The Georgia Straight - Capture Festival - March 30, 2017

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4 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

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CONTENTS

Union Street, Strathcona. Norma Ibarra photo.

7

START HERE

STRAIGHT TALK

A Georgia Straight freedom-of-information request has turned up 35 emails to the city from residents who have little or no sympathy toward those who struggle with an addiction. > BY TR AVIS LUPICK

15

FOOD

From a gala dinner to bento boxes, this year’s Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival has plenty to offer to please the taste buds. > BY GAIL JOHNSON

19

11 16 40 16 9 9 43 38 11 28 27

Books The Bottle Confessions I Saw You Real Estate Renters of Vancouver Savage Love SoManyDJs Straight Stars Theatre Visual Arts

r

TIME OUT

COVER

Female artists are well represented in the Capture Photography Festival’s feature exhibit this year, Song of the Open Road,

29 Arts 40 Music

> BY AMANDA SIEBERT

SERVICES

31

41 Employment

MOVIES

Comedy with bite and honest critiques of the post-apartheid era come to this year’s Vancouver South African Film Festival. > BY ADRIAN MACK

37

MUSIC

Susto’s Justin Osborne talks about his transformation from churchgoing Protestant U.S. southerner to defiant touring musician. > BY K ATE WILSON

GeorgiaStraight

41

COVER PHOTO

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Automotive | Education | Services | Travel Marketplace | Employment | Real Estate Property Rentals | Music | Announcements Callboard | And more...

@GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight

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straight talk RATEPAYERS DON’T WANT TO PAY FOR OD CRISIS

A lot of public feedback that the City of Vancouver has received related to the fentanyl crisis is unsympathetic toward people who struggle with an addiction. “If people want to use illegal drugs, I’m not paying for them,” reads one letter typical of those included in a response to a freedom-of-information request filed by the Straight. “They can drop dead for all I’m concerned.” The FOI package covers correspondence received by the mayor’s office and the city manager’s office from April 14, 2016—when the provincial government declared a publichealth emergency—up to the beginning of December. During those eight months, those two offices received 81 pieces of public feedback related to the overdose epidemic. Of those, 35 emails can be described as taking a negative position toward people addicted to drugs. “If you’re stupid enough to do drugs regardless of what your drug of choice is and your bad choice leads to an overdose (and potentially death), you deserve what you get,” reads another citizen’s letter. “Has anyone considered that this ‘epidemic’ is just nature’s way of eliminating the walking stupid who share our space?” Only 16 emails expressed sympathy for people affected by the fentanyl crisis. Another 30 emails were “neutral” on the issue but were included in the FOI package because they discussed related issues: for example, a 0.5-percent increase to property taxes that the City of Vancouver implemented last December to boost its response to drug-overdose deaths. “Why should property owners be penalized with a higher property tax to cover the costs of fentanyl over doses,” reads one typical neutral email. Of those 81 emails reviewed by the Straight, just three expressed support for that initiative, which city council passed on December 13. In a telephone interview, NPA councillor Melissa De Genova said she suspects the way Vision Vancouver councillors handled the property-tax increase made people less likely to support its larger response to fentanyl.

“If Vancouverites understood where their money was going, or if they had a chance to have input as to how it will be directed towards combatting the opioid crisis, perhaps we could get more of them onboard,” she explained. “There was no consultation.” Vision Vancouver councillor Kerry Jang said that responding to the fentanyl crisis has been complicated by stigma and a lack of understanding of addiction as a disease. He told the Straight those factors are likely at work in some of the feedback the city has received on the overdose crisis. “People don’t seem to realize— I don’t think even our opposition realizes, when it says stuff like ‘We should hand this over to the province’—that we had over 920 deaths last year,” Jang said. (There were 922 deaths across B.C. attributed to illicit drugs in 2015. That compares to 513 the previous year and 366 in 2014.) “That’s why we’ve been sending out so many press releases, trying to help people understand,” Jang continued. “I’ve written back many of them [citizens] explaining that what we’re doing is providing money to first responders to help them cope.” > TRAVIS LUPICK

RETIRING HEALTH MINISTER STRESSES READINESS

Health Minister Terry Lake struggles to come up with ideas when asked what’s next in the fight against B.C.’s rising number of overdose deaths. “We just need to continue on,” he told the Straight at a March 28 news conference at Vancouver General Hospital, “increasing the resources that are available, to be ready when people are seeking treatment.” In Vancouver, it appears that the opposite has happened. A review of financial reports for Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), the regional provider responsible for the City of Vancouver and Richmond, shows that while overdose deaths have skyrocketed, VCH has allocated less for mental health and substance use. In 2013, it spent $290 million on mental health and addiction. That number declined by one percent the following year, remained stable in 2015, and then, last year, dropped by four percent, to $275 million. The number of fatal overdoses in B.C. increased from 330 in 2013 to 992 last year.

www.cityuniversity.ca

During the same period, the City of Vancouver declared a “mental-health crisis” and Vancouver police apprehensions under the Mental Health Act rose from 2,276 in 2010 to 3,050 in 2015. In a telephone interview, VCH spokesperson Gavin Wilson maintained that the situation isn’t as bad as it looks. He explained that VCH once paid for operations at the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addiction. That money is still being spent but no longer by VCH; instead, it’s funded by the Provincial Health Services Authority. Similarly, HIV/AIDS programming was once lumped in with VCH spending on mental health and addictions but now receives its own line in budget documents. “This is a matter of funding shifting around from one category to another,” Wilson said. “We could always use more funding for just about any program, but there are limits to how much we can take from the public purse.” But during the same period that VCH appears to have spent less on mental health and addiction, the provincial government gave the regional authority smaller annual increases in funding. In 2009, the B.C. government’s contribution to VCH was up seven percent over the previous year. By 2012, the increase was down to four percent over 2011. In 2015, VCH actually received one percent less from the province than it did in 2014. In 2016, however, B.C. gave VCH five percent more than it did in 2015. Lake acknowledged health authorities are trying to do more with less. “We knew that health care was unsustainable, going up six percent every year,” he said. “I think everyone is coming to grips with this. If you look across the provinces, you’ll see that the increases back in ’06 to ’08, ’09 were significantly bigger than they have been since 2013 to today.” Lake was elected as the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson and has served as B.C.’s health minister since June 2013. He has announced he won’t seek reelection this May. Asked what work he feels he is leaving unfinished on mental health and addiction, Lake paused. “There are always things left undone,” he said. “Your need to achieve all your objectives is always going to exceed your capacity to do so.” > TRAVIS LUPICK

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EDITOR + PUBLISHER Dan McLeod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Yolanda Stepien GENERAL MANAGER Matt McLeod EDITOR Charlie Smith SECTION EDITORS

Janet Smith (Arts/Fashion) Mike Usinger (Music) Steve Newton (Time Out) Adrian Mack (Movies) Brian Lynch (Books) EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR Doug Sarti ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Gail Johnson, John Lucas, Alexander Varty STAFF WRITERS

Tammy Kwan, Lucy Lau, Travis Lupick, Carlito Pablo, Amanda Siebert, Craig Takeuchi, Kate Wilson SENIOR EDITOR Martin Dunphy EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jennie Ramstad PROOFREADER Pat Ryffranck CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

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HOUSING

Renters of Vancouver: “I think that I’ll win” > B Y KATE WIL SON

Renters of Vancouver takes an intimate look at how the city’s residents are dealing with the housing crisis. Tenants choose to remain nameless when they share their stories.

“O

riginally when I moved into my new place, I just dealt with a realtor because the homeowners—a husband and wife—didn’t speak English. When we did the initial walkthrough, I told the realtor that I had a dog. I paid the pet deposit as well as the rental deposit, and although we never wrote in the contract that I had a pet, it was pretty clear. On top of that, the husband and his daughter definitely knew about the situation because when they came over on a number of occasions to fix

things in the house, she was always there. Plus she’s a 175-pound mastiff, so she’s impossible to miss. “My theory is that the husband didn’t tell his wife about my pet—and that’s where the problems started. One day the wife showed up for whatever reason, and my dog came to the door. A few days later, I got a notice saying that they wanted me to leave because I hadn’t disclosed my pet. “I spent two days cleaning the house to the point where it was spotless and organized the final walkthrough with the husband and wife and their daughter as interpreter. “When the day came, however, the daughter was very late. The wife arrived first and started freaking out about something in the house. “I waited for a while before requesting my damage deposit. Because they never filed anything with the Residen-

This tenant has gone to court after an abitrator’s ruling was ignored.

tial Tenancy Branch, I assumed they weren’t disputing the fact that they owed me the full amount. I tried calling them several times and sent a number of emails. Eventually, I got a message back which said that they were at a wedding out of the county and that they had written a long list of damages. That was unfair, because the house was

way cleaner than when I moved in and I hadn’t damaged it in any way. “I then filed with the Tenancy Branch myself to get back my deposit. That hearing was scheduled to happen nine months later. But while I had followed all the procedures and sent all of the documents to the landlords, I had received nothing in return by the time of the meeting. “That definitely helped the arbitrator’s decision, and he judged that I won the case. He said that my deposit had to be returned. But after I got the decision, I was unable to get my money back. “The landlords both ignored me. They didn’t return my calls and didn’t respond to any other method of communication. I had no choice to take them to the small-claims court. “I think that I’ll win because I’ve already got the Residential Tenancy Branch judgement, but it hasn’t been

easy getting to this stage. There are so many hoops to jump through for the Branch, and then even more for the small-claims court—it’s quite a procedure to follow. Each time you file something, it costs you money. “Sometimes when people win at the small-claims court, they still can’t find the people to reclaim their money, if the defendants have moved on. I’m lucky, because I have the landlords’ home address. “In real estate, if you put money down for on a purchase, it’s held in trust so neither party can touch it. I think that’s maybe what the government should do for tenants: they should set up a trust division that holds deposits. That way, disputes over the deposit could be solved at the Residential Tenancy Branch, and money could be distributed immediately. It seems fairer for the landlord and tenant.” -

Home search: freedom at 26 Margo Simoni took advantage of a B.C. program offering an interest-free loan

C

oming up with a down payment is often a challenge for first-time homebuyers. For many young people early in their careers, it’s tough to set aside the required front money. There are student loans to settle, and the high cost of living makes it hard to save. For a house with a purchase price of $500,000 or less, the minimum deposit is five percent, or up to $25,000. It gets stiffer for more expensive homes. It’s five percent for the first $500,000 and 10 percent on the remaining balance for homes that are less than $1 million. For houses that cost $1 million or more, it’s 20 percent. Margo Simoni started working as a psychiatric nurse with Vancouver Coastal Health more than a year ago, after graduation, and she Margo Simoni says she feels like thought at one point that she could nobody can take away her home. not afford a house. “I was like, ‘I’m going to get mar- word I want to use is invincible. ried and find somebody to split Like, once you have something that half of everything is truly yours and with me, because that you worked I’m not going to really hard [for], be able to do this for me it just Carlito Pablo on my own,’ ” feels like nobody Simoni related with amusement can touch you and nothing can be during a phone interview with the taken away from you.” Georgia Straight. Simoni is among those who have The 26-year-old later learned about been helped by the B.C. Home a new provincial program that con- Owner Mortgage and Equity Parttributes to the down payment of first- nership program. time home purchasers. She applied The program provides new homeand got approved. buyers with a maximum loan of On March 15 this year, she com- $37,500, or up to five percent of the pleted the purchase of a Surrey con- purchase price of a home listed at do, the same apartment that she had $750,000 or less. It’s interest-free been renting. and payable within 25 years. BorIt’s a great personal boost for rowers don’t have to make a paySimoni, who said, “I had, you ment for the first five years. know, a lot of ups and downs. I’ve Since the applications opened gone through some things over the on January 16, more than 1,000 last few months and then this came people across the province have up for me, and I just feel like, the made submissions.

Real Estate

According to a B.C. Housing media release, a total of 831 applications had been approved as of March 25. Simoni used to pay $1,100 in monthly rent for her two-bedroom and two-bath condo. She will be shelling out the same amount for the mortgage packaged by broker Camilo Rodriguez. “When you work with a mortgage broker,” she said about the service provided by Rodriguez, “he gives you the numbers—like, he tells you what you are able to afford and what you could work with—so that you are still living within your means.” Simoni’s mother, Mirela Pilas, who is a realtor, was her agent in the purchase. She was the one who encouraged the young nurse to look into the province’s homepartnership program. Simoni said: “My mom has always been a big believer of me, like, she’s always been my number one support system, as well as my father.” She has been staying at the same place for more than two years, and everything has worked out well for her. She works part-time at a nearby yoga studio, goes to a local gym, and likes to hang out with friends at a neighbourhood sports bar. According to Simoni, she likes the challenge of keeping up with mortgage payments. “It’s just going to build my character,” she said. “It’s going to give me the ability to move forward, and obviously, there’s going to be things in the future that I am going to want to do, and who knows? I might even sell the place and buy a bigger place. It’s just a great door opener for a lot of other opportunities in the future.” -

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY

MASTER OF COUNSELLING Join us for an information session for our Vancouver cohort beginning in Fall 2017. The session will be Saturday, April 8, from 5-7pm at the Pinnacle Hotel - Harbourfront. RSVP TODAY AT

gonzaga.edu/soe/counselored QUESTIONS? Graduate Admissions Office:

soegrad@gonzaga.edu

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 9

Sponsored by Toyota BC Dealers

Consumer Reports and local taxi, courier, and car-share fleet managers know that the Toyota Prius c is one of the most affordable cars to own because of its fuel economy, durability, and low maintenance costs.

Toyota Prius c offers incredible cost savings

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hen Tai Silvey and his as gasoline. The regenerative brakteam at Evo Car Share ing system captures kinetic energy, decided to launch their which recharges the battery. This service more than two powers the car in city driving. years ago, they decided to meet in a This means that the 1.5-litre, fourclandestine location. That’s because cylinder engine uses just 4.9 litres per Silvey and the others didn’t want com- 100 kilometres in urban areas. Over petitors to know anything about what a year, this amounts to an annual fuel they had in mind to set their car-share cost of just $949 for the Toyota Prius c, apart from the others. according to the federal government. Obviously, choosing the right type “There is less wear and tear on the of car was at the top brakes due to the Sponsored by of their list of priregenerative brakorities. That’s being system,” Silvey cause if prospectpointed out. “So ive members didn’t in general, there is like the vehicle, less regular mainthey weren’t likely tenance than with to sign up. And standard vehicles.” that would doom This has been the business from borne out by inthe very start. dependent re“We looked at a number of differ- search by the highly regarded Conent cars,” Silvey said. “In the end, we sumer Reports magazine. It analyzes thought the Toyota Prius c was the depreciation, fuel, maintenance and most environmentally friendly op- repairs, interest, insurance, and taxes tion and one of the best drives.” in coming to its conclusions. Then came the consumer testing. In 2012, it reported that five-year And sure enough, the Toyota Prius c operating costs for the Toyota Prius hybrid has turned out to be one of the c were the lowest of all vehicles surbiggest lures. It’s caused Evo to grow veyed. In the small car category, exponentially in a relatively short time. the Toyota Prius beat models with “We started with 250 vehicles conventional engines by Kia, Chevand since then we’ve expanded very rolet, Nissan, and Suzuki by $2,000 rapidly up to 1,000 Toyota Prius c hy- to $2,500 per year in operating costs brids,” Silvey noted. over a five-year period. In other words, there’s been a This means that if a car with a confour-fold increase in just two years. ventional engine has a $5,000 lower And this growth has been afford- sticker price, it’s still going to be far able for Evo Car Share members. That’s more expensive than a Toyota Prius c because the Toyota Prius c is already over five years. the lowest-cost hybrid in Canada, “The Toyota Prius is one of the starting at $23,790 including freight least-expensive cars to own in our and pre-delivery inspection charges. estimation,” Consumer Reports deIndependent research has also dem- clared at the time. onstrated that the cost of owning a Another reason is reliability. The Toyota Prius c is significantly less than magazine pointed out that keepother compact cars over time because ing a car for eight years rather than of its stellar fuel efficiency, lower inci- five can sharply reduce annual costs. dence of repairs, high reliability, and That’s because once the owner has high resale value. paid off the loan, expenses decrease It’s why fleet managers in the Van- sharply. So a reliable vehicle, such couver taxicab and courier indus- as the Toyota Prius c, turns out to tries choose the Toyota Prius c over be a superior investment and saves other options. money over time than a car that The Toyota Prius c has achieved doesn’t last nearly as long. There can its stellar environmental reputation be even greater value if a motorist because it runs on electricity as well considers leasing rather than buying. 10 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

That’s to say nothing of resale value. Here, the Toyota Prius c also excels, according to independent research published this year. The Canadian Black Book recently ranked the Toyota Prius c first for best retained value in the subcompact category. It noted several features that appeal to purchasers, including “a surprisingly large interior” in the four-door hatchback, which make it attractive on the resale market. “It also has a good amount of space for cargo with the seats up or down,” the Canadian Black

Prius is a very efficient vehicle.” The superior gas mileage reduces fuel costs over time for Novex, which is a key consideration in its business. But another important factor is the car’s durability. According to Coupar, it’s a common misconception for people to think that it’s more expensive to go green. He pointed out that Toyota Prius vehicles have exceptionally long lifespans. “That’s why you see taxi companies use them as well,” Coupar said. “They’re a very reliable vehicle.”

