, and has taught at the Sommerakademie Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland, and the University of Washington, Seattle.

Dr. Cissie Fu is Dean of the Faculty of Culture + Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Co-Founder of the Political Arts Initiative, which invites 21st-century imag-e-nations of the political through digital technology and the creative and performing arts. Cissie’s research sits at the nexus of politics, philosophy, and performance, with a focus on contemporary manifestations of the political through individual and collective action and expression. Suspending divisions of theory/practice, contemplation/action, and analysis/performance, Cissie seeks common ground where thinking, making, and acting are equally foundational to being human, which, when taken as the starting point of political theorising, casts performance—of identity, will, and responsibility—as a powerful source for political awakening and a robust realisation of citizenship.

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The Foreshore is a year-long collaboration between Access Gallery and Other Sights’ for Artist Projects inspired by the deep influence of the waterways on our cities and societies on the West Coast.

The foreshore is a place of unclear jurisdiction, and thus of contestation, friction, and constant movement. Those who dwell in this zone must continually adapt to a changing environment. The foreshore also conjures histories specific to this region: narratives of trade and exchange, habitation and nourishment, resistance and violent erasure. It might similarly evoke our contemporary lived situation in this place. Considering the potential of this zone as both concept and site, The Foreshore initiative asks the following: how do we generate conditions of emergence? How can we take up space differently? How do we support unruly practices and futures?

www.theforeshore.org

Accessibility Info

Front door: width 35 inches. Front door step: height 4 inches. No ramp.

Hallway door: 35 inches. Washroom door: 29 inches width. Toilet: 12 inch clearance on left side, 19 inch clearance from toilet to sink. The washroom has no handrail. Washroom is all genders.

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Other Sights for Artists’ Projects is a non-profit arts organization that develops new and unexpected exhibition platforms outside of the gallery context. Other Sights collaborates and shares resources with organizations and individuals to present artworks that consider the aesthetic, economic and regulatory conditions of public places and public life. For more information visit othersights.ca

Other Sights gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Columbia Arts Council, The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 15, and private donors without whom this project would not be possible.

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Established as an non-profit artist-run centre in 1991, Access Gallery is platform for emergent and experimental art practices. We enable critical conversations and risk taking through new configurations of audience, artists, and community.