Evo Car Share applies operational savings from its Toyota Prius c into ski and bicycle racks and more parking space to enhance convenience for its members.

Book stated. “The ride is firm, but wouldn’t be classified as sporty. As expected, and the main reason for buying a hybrid vehicle, the fuel economy is excellent.” This fuel economy appeals to John Coupar, president of Novex Delivery Solutions, which bills itself as the Lower Mainland’s number one green courier company. Novex has about 100 vehicles in its f leet—with the number of Toyota Prius cars exceeding all others. The fact that a f leet manager attests to the car’s value says something about its appeal. “Our drivers carry a lot of product,” Coupar said, “and the Toyota

Novex prides itself as the only carbon-neutral vehicle-courier company in Canada. This has been achieved through a number of measures, including moving from natural gas to an electric heat pump in the office, as well as by using Toyota Prius c vehicles on the roads. And these cars are also helping Novex’s bottom line. “Our drivers rely on them and our customers rely on them,” Coupar said. “We’re very pleased with the performance we get. And we’re certainly pleased that we’re doing better for the environment. It’s one of Novex’s core values.” It’s believed that the first taxi driver in the world to use a Prius was

Yellow Cab’s Andrew Grant back in 2000. This was around the same time that environmental icon David Suzuki also started driving a Prius. Grant bought a new model in 2004, which ran for 1.5 million kilometres before being retired in 2011. Nowadays, Yellow Cab trumpets on its website that it has the largest ecofriendly hybrid fleet in North America. Evo is now doing for the car-share business what Yellow Cab did in its industry: make Toyota Prius c the go-to vehicle for users who are looking for value while remaining environmentally responsible. Silvey said that the Toyota Prius c emits 50 percent less carbon dioxide than a compact car with a conventional engine and 100 percent less than a family car with a conventional engine. As the City of Vancouver strives to become the greenest city in the world, Evo Car Share, Novex Delivery Solutions, and Yellow Cab are all stepping up to do their part to make this possible. A major financial benefit is that by spending less on gasoline, these companies also pay far less in fuel taxes per vehicle than their competitors. B.C.’s carbon tax is nearly $0.07 per litre. TransLink’s fuel tax adds another $0.17 per litre. Over a few years, that adds up to real money, even for those who don’t drive as many kilometres as your average cabbie. Silvey explained that Evo Car Share is owned by the B.C. Automobile Association, which is a nonprofit organization. So any savings that Evo achieves as a result of using the Toyota Prius c are reinvested back into the operation to enhance members’ experiences. This includes adding bike racks and ski racks to all of its vehicles. The savings are also reinvested in more parking spaces. “We build the overall Prius c package to suit the Vancouver lifestyle,” Silvey said. “Convenience in free-f loating car-sharing is of high importance because you need maximum convenience for it to be a useful service. So we invest in that convenience.” -

BOOKS

Spring brings fresh reads > BY BR IA N LYNCH

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ovely weather we’re having! Seriously, if you’re feeling like this spring has been little more than a dank grey offramp from a miserably icy winter, you can always take shelter in one of the fine books coming out now. Here are just a few of the many options. ICE GHOSTS: THE EPIC HUNT FOR THE LOST FRANKLIN EXPEDITION

(By Paul Watson; McClelland & Stewart) Pulitzer-winning war reporter Paul Watson has seen much of the world, along with many of our species’ murkiest motives, while writing about conflicts everywhere from the Balkans to Iraq and Angola. Here, he recounts an Arctic drama older than Canada itself, unfolding in “one of the last places left on our planet that holds out, as long as it can, refusing to bow to human will�. The Coquitlam-based Watson was the only journalist aboard the Canadian icebreaker that solved a 169-year-old mystery in 2014, when it located the wreck of the Erebus, one of two ships that vanished during the famously ill-fated Franklin Expedition of 1845 to chart the Northwest Passage. It’s a tale with a dozen fascinating strands, among them the long, strange history of searches for the lost ships, as well as the combination of science and indigenous knowledge that led to the discovery. Not to mention the attempt by then prime minister Stephen Harper to use the event for political ends—a turn that eventually convinced Watson to resign from his long-held post at the Toronto Star. GUTENBERG’S FINGERPRINT: PAPER, PIXELS AND THE LASTING IMPRESSION OF BOOKS (By

Merilyn Simonds; ECW) “Words are the constant,� Merilyn Simonds observes of the present revolutionary

moment in reading, “with paper on one shore, pixels on the other.� As a self-identified member of one of the “last generations to grow up in an entirely paper world�, the Kingston author of the celebrated 1996 novel The Convict Lover sets out to test the waters in between, with a multifaceted memoir about creating two versions of the same book: one a volume made by hand-operated letter press, the other a digital edition. “Technologies come and go,� she writes. “What is eternal, it seems, is the human craving for story.� I say read this one in hardcover. But that’s just me. Due out April 11. AMERICAN

WAR

(By Omar El Akkad; McClelland & Stewart) If you think our southern neighbours are at each other’s throats now‌ Omar El Akkad’s unnerving debut novel describes the Second American Civil War of 2074, just a couple of short decades after “the planet turned on the country and the country turned on itself.â€? Drones fill the skies and political boundaries shift with a turbulence equal to the environmental chaos that has recast the country’s coastlines, sinking them under rising oceans. El Akkad— who was born in Cairo and now lives in Portland, and who spent years based in Canada as an acclaimed journalist covering the Arab Spring, Guantanamo, and the Black Lives Matter movement— engages in the time-honoured novelists’ practice of projecting a dark future to reflect light back onto the present. Due out April 4.

WHERE IT HURTS (By Sarah De Leeuw; NeWest) This collection of personal essays f lickers back and forth between memory and experience, as the award-winning B.C. writer and poet traces vanishings of many kinds: the fading of industrial-town streets, the shifting recollections of distant childhood, the death of a friend, the disappearance of women along the infamous Highway of Tears. “You are in northern British Columbia,� De Leeuw writes at one point of the landscape where she lives. “Nowhere most of the world will ever go. A land bordering on the lost. An unseen. A beyond cities, a far outside the imaginings of most.� The breadth of the insight and language here is unsurprising. Before becoming a professor and health researcher at UNBC, De Leeuw was a tugboat driver and a loggingcamp cook. Due out April 1. LASER MOOSE AND RABBIT BOY

(By Doug Savage; Amp! Comics) These are perilous times, for sure. What to do when faced with swordwielding aliens? Or, worse, a mutant bear coated in fish scales, or a diabolically powerful mechanical squirrel? To find out, read the stirring adventures in this truly funny debut graphic novel by Vancouver’s Doug Savage, creator of the long-running online comic Savage Chickens. The superhero team of Laser Moose (ever vigilant, able and far too ready to shoot slicing red beams from his eyes) and diminutive sidekick Rabbit Boy (ever fluff y, wielding the superpower of—well, of just a really positive outlook on life) makes sure that all is right in the forest at the end. Big-hearted, dotty fun for kids from eight to 11 and pretty much everyone else. -

Carleigh Baker nimbly switches tone and focus, from sympathetic to satirical, in the refreshing, off-kilter short stories of her debut collection, Bad Endings.

Flawed human nature creates comic Endings REV IEW BAD ENDINGS By Carleigh Baker. Anvil, 168 pp, softcover

Vancouver’s

Carleigh

Baker

2 commands attention with “War

of Attrition�, the opening story (of 15) in her debut collection, Bad Endings. In it, Corinna, a woman “at the bottom of the food chain�, decides to leave her husband because, she explains, she just doesn’t feel like making the marriage work. In sudden need of a steady income, she takes a job distributing newspapers at a SkyTrain station and listens to a deluge of bitter life advice from her rival Lana, a Ukrainian mail-order bride. Sharp, darkly comic, and intriguing as a vignette, “War of Attrition� is matched perfectly by the closer, “Moosehide�. While on a canoeing trip near the Arctic Circle, an accountant couple expect to become the envy of their urban friends. Instead, they’re bored and fatigued, and all they notice is “the same shit we’ve seen for the last week: stunted trees, exfoliated hills, mud�. The spark in their otherwise soggy romance is reignited in the story’s fi nal pages, when they realize that they

S T R A IG H T STARS >>> good effort forward but don’t apply go of a preconceived judgment, and unnatural force. What is meant to be allow time to do its thing. hursday brings the second will be. Saturn retrograde, starting CANCER of three big-push initiatives Wednesday, will make sure of that! June 21–July 22 from Jupiter and Pluto. Their ARIES Jupiter/Pluto can prompt first meet-up was back in March 20–April 20 a breakthrough in consciousness or November, and their final duke-it-out Along with a fresh boost present circumstance. You’ll now hit a will happen at the start of August. This lengthy breakdown-to-breakthrough of determination and energy, Jupiter/ next level or phase regarding this sorttransit takes aim at the reality we face Pluto provides you with plenty of ex- it-out cycle, but there’s still much more but also—and more importantly—the tra incentive. Mercury into Taurus, to get through and more time to put sound barrier that keeps a lock on the starting Friday, gives you something in. To your benefit, both Mercury into workings of our outmoded rationale, more to go on. Venus on a revisit to Taurus, starting Friday, and Venus on justification, fear, and habitual re- Pisces keeps the potential very much a revisit of Pisces on Sunday help you sponse. Jupiter/Pluto is not working on alive. Monday onward, it’s all systems to make better inroads. an overnight punch clock but on the go. Wednesday is great for action. SatLEO urn retrograde changes the format or overtime shift. July 22–August 23 Mercury leaves Aries on Friday, but shifts the priority. On Thursday, a revisit, reonly for a temporary spell. For the next TAURUS think, and change of plans, priorities, three weeks, Mercury in Taurus puts April 20–May 21 or focus is productive. Too, Jupiter/ even more focus on money matters, There’s more than the aver- Pluto could see you back out, or peressential needs, and survival issues. The transit gives us something more age riding on the now. Yes, there’s sub- haps another could do so. Don’t dwell; substantial to work with and for. Take stantial working it out to be done. One you have enough to fill up on. Friday note; get your taxes done ASAP. By way or another, Mercury into Taurus, through Monday, go slow and with April 9, Mercury will begin a retro- starting Friday, is mobilizing. Watch the flow. Tuesday/Wednesday, intuigrade cycle. By April 20, Mercury will for something fresh or added to set tion is your best guide. The start of wheels in motion or for someone key Saturn retrograde late Wednesday fire it up again in Aries. Venus backtracks into Pisces on to act as a catalyst. Both Mercury and gets something more up and running. Sunday to finish her retrograde tour Venus retrograde, on a revisit of Pisces, VIRGO in this sign. Venus retrograde in Pis- offer you a significant reboot. August 23–September 23 ces works at several levels at the same GEMINI Thursday can move you time. Firstly, it calls for a review of our May 21–June 21 past a mindset or pressure point, and/ ideals and our projected expectations. A change of heart, mind, or or gets something out of your way. Are hope and faith well placed? To the plus or minus, Venus retrograde perspective sets you onto a fresh track. Mercury into Taurus, starting Friday, in Pisces is exposing. It can pull back Jupiter/Pluto can remove a doubt or helps you to gain a better even keel. You the curtain on the nature of illusions uncertainty; your better choice or op- should see improved overall progress. and personal deceptions or it can juice tion becomes more obvious. Mercury Activities and conversations deliver up a great potential, one that is worth into Taurus, starting Friday, also gives the goods. It’s an on-the-go/take-carereaching for. How can you tell the dif- you more to go on. As of Sunday, Venus of-it weekend. Venus on a revisit to Pisference? Follow the natural flow. Put calls for you to adjust expectations, let ces can put you back in touch.

> BRETT JOSEF GRUBISIC

> BY ROSE MARCUS

March 30 to April 5, 2017

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can quit early and leave the reputedly enchanting wilderness behind. Between those tales, Baker nimbly switches tone and focus. She’s sympathetic when observing a jaded guy (newly out of detox) who works at a suicide-prevention hotline and falls off the wagon seeking cocaine so that he can get laid. To a woman freshly out of the psych ward, whose family visit makes her realize she’s “totally not ready for the real world�, she offers the gift of dignity. There’s an amusing air of satire when Baker traces the steps of a woman who feels “like a thirty-yearold divorcee� (which, technically, she is) and who fights for bargain shoes at the Holt Renfrew sale, and when the author describes a new couple (with stillactive Tinder accounts) reaching the end of their affair. And, in “Read These Postcards in a Gonzo Journalist Voice�, Baker injects a welcome playfulness that also showcases literary chops. Often working with conventional subjects like love, connection, loss, and purpose, Baker offers refreshing or offkilter perspectives on them. Her characters possess an abundance of hardluck stories, true, but she writes them as sometimes wrong and sometimes foolish and hence eminently human in their fallibility.

LIBRA

September 23–October 23

Jupiter in Libra produces a big push or big release on Thursday. As of Friday, Mercury into Taurus puts more attention on the money side of things and also on “Is it worth it?� Although better stick-to-it is the right aim, Venus retrograde in Pisces, starting Sunday, keeps life on a floating barge for now. Saturn retrograde, starting Wednesday, shifts or redirects you/it.

SCORPIO

SAGITTARIUS

October 23–November 22

Don’t prejudge or preplan. Thursday/Friday, things have a way of sorting themselves out. One way or another, Mercury into Taurus, starting Friday, will get you reconnected. There is something more to work through or someone to prod. Know the week ahead will move you past a major hurdle. It’s a natural progression. Take it one day at a time. November 22–December 21

Thursday/Friday, Jupiter brings it up to speed and/or plugs you back in socially. Your best picks and plays can become more obvious. Mercury into Taurus, starting Friday, helps you to make better inroads regarding work, health, and problem-solving. It’s a short window; make good use of your time. Sunday onward, Venus powers up your feelers (sensory, intuitive, emotional responses). Wednesday is optimal for action.

☞

CAPRICORN

AQUARIUS

PISCES

December 21–January 20

More cooperative effort or delegating is in order Thursday/Friday. For the next 10 days, Mercury helps you to get a better handle on it and to hold yourself steady where it counts the most. Saturday through mid next week, ride it out; don’t force. Venus and Saturn call for you to ease up—on it and on yourself. January 20–February 18

Something new can be growing, even if it’s only a fresh perspective. Thursday’s Jupiter/Pluto launches a next phase. As of Friday, Mercury into Taurus makes the time ripe. Sunday onward, Venus begins to add more colour, shape, and form to the budding potential. Resourcefulness increases. Go by feel Monday/ Tuesday. Despite Saturn’s switch back, Wednesday shows good promise. February 18–March 20

Jupiter/Pluto gets the ball rolling Thursday/Friday, perhaps unexpectedly. You could spend more time or dollars than you had planned, but you are likely to find it is worth the extra. As of Sunday, Venus retrograde revisits Pisces. You’ll feel it as an energy, activity, and attention booster. Sunday to Wednesday, you’re a dynamo. Rely on instinct and intuition. B o o k a re a d i n g o r s i g n u p f o r Rose’s free monthly newsletter at www.rosemarcus.com/astrolink/.

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 11

March 30 to Y R R C H E SOM April 23 BLOIS VA L

2017

R E V U VA NC O F ES T

Check out our online Neighbourhood Maps for the best cherry blossom viewing locations!

Blossom Bliss & Sakura V Lunch Boxes Cherry blossom curated lunch boxes perfect for your PoP-Up Picnic and at all feature events listed below! +tax Pre-order online now!

$20

FREE

Photo By Adam m Smith

March 30 at Burrard SkyTrain Station, 12-1:30pm With Uzume Taiko and South Asian Arts - Also playing at Sakura Days FREE

Spring Lights Illumination / Les Lumières du Printemps A Canada 150 Event / Célébrez le 150e anniversaire du Canada April 14/15 or 21/22, From 8-10pm / Ce spectacle commencera vers 8 heures (apres le couche du soleil) et terminera a 10 heures"

With Photo by Ev E an Chen h

Cherry Jam Downtown Concert

With photo by LO LOBO

The Big Picnic

Raffle $10/ticket

April 15 OR April 22 at Queen Elizabeth h Pa P Park, 12-3pm Everyone's invited! FREE

Bike the Blossoms B sssoms

Saturday TBD, Sa D, meet at John Hendry Park k

A chance to win economy class Air Canada roundtrip tickets for 2 to Japan!

With photo ho by Melissa Bruntlett

FREE

Available at all events

Check VCBF.CA for latest updates as venues and dates a are subject to o change, pending b bloom.

VCBF.CA

12 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

# vancherryblossomfest

Celebrating Japanese food, arts, and culture in Vancouver

Saturday April 8 11am to 7pm Sunday April 9 11am to 5pm VanDusen Botanical Garden 37th & Oak

Details and tickets at: japanfairvancouver.com

SAKURA LANTERN PROCESSION SATURDAY APRIL 8 FROM 6:30PM Japanese festival food, Performing Arts, Sake tasting, Tea ceremony, Cooking demos, Children’s Tent

Advance tickets available online or at VanDusen Garden

japanfairvancouver.com

#SDJF

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 13

LIFESTYLE

Like these examples at Stanley Park last year, studio Hfour will offer a West Coast take on the Japanese tradition of welcoming the spring amid the flowering of cherry trees. Lukasz Szczepanski photos.

Cherry Blossom Festival illuminates Light, music, dancers, and more will elevate this year’s blossoms beyond mere viewing into immersive art > B Y A LEX A NDER VA R TY

C

herry-blossom viewing must be some kind of Zen, contemplative thing, right? Well, yes and no. “The traditional idea of it being a meditative and thoughtful experience is kind of like cultural propaganda, for lack of a proper term,” says Stuart Ward of Hfour, the “experiential studio” responsible for lighting up Vancouver’s annual Cherry Blossom Festival. “You go to Japan during cherry-blossom season, and go to Ueno Park, the biggest park in Tokyo, and there will be a million people in that park, literally, and everybody is picnicking and getting drunk. “The tranquillity and peacefulness,” he adds, “comes when you’ve had too much to drink and all you can do is lie down and stare up at the trees.” You can’t buy a beer from a vending machine in Vancouver, at least not yet, and brown-baggers in our public parks are subject to seizure and a scolding, or worse, from the local constabulary. And while an unusually harsh West Coast winter has many pining for a piña colada under the spring sun, Ward is not advocating going over the legal limit while scoping out the pink blooms of Prunus serrulata. But he and Hfour plan to make the annual cherry bloom somewhat more exciting than simply watching the petals bud, blossom, and fall. “The core idea of tranquillity and cherry-blossom viewing at night, yozakura, is about taking a moment to reflect on the shortness of life, the ephemerality of all things,” says Ward. “We’ve taken that, and created an experience around illuminating the cherry blossoms. In Japan, they set up spotlights in the trees; they’re basically high-powered bulbs that illuminate the blossoms

in white light, or yellowish-white light, so that people can see them. But, doing projection and light art, I was inspired by the blossoms as a potential canvas for projections and illumination, and decided ‘Oh, we should see if we could take the core idea of cherry-blossom viewing at night and transform it into a more artful experience—a more experiential thing than just having some food and drinks under the illuminated trees.’ So we’ll have colourful light, projected light, a team of dancers led by a choreographer [Heather Laura Gray], and a soundtrack related to spring that we’ll be playing in an ambient way. It’s a celebration of the arrival of spring from a West Coast, multicultural perspective.”

A MAP

FOR FLORAL SNAPS

cherry-blossom season is imminent, and with it 2 Vancouver’s comes an opportunity to capture some seriously gorgeous shots

of our city in full bloom. To help residents make the most of the occasion, which will kick off alongside the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival on March 30, the Vancouver park board has put together a handy map presenting the best spots in the city to find the pretty pink-and-white petals. The map includes the addresses of over 2,100 cherry trees in Metro Vancouver as well as in municipalities such as Agassiz and Chilliwack. “Festival favourite” locations (a.k.a. the most photogenic sites) are marked by red pins, while others are marked by blue ones. Users may search cherry-tree scenes by their preferred neighbourhood, cultivar, or a combination of both. Each spot is accompanied by a time frame in which the trees there are expected to flower, though these dates were drawn from the 2016 season. Given Vancouver’s unusually long winter, this year’s cherry blossoms may begin flowering at later dates. The full map may be viewed at maps.vcbf.ca/map/. “Cherry scouts” will also be updating the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s Blooming Now page with images of budding sites. Taking place from March 30 to April 23, this year’s Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival features a number of concerts, workshops, and art exhibitions happening around town. > LUCY LAU

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Having previously lived in Japan for “half a decade”, Ward is happy to tell us about the origins of cherryblossom viewing. It began, he explains, as a rural and somewhat bacchanalian custom honouring the disappearance of snow on the mountain passes. Think The Rite of Spring, but with kimonos. “No people could come or go from their village for the duration of winter,” he says, “so the melting of the snow and the arrival of the cherry blossoms was a big celebration. ‘Oh, we can go and visit the neighbouring village again. We can go and engage in commerce and trade again.’ ” What Ward can’t tell you is just when or even where his Spring Lights Illumination event will take place.

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Forecasting the annual bloom has always been an inexact science, and this year’s wacky weather patterns haven’t helped. Fortunately, Hfour and the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival have a secret weapon. “We were initially planning on doing March 31 and April 1, at Queen Elizabeth Park—but, as you can tell by the weather, that’s definitely not happening,” he reveals. “But there’s this guy, Joseph [Lin]. He’s an elderly gentleman, and from about February on he’s got a series of plum trees and early-blooming cherry trees, and for the past couple of decades he’s been monitoring them. Like clockwork, when they start to bloom he can map out the bloom of every other grove in the city. “We got information from Joseph that the Easter long weekend was probably going to be okay,” he adds. “And then we got more information that that is still too early, and we should be targeting the 21st and 22nd of April, so it keeps getting pushed back a little bit.” Keep an eye on the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival website for a definitive announcement, he suggests. And watch the festival in future years for even more reasons to get outside, at night, under colourful trees. “I’m hoping that this becomes a cultural thing in the city,” Ward says. “‘Oh, it’s spring and the cherry blossoms are out. Let’s go to the illuminations! Wonder where that’s happening this year?’ And ideally, it’ll be on for the entire duration of the bloom.” The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival takes place at various locations from Thursday (March 30) to April 23. For a full schedule and breaking blossom news, visit www.vcbf.ca/.

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Preparing for the pink bloom

“One thing that sets us apart from other festivals is that we actively engage people,” Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival founder Linda Poole says by phone. “Initially, we were known as the quietest and most contemplative festival… but to keep everyone’s interest, I keep having to create new things. So we’ve gradually become a little bit noisier, but I still think it all goes back to the cherry blossoms.” Inclement weather means that the 2017 edition of the VCBF, which runs until April 23, might be well under way before the first cherry flowers show their pretty pink heads. Here, though, are three ways to whet your anticipation for the big bloom to come: • The free Cherry Jam Downtown Concert, at the Burrard SkyTrain concourse Thursday (March 30), offers groups such as Uzume Taiko and Son de Maple in concert, under indoor trees that might be immune to the wet weather outside. Why Son de Maple, which plays the music of western Mexico? The VCBF is not a celebration of Japanese culture, says Poole, but “a celebration of beauty”.

• Submit your own 17-syllable poem to the Haiku Invitational, a VCBF–sponsored online-publishing initiative. (Enter here: www.vcbf.ca/.) This year’s theme is freedom, and you might be surprised how much the three-line format allows. • According to Poole, Vancouver is home to “43,000 cherry trees and 54 different cultivars”, with the most popular being the Kwanzan cherry, a variety first bred in China. Learn more cherry facts via the VCBF’s Tree Talks & Walks, scheduled to take place at various Vancouver parks once the bloom begins. Again, see www.vcbf.ca/ for dates and times. > ALEXANDER VARTY

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Sakura-season food flowers multiculturally From a gala dinner to bento boxes, this year’s Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival will offer beauty to please the eye and tastebuds

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efore he moved to Canada’s West trout aburi with avocado mousse, puffed nori, Coast during elementary school, and ikura). Look, too, for gelato art resembling Nobu Ochi spent several afternoons in various types of nigiri and maki by Bella Gelathis native Kyoto going to the park with eria’s James Coleridge. his grandmother. He remembers how the cherry It’s the first year Sakura Night has featured blossoms in spring would the participation of nonblanket the ground in pink. Japanese chefs. The executive chef of West “The majority of restauVancouver’s Zen Japanese rants in the city use Asian Gail Johnson Restaurant is as much in awe ingredients, and that’s what of the iconic trees now as he was then. the cherry-blossom festival is: it’s multiculturOchi is one of several local chefs who will al,” Ochi says. “It’s a way for everyone to apprebe cooking for the Sakura Night Gala, one ciate and experience the beauty of the flowers.” of many highlights of the Vancouver Cherry Now in its 11th year, the festival got its start Blossom Festival. because of Vancouver resident Linda Poole’s “In Japan, the season is about family and own appreciation of the spectacular trees. The friends getting together and spreading out a founder of the festival left the city for several big blanket under the cherry blossoms,” Ochi years beginning in the early ’90s while her tells the Georgia Straight by phone. “Everyone husband was with the foreign service. During brings food, and the adults bring sake, and it’s the pair’s travels, from the Middle East to the a big outing. People just sit and enjoy. That’s Caribbean, Poole met a Japanese ambassador what the whole spirit of it is, and that’s what who told her about his home country’s festival. we’re trying to portray at Sakura Night.” “I was away from cherry blossoms for 13 The gala—which takes place at the Stanley years, living in hot countries where I never saw Park Pavilion on Sunday (April 2)—raises funds a cherry blossom,” Poole says by phone. “I so for the annual arts-and-culture festival and will missed them.…He didn’t have to say anything feature food from eight local chefs. Ochi will more. I just said to myself, ‘When I get back be preparing several dishes, among them three home, I’m going to do this.’ types of temaki, or hand-rolled cone, including “When I came home, that first spring, noone of the most popular variations from Zen, body else seemed to be noticing it [the cherry which was the first Japanese spot in the city blossoming], and it really bothered me,” she to become certified by the Vancouver Aquar- adds. “Now people notice the beauty. They stop ium’s Ocean Wise program. The cone consists in their tracks and look up.” of tangy wild sockeye salmon, won-ton chips, The festival offers an array of activities and seven-spice, seaweed, and microgreens. events, including tree-related walks and talks Joining Ochi that evening are, among others, (some in Mandarin) and a haiku-writing compeHapa Izakaya chef Takayuki Sato (whose cre- tition. On April 8 and 9, the Sakura Days Japan ations will include tuna tataki); Benkei Ramen’s Fair takes place at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Taka Omi (tori-shio ramen with cherry blossom); Geared to food lovers are Japanese-cooking Justin Paakkunainen of Prestons Restaurant demonstrations, sake flights, and tea-ceremony Lounge (sake-poached octopus on sesame crisp demonstrations; other highlights include live with cherry-blossom gel); and Ancora Water- music, woodworking, calligraphy, Japanesefront Dining and Patio’s Ricardo Valverde (B.C. garden displays, a lantern procession, and more.

Best Eats

Hungry for nigiri or maki? Surprise—these cool creations are in fact Bella Gelateria’s gelato art that will be available to bite into at Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival’s Sakura Night. James Coleridge photo.

Japadog, Zakkushi, and Ichiyo’s Matcha Bar will be among the on-site food venders. A signature gathering at the festival is the Big Picnic at Queen Elizabeth Park. The date of the city’s largest spring picnic is to be determined, with this year’s unusually harsh winter having delayed the blooms. (Keep an eye on the fest’s website, www.vcbf.ca.) Attendees will have the choice of bringing in their own food or taking the easy route and ordering one of two bento boxes ($20) prepared by Cocktails and Canapes Catering. Blossom Bliss includes a sandwich consisting of furikake-seasoned chicken breast, misomarinated slaw, pickled cucumber, sriracha, and Japanese mayo on a soft egg baguette; a red-and-green kale salad with buckwheat soba noodles, lemongrass cabbage, and grilled zucchini in a peanut dressing; temari sushi; and a white-chocolate square with rose petals. The vegan-friendly and gluten-free Sakura V box, meanwhile, contains the same items

Edible art.

except for the sandwich, which is swapped out for a rice-paper roll with lemongrass cabbage, pickled daikon radish, red and yellow peppers, furikake-spiced tofu noodles, cilantro, and edible flowers. “You can order one of those and take your shoes off and sit on ‘petal mats’, which are tarps that zip up in different ways,” Poole says. “The ground is always wet, so a blanket doesn’t help you much. When you take your shoes off, it feels amazing. You just hang out and chill out. “I remember someone saying that people become chattier and friendlier when the cherry blossom opens,” she adds. “It opens our heart, and we’re more likely to reach out. It’s so true. Come to the Big Picnic and meet some new people and make friends.” Presented by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival takes place at various venues from March 30 to April 23. Full details are at www.vcbf.ca/.

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PRESENTS

COMPAGNIE HERVE KOUBI (FRANCE) WHAT THE DAY OWES TO THE NIGHT

A P R I L 2 0 17 UBC BANDS: (UN)PLUGGED Sat Apr 1, 8pm

Presented by the UBC School of Music The UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble and UBC Concert Winds perform repertoire by Mackey, Bryant, Whitacre, Shapiro and others.

TINARIWEN WITH SPECIAL GUESTS DENGUE FEVER Wed Apr 5, 8pm

Presented by Live Nation This GRAMMY Award winning group of Tuareg musicians from Northern Mali perform songs from their latest album, Elwan. Special guests Dengue Fever.

A SONG OF JOYS: CELEBRATING THE CHAN CENTRE AT 20 Sat Apr 8, 8pm

Presented by the UBC School of Music in partnership with the Chan Centre Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Chan Centre’s opening concert. Mozart’s Requiem and Chatman’s A Song of Joys.

MAX RAABE & PALAST ORCHESTER Sun Apr 9, 7pm

Presented by the Chan Centre The silky-smooth singing voice of Max Raabe—backed by the stylings of the brilliant Palast Orchester—evokes another era: Berlin in the 1920s.

JANE GOODALL: THE BIRTHDAY TOUR Apr 12 + 13, 7:30pm

Presented by the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada Dr. Goodall inspires as she recounts her experiences as a young woman working in the rainforest, and her dedication to youth-led action for sustainable change.

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has historically been dominated by men isn’t a stretch. But when it comes to the present day’s barrier-breaking photoconceptual art that is redefining the medium, women lead the charge. The female artists exhibiting work in the fourth Capture Photography Festival highlight the wide range of artistic responses being made both to and with photography. This year’s theme, Evolving Perspectives, speaks to both the breadth of the work displayed and the optics with which these works are created and perceived. This idea is looked at more closely within Capture’s feature exhibition, Song of the Open Road, named after the Walt Whitman poem. The group exhibit, which examines the notion that what you see is most definitely not what you get, will take place at the Contemporary Art Gallery. In Model Suite (Sliding Door), a large mural installed at the CAG’s Yaletown-Roundhouse Station

Seeking new perspectives

The simulated 360-degree city view in Vikky Alexander’s large installation Model Suite (Sliding Door) summons an earlier, simpler version of Vancouver.

The inspiration for her work—a photograph your voice, then you feel like you’re not taken inside 291, the New York photography galThe massively eclectic Capture Photography Festival really there,” Alexan- lery opened by Stieglitz in 1905—has spurred a number of recent projects by the artist. der says. shows women breaking ground in lens-based art “Sometimes photography is the artwork, but it’s site as part of Song of the Open Road, Vikky Alex- ALSO FEATURED IN Song of the Open Road also the thing used to document an artwork, and ander’s depiction of Vancouver from the confines of is local photo-based installation artist Kelly so I wondered what the value of an installation a real-estate-sales office will likely puzzle present-day Lycan, with a work that continues her study of photograph was,” Lycan says by phone. inhabitants. exhibition history by way of a photograph taken In Nearby Nearby: 291 Burlap Walls, her fasPhotographed in a model suite built to two- by Alfred Stieglitz in 1906. Lycan’s research- cination with the odd interior of the space led to thirds scale at a development on Alberni Street in driven practice seeks to unpack the methodolo- a piece that focuses on a very specific detail con1998, the image’s distinct, interrupted landscapes gies of exchange and transformation that take tained in Stieglitz’s photograph. create a strange dichotomy. place within imagery. see next page “While the suite was on the ground floor, it incorporated backlit images of Vancouver to imply More photography exhibitions to catch around town a view from a higher ground,” Alexander tells the Straight by phone from Montreal. With over 100 showcases, multimedia displays, and public art installations taking “Each image was shot at a different time of day, place in and around Vancouver from April 1 to 28, the Capture Photography Festival and each window gave a completely different view, is Western Canada’s largest celebration of light- and lens-based art. This year’s fourth so you had a 360-degree view of the city and a 24annual event marks a number of firsts for the fete: not only has Capture expanded hour progression of time, just by turning around its borders to include municipalities such as Richmond and New Westminster, it has also opened its this small apartment.” exhibition-submission process to the public, offering anyone with a camera and a vision the chance to The strategic placement of the work near a busy share their work. To help you navigate the mammoth festival, we’ve rounded up three must-see feaSkyTrain station, combined with its reference to tures at this spring’s iteration. a pre-real-estate-boom Vancouver, makes for a viewing experience that will likely have some NO. 3 ROAD ART COLUMNS (At Aberdeen and Lansdowne stations until July 1) Massive photolonging for a simpler time. graphs pasted outside various Canada Line stations (and the Expo Line’s Chinatown-Stadium stop) Of her own work, Alexander says, “I think of the will once again brighten commutes during this year’s Capture, though this time, three new addiphotograph itself as a very slippery medium, with its tions are extending the exhibition past Vancouver. In Richmond, a trio of B.C. artists will present high-gloss surface and implied depth. I gravitate toworks—some dreamy, others startlingly visceral—that spotlight the city’s landscape and natural wards subject matter where this is a feature, such as environment from street-level display cases along No. 3 Road. mirrors and reflections, especially in architecture— as a consequence, there are a lot of visual layers.” WONDER LAND (At Little Mountain Gallery from April 1 to April 30) An exhibition from Capture’s Alexander, a former Vancouverite, is very famopen submission process, Christine Germano’s Wonder Land tackles the issue of climate change iliar with the city’s status as an old boys’ club through a series of raw, double-exposed images. The photographs reveal the warming Earth’s effects among photographers. At the Nova Scotia College on Arctic and tropical areas such as Greenland, Fiji, Norway, and Samoa, demonstrating that greenof Art and Design, which Alexander attended in house-gas emissions and the destruction of natural resources are disturbing all areas of the globe. the ’70s, the photo department was also what the artist calls “a guy zone”. CAPTURE NEW WEST (At Telus Plaza [611 Sixth Street] and UFCW Local 1518 [350 Columbia It wasn’t until she moved to New York that Street] from April 1 to March 31, 2018) Last year, Capture and the City of New Westminster asked Alexander experienced how the influence of other local photographers to submit images that illustrated their interpretations of “traffic”. James Nisuccessful female artists could be valuable for her zam’s Heliographic Scale, a black-and-white shot of an abandoned limestone mine punctuated by own artistic development. bursts of light, and Matthew Brooks’s The Telephone Salesman, a fantastically retro portrait of ’60s “It was really validating to see their work, and and ’70s rotary phones against a backdrop of red shag carpeting, are the results of that request. The always helpful in terms of critical discussion and photographs will be displayed at the Royal City’s Telus Plaza and the United Food and Commercial their professional and technical support,” she Workers building, respectively. says, listing off names like Ellen Brooks, Sherrie > LUCY LAU Levine, Barbara Kruger, and Cindy Sherman. “Everybody wants to feel that they have a voice, and if you don’t see someone representing

2

THINGS TO DO

ARTS High five

Editor’s choice NUU-CHAH-NULTH STORY If all you know of First Nations participation in the First World War comes from embattled author Joseph Boyden’s undeniably gripping novel Three Day Road, here’s a chance to hear that story told from a West Coast, Nuu-chah-nulth perspective. Redpatch, a Hardline production running at Presentation House Theatre until April 9 and then at Studio 16 from April 12 to 16, follows a young mixed-race man from Vancouver Island into battle and beyond, with playwrights Raes Calvert and Sean Harris Oliver drawing on historical records and family legends to bring painful verisimilitude to the stage. Expect a harrowing tale, with not all of the hero’s tribulations coming at the hands of the Boche. -

Five events you just can’t miss this week

1

GENETIC DRIFT (April 5 to 8 at the Fishbowl on Granville Island) Pi Theatre imagines our world after climate change.

2

ANGELS IN AMERICA (To April 23 at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage) Don’t miss the first installment in this epic look at the AIDS era.

3

PACIFIC CROSSINGS (To May 28 at the Vancouver Art Gallery) Marvel at the artistic talent our city gained from Hong Kong.

4

XI XANYA DZAM (April 5 to September 4 at the Bill Reid Gallery) A true who’s who of the movers and shakers in B.C.’s indigenous art scene.

5

THE LOST FLEET (To May 28, 2018, at the Maritime Museum) A hard look at the seizure of 1,200 Japanese-Canadian–owned fishing vessels following Pearl Harbor.

In the news

MONEY FOR MURALS As the Straight went to the printer, city council was poised to provide a major financial injection to the Vancouver Mural Festival. A city staff report recommends that $200,000—more than 40 percent of this year’s $490,000 in Public Art Boost funding—go to Create Vancouver Society, which puts on the event. The staff’s next-largest Public Art Boost recommendation was $60,000 to the grunt gallery. This would “support planning for a dedicated art screen” on the Independent, which is a condo project near the corner of Kingsway and East Broadway. Council was scheduled to vote on this issue on Wednesday (March 29) at the policy and strategic priorities committee meeting. MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 19

Perspectives

from previous page

Using the image, and others like it that she located through the Internet, Lycan photographed five different sections of the burlap walls of Stieglitz’s gallery depicted in the images. She then enlarged her captures and photocopied them on more than 150 machines throughout North America, and, unsurprisingly, found that no two produced the same result. In the installation at the CAG, the photocopies are pasted side by side, in a pixelated swath of lilac, pink, and powder-blue hues that create an atmospheric, almost cloudlike viewing experience. “I think we exist in this perpetual reproduction, and a lot of it is manifested through photographs,” Lycan says. “Photography is how we enlarge ourselves, and how we miniaturize ourselves. We carry images around with us all the time—whether it’s your identification or images in your phone—so I’m fascinated by how we encounter and participate with it.” Using a “provisional method of image-making” like photocopying to create the installation also gives rise to questions of intention: where an archival print would likely be framed, the pieces that compose her work are simply pasted to the gallery wall. Like Alexander, Lycan has felt the effects of participating in a largely male-dominated industry, and she’s made work that specifically responds to the skewed male-to-female ratio she’s experienced. “I made this book where I collected lists of artists’ names from different exhibitions, and then I whited out all the men’s names,” Lycan says. “Of course, the lists at the end are just a few women.” Lycan says the frustration that comes with seeking out space to show work is often coupled with a strange sense of doubt: “I think if you’re a woman, you’re never really sure if you aren’t chosen for something because of you, or the system, so it’s an odd position to be in.”

GUEST SPEAKERS

Richmond’s annual series of talks about art, the city and creating connections between citizens and their communities

THE CHANGING NATURE OF ART GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS THURS, APRIL 6 | 7:00PM JOHN PATKAU // PATKAU ARCHITECTS

WHERE LYCAN HAS extracted a series of images from photographs to create her installation, Kelly Jazvac, another artist in Song of the Open Road, deconstructs an image to challenge its original purpose. Working with salvaged advertisements from billboards, the Toronto-based installation artist responds to images by reframing and manipulating them to extract the revealing material within. “When I see an advertisement, it’s evidence of a lot of different things that are happening in society,” says Jazvac in a telephone interview while visiting Portland, Oregon. In Ambient Advertising, a man and a young boy are seen walking in a

Today’s art galleries and museums seek to engage, motivate and inspire a 21st century audience that challenges our cultural institutions to become more agile, flexible and creative in the way that they present content. Patkau Architects’ vast portfolio includes the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Ontario, Audain Art Museum in Whistler, Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver and Thunder Bay Art Gallery. John Patkau’s designs over the years reflect the evolution of the art gallery and museum from being spaces for the display and preservation of objects toward new places of cultural commons. patkau.ca This talk will be preceded by Richmond-based tar and sitar player, Ali 3B[NJ. Richmond City Hall Council Chambers 6911 No. 3 Road FREE, but seating limited. Please RSVP to lulu@richmond.ca MAY 4 Eric & Mia Interdisciplinary Artists Calgary, AB richmond.ca/luluseries

20 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

“Aguirre is shedding light on experiences that are difficult —and necessary—to share.” - COLIN THOMAS, COLINTHOMAS.CA

“...triumphant.” - NOW MAGAZINE

In #haunted_hunted, Secwepemc artist Tania Willard reflects on the erasure of First Nations identities through intrusions on unceded territories.

serene landscape of rolling hills and a big, open sky. Jazvac has meticulously cut the large vinyl image into strips, so that, in its previous iteration at an exhibit in Toronto, viewers were invited to walk through it. At the CAG, the black-and-white image is cut further into sections to fit into the window boxes on the exterior of the gallery. For Jazvac, the contents of the photograph mean something entirely different when viewed in the context of an advertisement. “I was really interested in it because it’s such a reinforcement of a sublime landscape, and the use of an image of nature to sell something else,” says Jazvac. “I frequently see this romanticized interaction between one figure in a big, remote, pristine landscape, which can be a problematic representation.” Jazvac hopes that some of the implied romance is interrupted by her manipulations. Interruption is a strategy she employs frequently with images that, as advertisements, are quick to pull viewers in without concern. As art, however, they create space for conversation about the intention behind the imagery. “When we walk into a public space, we’re surrounded by images, and of course they have an impact on how we see ourselves, and how we see others,” she says. Strongly identifying as a feminist, Jazvac is constantly confronted by the way women are represented in advertisements, and she’ll address those confrontations in an upcoming Toronto exhibit that is “very much focused on the representation of gender”. “I see these legacies and histories of violence, of colonialism, of sexism, embedded in these advertisements, so if we can look from a different angle at the images that we’re surrounded with constantly, I think that’s a productive exercise,” she says. In the context of the contemporary art world, Jazvac doesn’t deny that

sexism is real, and hopes that, with growing initiatives to show work from more people outside of the mostly white, mostly male demographic, a more equal sharing of gains, exposure, representation, ideas, and public discourse will result. TANIA WILLARD, whose work is featured at the South Granville entrance of the Waterfront Canada Line station as part of Capture’s public-art initiative, also plays with the combination of landscape and figure, but in a way that’s much more specific to the location and person pictured. An indigenous interdisciplinary artist and curator hailing from the Secwepemc (Shuswap) First Nation, Willard lives on a reserve five hours outside of Vancouver, near Chase, B.C. For her work, #haunted_hunted, photographed by Aaron Leon, Willard reflects on how the persistent intrusion upon and development of unceded indigenous territory contributes to the erasure of First Nations identities. Willard’s images speak to two distinct narratives. The first shows a figure, the artist, draped in a sheet bearing appropriated Sante Fe–inspired designs, set against the backdrop of her reserve. In the background, the twinning of Highway 1 takes place. In the second, the same figure wears the sheet again, this time against a plain white backdrop inside the reserve’s hall. Where Willard’s cloaked figure seems to haunt the land in one image, it disappears into the whiteness of the backdrop in the other. “A number of ancestral remains had been found—and continue to be found—in the highway twinning process. There was always this backdrop to the development that unearths our ancestors,” says Willard over the phone from her home. “But I was also thinking about my own invisibility as a mother, as someone who chose to live on the reserve, see page 27

For full festival programming, visit capturephotofest.com

Event Highlights Saturday, April 1 | 12–6 PM

Saturday, April 8 | 1:30 PM

[LAUNCH]

[TOUR]

CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL & FEATURE EXHIBITION LAUNCH

KAREN ZALAMEA: OUTDOOR EXHIBITION TOUR

Contemporary Art Gallery 555 Nelson Street, Vancouver

FREE | RSVP TO RSVP@CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

FREE | FOOD AND DRINK PLUS ARTISTS

Sunday, April 9, 16 & 23 | 2–4 PM

IN ATTENDANCE FROM 4–6 PM

[TOUR]

Sunday, April 2 | 3 PM

ON AND OFF THE ROAD: CANADA LINE PUBLIC ART TOUR

[TALK]

PANEL DISCUSSION: LEWIS BALTZ

1501 West Broadway, Vancouver

Waterfront Canada Line Station 601 West Cordova St, Vancouver

Griffin Art Projects 1174 Welch St, North Vancouver

FREE | RSVP TO RSVP@CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

FREE

Tuesday, April 11 | 6 PM

[DOORS 5 PM]

[SPEAKER SERIES]

Tuesday, April 4 | 6 PM

[DOORS 5 PM]

ALINKA ECHVERRÍA Inform Interiors 50 Water St, Vancouver

[SPEAKER SERIES]

ALEX MORRISON IN CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTOS DIKEAKOS

FREE | RSVP TO INFO@INFORMINTERIORS.COM

Inform Interiors 50 Water St, Vancouver

Thursday, April 13 | 6:50 PM [TOUR]

FREE | RSVP TO INFO@INFORMINTERIORS.COM

Thursday, April 6 | 12:15–12:45 PM [TOUR]

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD: EXHIBITION TOUR

JOSEPH STAPLES: OUTDOOR EXHIBITION TOUR Capture Photography Festival Office 305 Cambie St, Vancouver FREE | RSVP TO RSVP@CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

Contemporary Art Gallery 555 Nelson St, Vancouver

Tuesday, April 18 | 6 PM [DOORS 5 PM]

FREE

Ema Peter in conversation with Mark Busse

[SPEAKER SERIES]

clockwise LEWIS BALTZ, NEVADA: ELEMENT #6 (NEW CONSTRUCTION, SHADOW MOUNTAIN), 1977 © THE LEWIS BALTZ TRUST COURTESY OF GALLERY LUISOTTI, SANTA MONICA COLLECTION OF DAVID KNAUS ALINKA ECHEVERRÍA, PRECESSION OF THE FEMININE, 2015

DIGESTING ARCHITECTURE: THE BUILT WORLD AND THE PHOTOGRAPH Inform Interiors 50 Water St, Vancouver FREE | RSVP TO INFO@INFORMINTERIORS.COM

KAREN ZALAMEA, VITRINE, 2017 SERIES OF 14 PHOTOGRAPHS ON VINYL CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

Major Supporting Sponsor

Media Sponsors Supporting Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Contributing Sponsors

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 21

Exhibition Highlights

Public Art APRIL 8 to MAY 6, 2017

FRED HERZOG SELECTIONS FROM MODERN COLOUR

April 1–June 18 Vikky Alexander, Robert Arndt, Gerard Byrne, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguy̋n, Kelly Jazvac, Kelly Lycan, Niamh O’Malley, Dawit L. Petros, Greg Staats, Lisa Tan

BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB

INDUSTRIOGLYPHS

BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation 944 Burrard St, Vancouver

King Edward Canada Line Station Georgia Straight and Capture Photography Festival Canada Line Competition Station

April 1–23 Barb Choit, Anne Collier, Annette Kelm, Evan Lee

April–September Owen Murray

INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

Marine Drive Station

Pattison Outdoor Billboards FOR BILLBOARD LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April–September Alejandro Cartagena

CARPOOLERS

A HORSE LED TO WATER

Art Rental & Sales 1st Floor Annex, Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby St, Vancouver

VITRINE South Granville Neighbourhood

CURATED BY

FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April 1–28 Joseph Staples

FALUN SERIES Gastown Neighbourhood FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

Vancouver City Centre Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1–28 Rui Nunes

OFFSHORE – HYUNDAI PATRIOT April–September Ron Tran

Woodward’s Atrium Floor 111 West Hastings St, Vancouver

FRUIT TREE Olympic Village Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Matthew Brooks

Charles H. Scott Gallery

THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN

April–September Julian Hou

CHINTZWARE Broadway–City Hall Canada Line Station CURATED BY

Artspeak

UFCW Local 1518 Building 350 Columbia St, New Westminster April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 James Nizam

HELIOGRAPHIC SCALE TELUS Plaza 611 Sixth St, New Westminster

22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

I, VOLUME 1 April 5–June 5 Xuefeng Li

Art Beatus 108-808 Nelson St, Vancouver

JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND EDWARD HOPPER

clockwise MARIAN PENNER BANCROFT, PARASOL, 2016, C-PRINT, 20” x 20”

April 21–May 28 Naveen Naqvi

THERE, THERE Remington Gallery 108 East Hastings St, Vancouver

GREG GIRARD, EMPTY SIGN, 1982 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT, 28” x 38” COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MONTE CLARK GALLERY KELLY LYCAN, NEARBY NEARBY, 291 BURLAP WALLS, 2015 COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, DOCUMENTATION: TONI HAFKENSCHEID ELIZABETH ZVONAR, SPRINGTIME, 2017

April 7–May 13 Tom Richardson

REHEARSAL FOR A SYNTHETIC THEATRE

On until April 15 Marian Penner Bancroft

GROWING AND RISING

Granville South Canada Line Entrance

I ATTEMPT FROM LOVE’S SICKNESS TO FLY, IN VAIN

Burrard Arts Foundation 108 East Broadway, Vancouver

Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford

March 27–June 9 Mark Mizgala

#HAUNTED_HUNTED

April 10–June 2 Victoria Kon

April 22–May 20 Carol Sawyer

FOTOFILMIC ’16

GRAND THEFT TERRA FIRMA

August 2017–January 2018 Christina Dixon & Woojae Kim, Jeff Downer, Patryk Stasieczek

April 1–28 Karen Zalamea

HANDSOME REWARDS

Monte Clark Gallery 105-525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

Group Exhibition

April 1, 2017–March 2018 Alinka Echverría

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

Richmond Art Gallery 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond

UNDER VANCOUVER 1972–1982

TO YOU IT WAS FAST

On until May 7 David Campion & Sandra Shields

Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

April–September Tania Willard

Capture Photography Festival

ALUMINUM LIGHTBOX WITH TRANSMOUNTED TRANSPARENCY

April 9–June 25 Michael Bednar

April 22–May 27 Greg Girard

April 6–May 20 Elizabeth Zvonar

Pendulum Gallery, HSBC Building 855 West Georgia St, Vancouver

Surrey Art Gallery UrbanScreen 13458 107A Ave, Surrey

Stadium–Chinatown SkyTrain Station

UNKNOWN ROAD

MATTHEW BROOKS, THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN, 2017,

Equinox Gallery 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

THE FRASER, LIVING RIVER April 1–30 Jeff Downer

R Space 123 East 8th Ave, Vancouver

CURATED BY

Capture Photography Festival

April–September Jon Rafman

On until May 7 Scenocosme

below

Chernoff Fine Art 265 East 2nd Ave, Vancouver

On until April 14 Group Exhibition

Megan Jones, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

CURATED BY

Emily Marston, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

ALEX MORRISON, BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB, 2017

MODERN COLOUR PHOTO WORKS

MAKING STATUES FOR OVER-60-YEAR-OLDS IN SHENGJING VILLAGE

WESTMEAD, IRELAND, 2011 FROM THE SERIES THE NINE EYES OF GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Access Gallery 222 East Georgia St, Vancouver

Weishan Tan

RENCONTRES IMAGINAIRES

PRECESSION OF THE FEMININE

Waterfront Canada Line Station

GROWING AND RISING

JON RAFMAN, UNKNOWN ROAD, KNOCK KILLUA,

Fred Herzog

New Media Gallery Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St, New Westminster

NPAC ANNUAL PICTURES OF THE YEAR NOMINEES ANNE COLLIER, EYE #1, 2014 PART OF INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

MISS SOLITUDE

West Vancouver Museum 680 17th St, West Vancouver

Duplex Projects 4257 and 4277 Fraser St, Vancouver

BRINK

clockwise

NEW WORKS

BETWEEN DREAMING AND LIVING

On until April 30 David Bowen, Nelamrie du Preez, Miguel Angel Rios, Stefan Tiefengraber, Jacob Tonski

February–July Annie Briard, Paulo Majano, Michael Love

Birthe Piontek

DISTRICT

Gordon Smith

Griffin Art Projects 1174 Welch St, North Vancouver

April–September Stuart McCall

April 22–June 17

Marten Elder

April 1–May 7 Vikky Alexander

Contemporary Art Gallery 555 Nelson St, Vancouver

LEWIS BALTZ, PORTFOLIOS AND SELECTIONS FROM THE COLLECTION OF CLAUDIA BECK AND ANDREW GRUFT

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Alex Morrison

April 8–May 6

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD

On until May 22 Lewis Baltz and others

525 GREAT NORTHERN WAY VANCOUVER BC 604 736 2405 WWW.EQUINOXGALLERY.COM

March 29–May 6 Victor John Penner

RADIAL SYSTEMS

FIELD Contemporary 17 West Broadway, Vancouver April 7–28 Group Exhibition

THE LIND PRIZE

SHIFT

Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver

Victor John Penner / District* *Based on a true story

Curated by Darrin Morrison March 29 to May 6 / 2017 Reception / March 28 / 7 to 9 p.m. Artist Talk / April 15 / 2 p.m. West Vancouver Museum 680 17th Street, West Vancouver westvancouvermuseum.ca

DISTRICT

*

Hey Arthur, this is Eppich, 2016 Archival pigment print 60 x 48 inches 152.4 x 121.9 cm

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23

Exhibition Highlights

Public Art APRIL 8 to MAY 6, 2017

FRED HERZOG SELECTIONS FROM MODERN COLOUR

April 1–June 18 Vikky Alexander, Robert Arndt, Gerard Byrne, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguy̋n, Kelly Jazvac, Kelly Lycan, Niamh O’Malley, Dawit L. Petros, Greg Staats, Lisa Tan

BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB

INDUSTRIOGLYPHS

BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation 944 Burrard St, Vancouver

King Edward Canada Line Station Georgia Straight and Capture Photography Festival Canada Line Competition Station

April 1–23 Barb Choit, Anne Collier, Annette Kelm, Evan Lee

April–September Owen Murray

INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

Marine Drive Station

Pattison Outdoor Billboards FOR BILLBOARD LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April–September Alejandro Cartagena

CARPOOLERS

A HORSE LED TO WATER

Art Rental & Sales 1st Floor Annex, Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby St, Vancouver

VITRINE South Granville Neighbourhood

CURATED BY

FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April 1–28 Joseph Staples

FALUN SERIES Gastown Neighbourhood FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

Vancouver City Centre Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1–28 Rui Nunes

OFFSHORE – HYUNDAI PATRIOT April–September Ron Tran

Woodward’s Atrium Floor 111 West Hastings St, Vancouver

FRUIT TREE Olympic Village Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Matthew Brooks

Charles H. Scott Gallery

THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN

April–September Julian Hou

CHINTZWARE Broadway–City Hall Canada Line Station CURATED BY

Artspeak

UFCW Local 1518 Building 350 Columbia St, New Westminster April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 James Nizam

HELIOGRAPHIC SCALE TELUS Plaza 611 Sixth St, New Westminster

22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

I ATTEMPT FROM LOVE’S SICKNESS TO FLY, IN VAIN Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

I, VOLUME 1 April 5–June 5 Xuefeng Li

Art Beatus 108-808 Nelson St, Vancouver

JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND EDWARD HOPPER

clockwise MARIAN PENNER BANCROFT, PARASOL, 2016, C-PRINT, 20” x 20”

April 21–May 28 Naveen Naqvi

THERE, THERE Remington Gallery 108 East Hastings St, Vancouver

GREG GIRARD, EMPTY SIGN, 1982 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT, 28” x 38” COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MONTE CLARK GALLERY KELLY LYCAN, NEARBY NEARBY, 291 BURLAP WALLS, 2015 COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, DOCUMENTATION: TONI HAFKENSCHEID ELIZABETH ZVONAR, SPRINGTIME, 2017

April 7–May 13 Tom Richardson

REHEARSAL FOR A SYNTHETIC THEATRE

On until April 15 Marian Penner Bancroft

GROWING AND RISING

Granville South Canada Line Entrance

April 10–June 2 Victoria Kon

April 22–May 20 Carol Sawyer

Burrard Arts Foundation 108 East Broadway, Vancouver

Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford

March 27–June 9 Mark Mizgala

#HAUNTED_HUNTED

HANDSOME REWARDS

Monte Clark Gallery 105-525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

FOTOFILMIC ’16

GRAND THEFT TERRA FIRMA

August 2017–January 2018 Christina Dixon & Woojae Kim, Jeff Downer, Patryk Stasieczek

April 1–28 Karen Zalamea

Richmond Art Gallery 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond

UNDER VANCOUVER 1972–1982

Group Exhibition

April 1, 2017–March 2018 Alinka Echverría

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

April 9–June 25 Michael Bednar

April 22–May 27 Greg Girard

TO YOU IT WAS FAST

On until May 7 David Campion & Sandra Shields

Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

April–September Tania Willard

Capture Photography Festival

ALUMINUM LIGHTBOX WITH TRANSMOUNTED TRANSPARENCY

Birthe Piontek

April 6–May 20 Elizabeth Zvonar

Pendulum Gallery, HSBC Building 855 West Georgia St, Vancouver

Surrey Art Gallery UrbanScreen 13458 107A Ave, Surrey

Stadium–Chinatown SkyTrain Station

UNKNOWN ROAD

MATTHEW BROOKS, THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN, 2017,

Equinox Gallery 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

THE FRASER, LIVING RIVER April 1–30 Jeff Downer

R Space 123 East 8th Ave, Vancouver

CURATED BY

Capture Photography Festival

April–September Jon Rafman

On until May 7 Scenocosme

below

Chernoff Fine Art 265 East 2nd Ave, Vancouver

On until April 14 Group Exhibition

Megan Jones, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

CURATED BY

Emily Marston, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

ALEX MORRISON, BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB, 2017

MODERN COLOUR PHOTO WORKS

MAKING STATUES FOR OVER-60-YEAR-OLDS IN SHENGJING VILLAGE

WESTMEAD, IRELAND, 2011 FROM THE SERIES THE NINE EYES OF GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Access Gallery 222 East Georgia St, Vancouver

Weishan Tan

RENCONTRES IMAGINAIRES

PRECESSION OF THE FEMININE

Waterfront Canada Line Station

GROWING AND RISING

JON RAFMAN, UNKNOWN ROAD, KNOCK KILLUA,

Fred Herzog

New Media Gallery Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St, New Westminster

NPAC ANNUAL PICTURES OF THE YEAR NOMINEES ANNE COLLIER, EYE #1, 2014 PART OF INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

MISS SOLITUDE

West Vancouver Museum 680 17th St, West Vancouver

Duplex Projects 4257 and 4277 Fraser St, Vancouver

BRINK

clockwise

NEW WORKS

BETWEEN DREAMING AND LIVING

On until April 30 David Bowen, Nelamrie du Preez, Miguel Angel Rios, Stefan Tiefengraber, Jacob Tonski

February–July Annie Briard, Paulo Majano, Michael Love

DISTRICT

Gordon Smith

Griffin Art Projects 1174 Welch St, North Vancouver

April–September Stuart McCall

April 22–June 17

April 1–May 7 Vikky Alexander

Contemporary Art Gallery 555 Nelson St, Vancouver

LEWIS BALTZ, PORTFOLIOS AND SELECTIONS FROM THE COLLECTION OF CLAUDIA BECK AND ANDREW GRUFT

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Alex Morrison

April 8–May 6 Marten Elder

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD

On until May 22 Lewis Baltz and others

525 GREAT NORTHERN WAY VANCOUVER BC 604 736 2405 WWW.EQUINOXGALLERY.COM

March 29–May 6 Victor John Penner

RADIAL SYSTEMS

FIELD Contemporary 17 West Broadway, Vancouver April 7–28 Group Exhibition

THE LIND PRIZE

SHIFT

Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver

Victor John Penner / District* *Based on a true story

Curated by Darrin Morrison March 29 to May 6 / 2017 Reception / March 28 / 7 to 9 p.m. Artist Talk / April 15 / 2 p.m. West Vancouver Museum 680 17th Street, West Vancouver westvancouvermuseum.ca

DISTRICT

*

Hey Arthur, this is Eppich, 2016 Archival pigment print 60 x 48 inches 152.4 x 121.9 cm

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23

Exhibition Highlights

Public Art APRIL 8 to MAY 6, 2017

FRED HERZOG SELECTIONS FROM MODERN COLOUR

April 1–June 18 Vikky Alexander, Robert Arndt, Gerard Byrne, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguy̋n, Kelly Jazvac, Kelly Lycan, Niamh O’Malley, Dawit L. Petros, Greg Staats, Lisa Tan

BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB

INDUSTRIOGLYPHS

BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation 944 Burrard St, Vancouver

King Edward Canada Line Station Georgia Straight and Capture Photography Festival Canada Line Competition Station

April 1–23 Barb Choit, Anne Collier, Annette Kelm, Evan Lee

April–September Owen Murray

INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

Marine Drive Station

Pattison Outdoor Billboards FOR BILLBOARD LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April–September Alejandro Cartagena

CARPOOLERS

A HORSE LED TO WATER

Art Rental & Sales 1st Floor Annex, Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby St, Vancouver

VITRINE South Granville Neighbourhood

CURATED BY

FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April 1–28 Joseph Staples

FALUN SERIES Gastown Neighbourhood FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

Vancouver City Centre Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1–28 Rui Nunes

OFFSHORE – HYUNDAI PATRIOT April–September Ron Tran

Woodward’s Atrium Floor 111 West Hastings St, Vancouver

FRUIT TREE Olympic Village Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Matthew Brooks

Charles H. Scott Gallery

THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN

April–September Julian Hou

CHINTZWARE Broadway–City Hall Canada Line Station CURATED BY

Artspeak

UFCW Local 1518 Building 350 Columbia St, New Westminster April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 James Nizam

HELIOGRAPHIC SCALE TELUS Plaza 611 Sixth St, New Westminster

22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

I, VOLUME 1 April 5–June 5 Xuefeng Li

Art Beatus 108-808 Nelson St, Vancouver

JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND EDWARD HOPPER

clockwise MARIAN PENNER BANCROFT, PARASOL, 2016, C-PRINT, 20” x 20”

April 21–May 28 Naveen Naqvi

THERE, THERE Remington Gallery 108 East Hastings St, Vancouver

GREG GIRARD, EMPTY SIGN, 1982 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT, 28” x 38” COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MONTE CLARK GALLERY KELLY LYCAN, NEARBY NEARBY, 291 BURLAP WALLS, 2015 COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, DOCUMENTATION: TONI HAFKENSCHEID ELIZABETH ZVONAR, SPRINGTIME, 2017

April 7–May 13 Tom Richardson

REHEARSAL FOR A SYNTHETIC THEATRE

On until April 15 Marian Penner Bancroft

GROWING AND RISING

Granville South Canada Line Entrance

I ATTEMPT FROM LOVE’S SICKNESS TO FLY, IN VAIN

Burrard Arts Foundation 108 East Broadway, Vancouver

Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford

March 27–June 9 Mark Mizgala

#HAUNTED_HUNTED

April 10–June 2 Victoria Kon

April 22–May 20 Carol Sawyer

FOTOFILMIC ’16

GRAND THEFT TERRA FIRMA

August 2017–January 2018 Christina Dixon & Woojae Kim, Jeff Downer, Patryk Stasieczek

April 1–28 Karen Zalamea

HANDSOME REWARDS

Monte Clark Gallery 105-525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

Group Exhibition

April 1, 2017–March 2018 Alinka Echverría

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

Richmond Art Gallery 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond

UNDER VANCOUVER 1972–1982

TO YOU IT WAS FAST

On until May 7 David Campion & Sandra Shields

Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

April–September Tania Willard

Capture Photography Festival

ALUMINUM LIGHTBOX WITH TRANSMOUNTED TRANSPARENCY

April 9–June 25 Michael Bednar

April 22–May 27 Greg Girard

April 6–May 20 Elizabeth Zvonar

Pendulum Gallery, HSBC Building 855 West Georgia St, Vancouver

Surrey Art Gallery UrbanScreen 13458 107A Ave, Surrey

Stadium–Chinatown SkyTrain Station

UNKNOWN ROAD

MATTHEW BROOKS, THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN, 2017,

Equinox Gallery 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

THE FRASER, LIVING RIVER April 1–30 Jeff Downer

R Space 123 East 8th Ave, Vancouver

CURATED BY

Capture Photography Festival

April–September Jon Rafman

On until May 7 Scenocosme

below

Chernoff Fine Art 265 East 2nd Ave, Vancouver

On until April 14 Group Exhibition

Megan Jones, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

CURATED BY

Emily Marston, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

ALEX MORRISON, BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB, 2017

MODERN COLOUR PHOTO WORKS

MAKING STATUES FOR OVER-60-YEAR-OLDS IN SHENGJING VILLAGE

WESTMEAD, IRELAND, 2011 FROM THE SERIES THE NINE EYES OF GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Access Gallery 222 East Georgia St, Vancouver

Weishan Tan

RENCONTRES IMAGINAIRES

PRECESSION OF THE FEMININE

Waterfront Canada Line Station

GROWING AND RISING

JON RAFMAN, UNKNOWN ROAD, KNOCK KILLUA,

Fred Herzog

New Media Gallery Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St, New Westminster

NPAC ANNUAL PICTURES OF THE YEAR NOMINEES ANNE COLLIER, EYE #1, 2014 PART OF INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

MISS SOLITUDE

West Vancouver Museum 680 17th St, West Vancouver

Duplex Projects 4257 and 4277 Fraser St, Vancouver

BRINK

clockwise

NEW WORKS

BETWEEN DREAMING AND LIVING

On until April 30 David Bowen, Nelamrie du Preez, Miguel Angel Rios, Stefan Tiefengraber, Jacob Tonski

February–July Annie Briard, Paulo Majano, Michael Love

Birthe Piontek

DISTRICT

Gordon Smith

Griffin Art Projects 1174 Welch St, North Vancouver

April–September Stuart McCall

April 22–June 17

Marten Elder

April 1–May 7 Vikky Alexander

Contemporary Art Gallery 555 Nelson St, Vancouver

LEWIS BALTZ, PORTFOLIOS AND SELECTIONS FROM THE COLLECTION OF CLAUDIA BECK AND ANDREW GRUFT

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Alex Morrison

April 8–May 6

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD

On until May 22 Lewis Baltz and others

525 GREAT NORTHERN WAY VANCOUVER BC 604 736 2405 WWW.EQUINOXGALLERY.COM

March 29–May 6 Victor John Penner

RADIAL SYSTEMS

FIELD Contemporary 17 West Broadway, Vancouver April 7–28 Group Exhibition

THE LIND PRIZE

SHIFT

Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver

Victor John Penner / District* *Based on a true story

Curated by Darrin Morrison March 29 to May 6 / 2017 Reception / March 28 / 7 to 9 p.m. Artist Talk / April 15 / 2 p.m. West Vancouver Museum 680 17th Street, West Vancouver westvancouvermuseum.ca

DISTRICT

*

Hey Arthur, this is Eppich, 2016 Archival pigment print 60 x 48 inches 152.4 x 121.9 cm

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23

Exhibition Highlights

Public Art APRIL 8 to MAY 6, 2017

FRED HERZOG SELECTIONS FROM MODERN COLOUR

April 1–June 18 Vikky Alexander, Robert Arndt, Gerard Byrne, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguy̋n, Kelly Jazvac, Kelly Lycan, Niamh O’Malley, Dawit L. Petros, Greg Staats, Lisa Tan

BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB

INDUSTRIOGLYPHS

BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation 944 Burrard St, Vancouver

King Edward Canada Line Station Georgia Straight and Capture Photography Festival Canada Line Competition Station

April 1–23 Barb Choit, Anne Collier, Annette Kelm, Evan Lee

April–September Owen Murray

INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

Marine Drive Station

Pattison Outdoor Billboards FOR BILLBOARD LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April–September Alejandro Cartagena

CARPOOLERS

A HORSE LED TO WATER

Art Rental & Sales 1st Floor Annex, Vancouver Art Gallery 750 Hornby St, Vancouver

VITRINE South Granville Neighbourhood

CURATED BY

FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

April 1–28 Joseph Staples

FALUN SERIES Gastown Neighbourhood FOR ARTWORK LOCATIONS, SEE CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

Vancouver City Centre Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1–28 Rui Nunes

OFFSHORE – HYUNDAI PATRIOT April–September Ron Tran

Woodward’s Atrium Floor 111 West Hastings St, Vancouver

FRUIT TREE Olympic Village Canada Line Station CURATED BY

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Matthew Brooks

Charles H. Scott Gallery

THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN

April–September Julian Hou

CHINTZWARE Broadway–City Hall Canada Line Station CURATED BY

Artspeak

UFCW Local 1518 Building 350 Columbia St, New Westminster April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 James Nizam

HELIOGRAPHIC SCALE TELUS Plaza 611 Sixth St, New Westminster

22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

I ATTEMPT FROM LOVE’S SICKNESS TO FLY, IN VAIN Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

I, VOLUME 1 April 5–June 5 Xuefeng Li

Art Beatus 108-808 Nelson St, Vancouver

JOURNEY TO THE WEST AND EDWARD HOPPER

clockwise MARIAN PENNER BANCROFT, PARASOL, 2016, C-PRINT, 20” x 20”

April 21–May 28 Naveen Naqvi

THERE, THERE Remington Gallery 108 East Hastings St, Vancouver

GREG GIRARD, EMPTY SIGN, 1982 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT, 28” x 38” COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MONTE CLARK GALLERY KELLY LYCAN, NEARBY NEARBY, 291 BURLAP WALLS, 2015 COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, DOCUMENTATION: TONI HAFKENSCHEID ELIZABETH ZVONAR, SPRINGTIME, 2017

April 7–May 13 Tom Richardson

REHEARSAL FOR A SYNTHETIC THEATRE

On until April 15 Marian Penner Bancroft

GROWING AND RISING

Granville South Canada Line Entrance

April 10–June 2 Victoria Kon

April 22–May 20 Carol Sawyer

Burrard Arts Foundation 108 East Broadway, Vancouver

Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford

March 27–June 9 Mark Mizgala

#HAUNTED_HUNTED

HANDSOME REWARDS

Monte Clark Gallery 105-525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

FOTOFILMIC ’16

GRAND THEFT TERRA FIRMA

August 2017–January 2018 Christina Dixon & Woojae Kim, Jeff Downer, Patryk Stasieczek

April 1–28 Karen Zalamea

Richmond Art Gallery 7700 Minoru Gate, Richmond

UNDER VANCOUVER 1972–1982

Group Exhibition

April 1, 2017–March 2018 Alinka Echverría

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

April 9–June 25 Michael Bednar

April 22–May 27 Greg Girard

TO YOU IT WAS FAST

On until May 7 David Campion & Sandra Shields

Republic Gallery 3rd Floor, 732 Richards St, Vancouver

April–September Tania Willard

Capture Photography Festival

ALUMINUM LIGHTBOX WITH TRANSMOUNTED TRANSPARENCY

Birthe Piontek

April 6–May 20 Elizabeth Zvonar

Pendulum Gallery, HSBC Building 855 West Georgia St, Vancouver

Surrey Art Gallery UrbanScreen 13458 107A Ave, Surrey

Stadium–Chinatown SkyTrain Station

UNKNOWN ROAD

MATTHEW BROOKS, THE TELEPHONE SALESMAN, 2017,

Equinox Gallery 525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

THE FRASER, LIVING RIVER April 1–30 Jeff Downer

R Space 123 East 8th Ave, Vancouver

CURATED BY

Capture Photography Festival

April–September Jon Rafman

On until May 7 Scenocosme

below

Chernoff Fine Art 265 East 2nd Ave, Vancouver

On until April 14 Group Exhibition

Megan Jones, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

CURATED BY

Emily Marston, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts

No. 3 Road Art Columns Lansdowne and Aberdeen Canada Line Stations

ALEX MORRISON, BRAND NEW ERA SOCIAL CLUB, 2017

MODERN COLOUR PHOTO WORKS

MAKING STATUES FOR OVER-60-YEAR-OLDS IN SHENGJING VILLAGE

WESTMEAD, IRELAND, 2011 FROM THE SERIES THE NINE EYES OF GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Access Gallery 222 East Georgia St, Vancouver

Weishan Tan

RENCONTRES IMAGINAIRES

PRECESSION OF THE FEMININE

Waterfront Canada Line Station

GROWING AND RISING

JON RAFMAN, UNKNOWN ROAD, KNOCK KILLUA,

Fred Herzog

New Media Gallery Anvil Centre, 777 Columbia St, New Westminster

NPAC ANNUAL PICTURES OF THE YEAR NOMINEES ANNE COLLIER, EYE #1, 2014 PART OF INORGANIC SEDUCTIONS

MISS SOLITUDE

West Vancouver Museum 680 17th St, West Vancouver

Duplex Projects 4257 and 4277 Fraser St, Vancouver

BRINK

clockwise

NEW WORKS

BETWEEN DREAMING AND LIVING

On until April 30 David Bowen, Nelamrie du Preez, Miguel Angel Rios, Stefan Tiefengraber, Jacob Tonski

February–July Annie Briard, Paulo Majano, Michael Love

DISTRICT

Gordon Smith

Griffin Art Projects 1174 Welch St, North Vancouver

April–September Stuart McCall

April 22–June 17

April 1–May 7 Vikky Alexander

Contemporary Art Gallery 555 Nelson St, Vancouver

LEWIS BALTZ, PORTFOLIOS AND SELECTIONS FROM THE COLLECTION OF CLAUDIA BECK AND ANDREW GRUFT

April 1, 2017–March 31, 2018 Alex Morrison

April 8–May 6 Marten Elder

SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD

On until May 22 Lewis Baltz and others

525 GREAT NORTHERN WAY VANCOUVER BC 604 736 2405 WWW.EQUINOXGALLERY.COM

March 29–May 6 Victor John Penner

RADIAL SYSTEMS

FIELD Contemporary 17 West Broadway, Vancouver April 7–28 Group Exhibition

THE LIND PRIZE

SHIFT

Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver

Victor John Penner / District* *Based on a true story

Curated by Darrin Morrison March 29 to May 6 / 2017 Reception / March 28 / 7 to 9 p.m. Artist Talk / April 15 / 2 p.m. West Vancouver Museum 680 17th Street, West Vancouver westvancouvermuseum.ca

DISTRICT

*

Hey Arthur, this is Eppich, 2016 Archival pigment print 60 x 48 inches 152.4 x 121.9 cm

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Friday, April 21–Sunday, April 23

Sunday, April 23 | 10 AM–2 PM

Thursday, April 27 | 7 PM

Saturday, April 29 | 11 AM–6 PM

[COMMUNITY EVENT]

[YOUTH WORKSHOP]

[TALK]

[COMMUNITY EVENT]

VANCOUVER PHOTO BOOK FAIR

LET’S PHOTO ZINE

BIRTHE PIONTEK AND MARGUERITE PIGEON

BOOMBOOM PHOTOROOM

James Black Gallery 144 East 6th Ave, Vancouver

Western Front 303 East 8th Ave, Vancouver

Truth and Beauty Gallery 698 West 16th Ave, Vancouver

AGES 13–18

Access Gallery 222 East Georgia St, Vancouver

FREE

FREE | RSVP TO RSVP@CAPTUREPHOTOFEST.COM

FREE

PROCEEDS GO TO FROM THE BOTTOM UP FOUNDATION

Saturday, April 22 | 2–4 PM

Tuesday, April 25 | 6 PM [DOORS 5 PM]

Friday, April 28 | 6.30 PM–LATE

Saturday, April 29 | 11 AM & 1 PM

[LAUNCH]

[SPEAKER SERIES]

[COMMUNITY EVENT]

[FAMILY WORKSHOP]

Greg Girard

Shep Steiner

PHOTO BOOK LAUNCH AND SIGNING

ALLEGORY, CONVERSION, CAMERA LUCIDA

SLIDELUCK IV

CUT, PASTE, ACTION!

Beaumont Studios and Gallery 316 West 5th Ave, Vancouver

ArtStarts Gallery 808 Richards St, Vancouver

Monte Clark Gallery 105-525 Great Northern Way, Vancouver

Inform Interiors 50 Water St, Vancouver

TICKETS $35

FREE

FREE

FREE | RSVP TO INFO@INFORMINTERIORS.COM

Friday, April 28 | 7 PM

Sunday, April 30 | 1–3 PM

[COMMUNITY EVENT]

[TALK]

LIND PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENT & CAPTURE FESTIVAL CLOSING EVENT

Henri Robideau and Phillip Chin

Saturday, April 22 | 4 PM

Wednesday, April 26 | 6–9 PM

[TALK]

[COMMUNITY EVENT]

LUCE LEBART

MAGENTA FOUNDATION AWARDS & RYAN WALKER OPENING

Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver FREE

thisopenspace: The Playground 434 Columbia St, Vancouver

Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Ave, North Vancouver

SUGGESTED DONATION: $20

THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY Shadbolt Centre for the Arts 6450 Deer Lake Ave, Burnaby FREE

FREE

FREE

Hastings: A Second Look Gabor Gasztonyi

Opening: April 6, 6-10pm Exhibit: April 6-May 13 Gabor Gasztonyi Gallery, 730 12th St, New Westminster

Hua Jin .00/-*()5 APR 5th Ňƒ + Ć?Ć?th

Viridian Gallery

1570 Coal Harbour Quay Vancouver

Monique Motut-Firth

APR 7 ŃľŇƒĆ–

Ňƒ ING

APR Ć– Ć‘

www.gaborphotography.com www.gaborgasztonyigallery.com

ART TALK

CONSUMED

Masters Gallery presents

John Dean Tuesday in New York April 1 - 28, 2017 Opening April 1, 2PM

http://photo.net/photos/Straight

Horizons Gallery, (rear of 295 E 2nd Ave), Vancouver, BC

April 1 - 30, 2017

Rob Straight P hotography

In-Kind Sponsors

24 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

Partners

Also on display Early Views of British Columbia: 1870-1900 2245 Granville St. Vancouver, BC V6H 3G1 vancouver-mastersgalleryltd.com

CAPTURE FESTIVAL

Artists retell history in heterodox exhibits With the help of archival images and footage, Canada’s unseen past gets the spotlight at this year’s Capture Photography Festival > BY L UC Y LA U

H

usband-and-wife artists David Campion and Sandra Shields have been crafting photo-text installations that explore the history and damaging effects of colonialism for nearly two decades. But even they couldn’t have predicted the shoot’em-up muse behind their latest show: the controversial Grand Theft Auto, a video game that tasks players with completing a series of violent crimes—guns, drugs, and robberies included—as they climb the crooked ladder of a fictional underworld. “In most video games, you play the good guy and you go around beating the bad guys,” says Shields, speaking to the Straight by phone alongside Campion from their home in Deroche, B.C. “In Grand Theft Auto, you play the bad guy…and you win by being the baddest one.” The similarities between Grand Theft Auto’s premise and the European settlement of British Columbia—the latter being a topic that Campion and Shields have tackled in past exhibitions—struck Campion as he was watching a friend play the game. Having previously framed the issue of colonization in the context of a storyboard, the couple quickly realized that a video-game guidebook would serve as a neat vehicle for bringing to light B.C.’s problematic history while challenging audiences to consider their roles in the thieving of indigenous land. “We were looking for a popular form that might resonate with youth,” explains Campion. “So it [the guidebook] became a kind of shorthand for telling a complex story.” Five years of research and creative efforts later, Campion and Shields have built Grand Theft Terra Firma,

Audiences are cast as a gang of white bandits in Grand Theft Terra Firma. David Campion and Sandra Shields photo.

a disarmingly humorous installation of composite vignettes, props, and character portraits taken from an imaginary video game of the same name. Presented as part of this year’s Capture Photography Festival, the exhibition casts viewers as a gang of white bandits carrying out “daylight robbery” by order of a criminal mastermind in England. Portrait photographs of actors dressed in full colonial garb introduce visitors to characters such as “the governor”, “the land speculator”, and “the pioneer”, all of whom play a part in the plundering of First Nations’ properties and resources. Images of “power objects” like cannons and surveyor’s chains teach players how to fend off indigenous resistance, and strategy text suggests methods to heighten prejudice levels while keeping empathy at bay— both keys to advancing in the game. Most compellingly, computermanipulated photographs posing as

screen grabs depict members of B.C.’s Stó:lō community—outfitted in contemporary clothing—as Grand Theft Terra Firma’s victims. “We had quite a lot of conversations around that,” Campion notes of the contrasting wardrobes. “And we reached a conclusion that it was important to speak to the idea that, for indigenous people, the theft is not some kind of abstract thing that happened a long time ago. It’s a lived, daily reality.” The events portrayed in the screenshots, which include the removal of First Nation families from their homes, are all inspired by moments in B.C. history. Campion and Shields worked closely with the Stó:lō community, the University of Victoria, and the Chilliwack Museum and Archives to conduct their research, effectively flipping the celebratory imperial-settler script while forwarding the national dialogue around rec-

onciliation in time for Canada’s supposed 150th birthday. “You can’t have meaningful reconciliation without talking about what actually happened,” says Shields. In Burnaby, local interdisciplinary artist Cindy Mochizuki is also delving into Canada’s unseen past for this year’s Capture. Her exhibition Rock, Paper, Scissors explores the lives of Japanese-Canadian migrants who moved from Yonago, a small city situated on Japan’s northwestern shoreline, to the islands of B.C. during the 1900s. Featuring a mix of video, radio drama, animation, and sculpture, the immersive, multimedia installation tells three fantastical short stories that incorporate archival images and footage of Japanese-Canadian labourers filmed shortly after they arrived in Canada. “Oftentimes, when we think about Japanese-Canadian history, we think

about the internment,” Mochizuki says by phone. “I was interested in looking at the time before that: the stories of my great-grandparents when they were younger and their lives before that traumatic event, and the things that they were up against, the things that they were achieving.” Many of the documented materials follow the migrants working in the coal and lumber industries—two natural resources that ground the tales voiced in Rock and Paper, respectively. In Rock, a set of gelatin-silver portraits uncovered from a Cumberland studio also reveals the brave, beaming faces put on by Japanese-Canadian families despite the discrimination they experienced. “They’re sending them back home to families in Japan just to show that they’re okay,” Mochizuki says of the photographs. “But they were living in really poor conditions, working in mines for really low wages.” Like Campion and Shields, Mochizuki hopes to draw attention to memories that are often sidelined in Canadian history, many of which illuminate the parallels between past and present-day affairs more than we’d like to admit. “There’s something to be said about the idea that these stories from the 1900s could be alluding to things that are happening now,” Mochizuki explains. “Canada has this reputation from the outside that it’s kind of a place where racism and misogyny don’t exist,” adds Campion. “And yet, deep in the country’s psyche, it’s there.” The Capture Photography Festival presents David Campion and Sandra Shields’s Grand Theft Terra Firma at Reach Gallery until May 7, and Cindy Mochizuki’s Rock, Paper, Scissors at the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre until April 30.

AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE • MAR. 31 @ 8 PM WITH “A” BAND & NITECAP

One of the most exciting young jazz musicians in the world today

GERMÁN LÓPEZ • APR. 2 @ 8 PM

Stunning music from the Canary Islands featuring the timple (a cousin of the ukulele) and guitar

VENUE: PRESENTATION HOUSE THEATRE

GORD GRDINA’S NYC QUARTET APR. 8 @ 8 PM JUNO-winning oud & guitar player blending jazz & Arabic classical

VENUE: WESTERN FRONT

Tickets: 604.990.7810 • Online: capilanou.ca/centre Capilano University • 2055 Purcell Way • North Vancouver

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 25

ARTS

Mozongi draws on rich past > B Y JA NE T S M ITH

I

DON’T MISS IT! CLOSES APRIL 1

“REFUGE IS A GENUINE EYE-OPENER” JERRY WASSERMAN, VANCOUVER SUN

“TIMELY, DISTURBING, POWERFUL” JO LEDINGHAM

t took Zab Maboungou 30 years and work across three continents before she was finally able to bring her dance back to the Republic of the Congo, the place where she first fell in love with her art form. The Montreal artist had hoped to take the powerful, live-percussiondriven Mozongi (Return) to Congo way back when she created it 20 years ago. But it wasn’t till this recent revival that the Paris-born, Brazzaville-trained choreographer was able to make it happen. “See the time it takes to realize our dreams?” the Canadian dance icon says to the Straight with a laugh, speaking over the phone before Mozongi travels to Vancouver. “I hadn’t been back since 1988. I took my time to take it back to Congo. I wanted to use that distance to really give myself time to see that training of where I grew up and learned to dance. “You see, time is my main theme: time, life, death are almost all I deal with as a choreographer. And I use my perspective of living on three continents. Space is something I see also from the inside.” Maboungou was thrilled to hear the musicians there comment on the complexity of the work. “They were amazed at the patterns and rhythms— and this is a place of rhythms, Africa!” she tells the Straight. “And for dancers you can imagine how rewarding it was: they were able to finally understand these transcultural things I’m projecting on them.” It’s been a long journey for Maboungou, a pioneer of African contemporary dance in Canada who trained in postrevolutionary Congo, then returned to France to study dance further before heading to Montreal and finally launching her company there 30 years ago. African dance was all but unknown in the Quebec city then. From the beginning, she has fought the pigeonholing of ethnic or folk traditions, instead insisting on

Friday, March 31 at 8:00pm BOX OFFICE 604 984 4484 tickets.centennialtheatre.com

2300 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver

26 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

being seen as a contemporary artist who draws on the dance and gestures of central Africa. And in Mozongi, the hypnotic magic she creates has as much to do with the energized, earthbound, and intricately patterned choreography for her five dancers as with the live sounds and movement of the two percussionists on-stage. “For me, dance has to be fully live and I want to take away the idea of recorded music,” she says, adding that this is still a new concept for Canadian dance audiences and artists. “I was challenged on this: ‘This is music, this is not dance.’ For 30 years it’s been a fight, and then there’s calling it contemporary dance on top of that!” Maboungou says she tells her musicians they’re just as much a part of the work as the dancers, a fact audiences will hear, see, and feel when Mozongi comes here. As for her dancers, the choreographer draws them from across the spectrum of contemporary, hip-hop, and African backgrounds.

“They don’t come from the same tradition, so you can see the challenge for me,” says Maboungou, who trains her troupe in her own technique. “When people audition with me, I look for a sense of music, rhythm, articulating gestures in space. With one contemporary dancer, I saw it in her eyes.” Maboungou is clearly creating in the here and now, developing dance that is exciting and new, even as she draws on the rich, diverse movement traditions of the land she left so long ago. “In the studio, I have to be able to be open and respond with the real people. I’m not just projecting a dance that I have in my head,” she explains. “You’re really working with the person, and that is already a very contemporary approach. What I do doesn’t rest on traditional repertoire.” Mozongi is at the Scotiabank Dance Centre from next Thursday to Saturday (April 6 to 8).

Climate fears create Drift

H with Anwar Khurshid

African-contemporary-dance pioneer Zab Maboungou finds dancers from across the spectrum to perform her intricate patterns. Kevin Calixte photo.

> B Y A LEX A ND ER VA R TY

e could survive the frozen vacuum of interstellar space. Temperatures hot enough to shrivel a scorpion would not faze him. Years without food? No problem. And yet this literally superhuman creature is probably plagued by selfdoubt and existential despair. He is Gary 3: part man, part tardigrade. And he is also the protagonist of Amy Lee Lavoie’s new play, Genetic Drift, a Pi Theatre production being presented as part of Boca del Lupo’s ever-provocative Micro Performance Series. It’s 150 years in the future. Global warming is now more than an inconvenient truth or an undeniable fact: it’s a mortal threat. And the surviving members of the one percent are desperate to ensure that their genes, at least, will survive, no matter the cost. Director Richard Wolfe came up with the basic idea, but when he handed writing duties to Lavoie, she knew exactly where to go. “For any writer, being able to create 150 years of history is a daunting task, but really exciting,” she says, in a telephone interview from her West End home. “So as soon as he pitched it to me, my focus became ‘I’ve got to absorb all the news reports that I can.’ At first I watched a lot of documentaries—and SNL [Saturday Night Live], which is my best news source right now. I was really open to a lot of conversations with people—their fears about the end of the world, and the future, and what we’re doing. There was also an article about human-pig embryos, so there were all these gifts that were being given to me, and I just kind of shaped a world based on my assumptions about what would happen.” Pigs, of course, would be no more likely to survive the coming inferno than their bacon-eating, two-legged counterparts. So Lavoie seized on the idea of splicing human genes with those of a seemingly unkillable and unfathomably cute microorganism. “Whether or not that totally comes through is still to be determined,” the playwright cautions, noting that actor Tom Jones’s costume is still in the design process. “But the tardigrade is certainly the visual inspiration for Gary 3. I just think they’re incredible. Anything called a waterbear…” She trails off, laughing, before delving deeper into the psyche of this one-man show’s protagonist. “I think he’s

Playwright Amy Lee Lavoie looks 150 years into the planet’s threatened future and sees strange hybrids.

much more human than animal.…I don’t know how much I can give away, but I think the animal elements are sort of physical manifestations, things to help him through what’s going on in the world. But he’s totally conscious, really fighting, and very much a human.” Lavoie is also loath to give away how she and Wolfe plan to work their audience into Genetic Drift’s script, but allows that immersive design and a tiny Granville Island theatre will ensure that viewers feel part of the action. “They’ll certainly be held accountable for what’s happening,” she says. “But hopefully, they’ll be able to take it with a laugh—and feel compelled to learn something, too.” Pi Theatre and Boca del Lupo present Genetic Drift at the Fishbowl on Granville Island from next Wednesday to Saturday (April 5 to 8).

ARTS

Opposites mesh in fire/water VISUAL AR TS MARCUS BOWCOTT AND LAURA WEE LAY LAQ: FIRE/WATER At the Amelia Douglas Gallery until April 21

The title of this small exhibition,

2 fire/water, refers to one artist’s

subject and another artist’s process. Laura Wee Lay Laq’s hand-built ceramic vessels achieve their distinctive surface markings through the rakulike way in which they are fired. Fire essentially brings them into being. Many of Marcus Bowcott’s paintings depict seascapes and immense, oceangoing vessels. Water is a subject that enables this artist to speak not only to his past employment as a deckhand and longshoreman, but also to his political, economic, and environmental concerns. The pairing of the two artists celebrates the fact that they were enrolled in the same fine-arts program at Douglas College (where the Amelia Douglas Gallery is located) and that they were in the first graduating class from that institution, in 1972. The location of the show provides an opportunity for Bowcott to mourn the loss of the studio-arts program at the college. In his statement, he laments the fact that fine-arts education, here and elsewhere, has been displaced by a focus on business and on generating enrollment from international students, who pay substantially higher tuition fees than locals. Wee Lay Laq’s statement is much more poetic—as is her work. She describes the process by which she realizes her wondrous vessels and the sense of peace and harmony—and something like the Buddhist state of “no mind”—she experiences working with clay. Instead of applying glaze, Wee Lay Laq burnishes each vessel before it is fired, when the clay is at the “leatherhard” stage, achieving a smooth and softly glowing surface. Smoky colours and often evocative effects are, again, the result of what she identifies as “primitive” firing, using sawdust—

Perspectives

Laura Wee Lay Laq produces ceramic vessels such as 10 Point Pod through what she identifies as “primitive” firing, using sawdust as fuel.

packed in and around her vessels—as fuel rather than gas or electricity. Early in her career, finding no ceramic tradition to draw from among the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast, Wee Lay Laq looked to ancient pottery techniques of the American Southwest. Many of her vessels assume the basic form of the olla; others are inspired by natural forms, such as spiky seedpods and flowers unfurling from buds. Squash Blossom takes the squat, segmented form of not a blossom but the squash itself; The Geometry of Space suggests the complex form of a protea, much enlarged and with the apparent weight and patina of bronze. All of Wee Lay Laq’s vessels are works of consummate beauty, inspiring in the viewer the same sense of oneness with the natural world that she describes experiencing while she is making them. Bowcott’s oil paintings take on global warming, the military-industrial complex, and celebrity politicians preaching laissez-faire capitalism and the godliness of wealth. Also on view are a couple of maquettes for public sculptures, the best-known being his Trans Am Totem, with its pointedly from page 20

critical stack of used cars on top of the severed trunk of an old-growth cedar tree. More subtle in the context of this exhibition—that is, in dialogue with Wee Lay Laq’s ceramics—are his seascapes and paintings of ocean freighters. Grey Green Wake shows us an expanse of ocean devoid of any marker other than the ephemeral one—the churned-up water a large vessel trails behind it. His freighters are great, hulking paradoxes—floating monoliths, each an immense, implacable presence, occasionally muted by mist. Slightly abstracted, they suggest the relationship between our rampant overconsumption and the sea-borne freight that is such an inextricable part of our globalized economy. (This latter theme was addressed by last year’s Access Gallery show 23 Days at Sea.) With its dark hull casting a long, menacing reflection, R, B & G Anchorage conveys both power and menace. It reminds us that we should look a little more thoughtfully at all those freighters so familiarly moored in English Bay. > ROBIN LAURENCE

think it’s for a number of reasons, because we haven’t made changes to contemporary art spaces, practices, and work that supports something like having children,” she says. “That’s a barrier, so what happens is because those commitments are not in place, it’s easier for a single, unattached man to participate.” From one artist to the next, Willard, Jazvac, Lycan, and Alexander echo each other’s thoughts: art without diversity creates a recipe for invisibility. In the same way that Capture’s Evolving Perspectives seeks to step outside of the limits of traditional photography, it is imperative that we continue to seek out and interact with artwork the speaks to experiences unlike our own. Willard sums it up best: “Without diversity, we’d lose the entire process of what I think art is, which is about challenging perceptions, challenging what becomes tradition, offering new ways of thinking through the world that we live in. “I think that’s truly art. Other things? They’re just nice representations.” -

because it makes me much more isolated from, say, the art world, or any of the common resources we take for granted living in the city,” she adds. These things, however, are balanced by the fact that her children are able to live and learn on their ancestral lands. For Willard, the exhibiting of a work that speaks to how we travel and move through spaces near Waterfront Station, arguably the city’s most hectic transit hub, makes perfect sense. “I think it’s totally appropriate, because Highway 1 is also one of the busiest transit corridors,” she says. “I want people to think about indigenous territory, belonging, our travel through spaces, and about who we are within them.” Since relocating to the reserve five years ago, Willard says, she’s placed herself in a traditional Secwepemc community, where the role of women is very strong. But off the reserve, as a mother, Willard’s experience as a contemporary artist is made more difficult by the fact that children have never been welcomed into the places where art is made or shown. The Capture Photography Festival runs from Saturday “Although it’s true as a woman I’ve often felt not as (April 1) to April 28. For more information, visit capture supported as a male in contemporary art, I certainly photofest.com/.

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MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 27

ARTS

Burkett pulls the strings on bawdy charm TH E AT RE THE DAISY THEATRE Marionette, costume, and set design by Ronnie Burkett. Music and lyrics and sound design by John Alcorn. At the Cultch’s Historic Theatre on Tuesday, March 21. Continues until April 9

For the fourth time, Calgary’s

2 Ronnie Burkett has brought his puppet show The Daisy Theatre to Vancouver, and its popularity has probably been something of a head-scratcher to the uninitiated. It was popular, yes, obviously, but how good could a bunch of strings really be? Well, pretty damn great. Burkett delivers hilarity and vulgarity, catharsis and pathos, all via papier-mâché. His characters are the stuff of brilliant sketch comedy—vivid, detailed, real—with a distinct voice and speech pattern for each one. But the real marvel is the way in which he embodies them through their small forms: finely sculpted and attired and full of movement, the puppets vibrate with life, even though the audience can see Burkett the entire time. The Daisy Theatre is apparently a different experience every night. Burkett has a host of puppets and characters and he mixes it up so no two shows are the same. This performance, which coincided with World Puppetry Day, opened with a sexy cabaret singer on a swing crooning a highly suggestive number with lyrics like “I’ll take your bird in my hand and two in the bush!” As she swings higher, her legs pump faster, and it’s a thing of beauty to see this kind of specificity throughout the show. (Running times vary between 90 and 120 minutes.) An elderly woman struggles to walk with her walker. An old man pushes a broom. A country singer’s stride is as wide-legged as if the horse were still between her thighs. Burkett’s attention to detail is exquisite. He’s also a charming, funny, outlandish personality. Whether that’s the man himself or another character for The Daisy Theatre, it’s hard to say. What does shine through is that for all the bawdy jokes and F-bombs, Burkett’s world, like so many, has been reshaped in the last several months as Islamophobia, racism, homophobia, and misogyny have more openly infiltrated American politics and, specifically, the White House. Amid the broad humour and laugh-outloud moments, Burkett explores real fear—political, social, emotional—in tangible, heartbreaking ways, even if the setting seems absurd. (A ventriloquist’s dummy having an existential crisis is genuinely devastating, as are

Each of The Daisy Theatre’s marionettes has a distinct voice supplied by puppeteer Ronnie Burkett. Alejandro Santiago photo.

both appearances by Schnitzel, a fairy with no wings.) The only thing that falls flat is an elderly character’s mildly racist “joke” about Vancouver’s Asian population. Thankfully, the audience was audibly displeased. It’s a tone-deaf misstep in an otherwise empowering, thoughtful, and rib-crunching evening by a true puppet master.

> ANDREA WARNER

REFUGE By Mary Vingoe. Directed by Donna Spencer. A Firehall Arts Centre production. At the Firehall Arts Centre on Thursday, March 23. Continues until April 1

What makes a “good” refugee?

2 And who are most Canadians

to judge whether a person has suffered enough to qualify for asylum, whether a person “deserves” the safety they seek? These are some of the big questions playwright Mary Vingoe raises in Refuge. Based on Mary Lynk’s award-winning 2010 CBC radio documentary “Habtom’s Path”, which described the harrowing journey of refugee Habtom Kibreab, an Eritrean army deserter who fled to Halifax, Refuge tells the story of Ayinom Zerisenai, also an Eritrean army deserter seeking refugee status in Halifax. Ayinom isn’t

a physical presence in the play, but he is the figure around whom every other character orbits. His mother, Amleset (Angela Moore), who has been in Canada for several years, is tutored by Pamela (Sangeeta Wylie), an IndoCanadian woman whose grandparents died in the 1985 Air India bombing. After Pamela runs into her ex, Saul (Robert Moloney), an immigration lawyer, at a showing of artwork by her husband, Allan (Frank Zotter), she begs Saul to take on Ayinom as a client. Saul recruits Mebrahtu (Aadin Church) to help as a translator, and convinces Pamela to temporarily take Ayinom in. But soon there’s speculation about Ayinom’s past and whether he’s as innocent as he claims. Refuge has some issues with pacing and narrative. The scenes shift abruptly and incessantly between Ayinom’s arrival and first months in Halifax and the present—the interviewer (Nicola Lipman) speaking to those who knew Ayinom for her doc. While Ayinom’s story itself is compelling, heartbreaking, and infuriating, the connections between Pamela, Saul, and their Air India back story never quite come together. In fact, the rekindling plot line itself feels painfully unnecessary, but there’s so little clarity about what’s real and what’s fictionalized, it’s hard to say with certainty whether this is a

flaw of Vingoe’s writing, the direction, the actors, or the program notes. To further complicate matters, Vingoe uses actual text from Lynk’s CBC doc, but by naming her character Ayinom, she purposefully puts some distance between Refuge and Habtom Kibreab, whose life she’s borrowed from so heavily. This raises some murky ethical questions: who gets to tell whose stories versus who gets to tell their own? These queries are as loaded in racialized violence and stigma as the ones pertaining to “good” and “bad” refugees. Refuge contains some powerful performances—Moore and Church, in particular, nail their emotionally gruelling final scenes—and there are profound and devastating moments that resonate even more deeply in our current political landscape, but the play itself still feels like a work in progress. > ANDREA WARNER

THE REFUGEE HOTEL Written and directed by Carmen Aguirre. A Studio 58 production. At Studio 58 on Sunday, March 26. Continues until April 9

“It takes courage to remember.

2 It takes courage to forget.” These

lines bookend The Refugee Hotel,

written and directed by Carmen Aguirre, and though the words are simple, they carry a heavy weight: to survive is to find a way to live with trauma, even if it seems impossible. Aguirre was a six-year-old refugee from Chile when she arrived in Vancouver in 1974, following Augusto Pinochet’s violent coup the previous year. She herself lived in what she calls a “refugee hotel” located on Denman Street. Following the dictator’s arrest in 1998, Aguirre wrote a fictionalized autobiographical account of one week in the life of the inhabitants of the Refugee Hotel. Fat Jorge (Logan Fenske) and Flaca (Elizabeth Barrett) have just arrived with their young children, Manuelita (Krista Skwarok) and Joselito (Teo Saefkow). Jorge and Flaca have both been held, interrogated, and tortured, but while Flaca wants to talk about her ordeal—she’s been away from her family for two years and has experienced horrific things— Jorge tries to drown his perpetual night terrors in booze. Soon, four more refugees arrive, and the group bonds quickly. But it’s a volatile closeness, forged out of the shared experience of exile. There are blowups and hook-ups, suicide attempts, speeches, and, for some, catharsis. The Refugee Hotel describes itself as a dark comedy, which is a bit of a stretch. The grim specificity of the torture is awful, necessary, and occasionally shocking. There is humour, and Aguirre’s ability to find it in spaces where none should exist is a marvel, but most of the actors don’t seem to possess much comic timing, and some are stiff and overly mannered in their delivery. The absence of Latin actors is addressed both in Aguirre’s directorial note and by the cast in their own separate program acknowledgment, but I can’t help but wonder what might have been possible if Studio 58’s student population weren’t quite so white. But Aguirre’s been trying to convince Vancouver theatre companies to produce The Refugee Hotel for 15 years, and Studio 58 is the first one to take it on. Though it’s not a flawless production, it’s an important one for so many reasons, not the least of which is our current political climate regarding refugees and oppressive, violent dictatorships. What makes The Refugee Hotel resonate so deeply is its authenticity and heart. A play about refugees written by a refugee is an all too rare experience in the theatre, but it shouldn’t be. The Refugee Hotel reminds us how much more powerful it can be when people tell their own stories. > ANDREA WARNER

Genetic Drift APRIL 5 - 8

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straight choices

ar ts/ timeout THEATRE DANCE MUSIC COMEDY LITERARY EVENTS ET CETERA GALLERIES MUSEUMS

DANCE 2THIS WEEK

< < < < < < < <

NORSE GOD Three cool facts about Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud: he’s the artistic director of the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and co–AD of the Risør Festival of Chamber Music. He performs on a violin built in 1744 by Giuseppe Guarneri, Antonio Stradivari’s only serious rival. And he’s guest-starring with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum from Saturday to Monday (April 1 to 3), performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major. Word is that he’s more than capable of finding a fresh take on this beloved classical-concert staple.

THEATRE 2OPENINGS REDPATCH Hardline Productions presents the world premiere of Raes Calvert and Sean Harris Oliver’s historical drama about a young Métis volunteer soldier deployed to fight in World War I. Mar 29–Apr 9, Presentation House Theatre (333 Chesterfield Ave.). Tix $25/20/15, info www.hardlineproductions.ca/. MARION BRIDGE Daniel MacIvor’s play tells the story of three estranged sisters who reunite in their family home on Cape Breton Island to say goodbye to their dying mother. Mar 30–Apr 15, 8 pm, Deep Cove Shaw Theatre (4360 Gallant, North Van). Info www.deepcovestage.com/.

2ONGOING LES BELLES-SOEURS Michel Tremblay’s play tells the story of an unexpected windfall that ends up breeding resentment between a woman and her friends. Presented by UBC Theatre. To Apr 1, Frederic Wood Theatre (6354 Crescent Rd., UBC). Info www.theatrefilm.ubc.ca/ events/main-stage-season/. REFUGE Mary Vingoe’s provocative story of the pitfalls of seeking sanctuary in today’s suspicious world, directed by Donna Spencer. To Apr 1, Firehall Arts

straight choices

LIFE AQUATIC Fire and earth are the basic building blocks of flamenco, a music-and-dance style rooted in the soil of southern Spain and marked by intense flames of passion. But in del Mar, at the Waterfront Theatre on Saturday (April 1), water takes centre stage, and devotees of the Andalusian art form will no doubt be curious to see how this plays out. Vancouver’s avant-garde Raíces y Alas Flamenco Project has a reputation for expanding on flamenco tradition without losing any of the idiom’s characteristic flavour; don’t expect dilution here.

ZOETROPE: THE CURIOSITY OF PUPPET ODDITIES Fourth-term students of Studio 58 use three-person, shadow, and object puppetry to explore the curiosity of puppet oddities through a story of love and death. To Apr 2, Studio 58 (100 W. 49th). Info www.studio58.ca/.

Centre (280 E. Cordova). Tix from $23, info www.firehallartscentre.ca/onstage/refuge/. THE DAISY THEATRE Puppeteer provocateur Ronnie Burkett and his resident company of over 40 marionettes perform different shows each night. To Apr 9, The Cultch (1895 Venables). Tix from $20, info www.thecultch.com/. THE REFUGEE HOTEL Studio 58 presents writer-director Carmen Aguirre’s dark comedy that tells the story of eight Chilean exiles who struggle with the effects of fleeing their homeland. To Apr 9, Studio 58 (Langara College, 100 W. 49th). Tix from $12.25, info www.studio58.ca/. THE TRAIN DRIVER United Players presents Athol Fugard’s exploration of guilt, suffering, redemption, and the powerful bonds that grow between strangers. To Apr 16, Jericho Arts Centre (1675 Discovery). Tix $20-24, info www.unitedplayers.com/.

WOMEN MARCHING SCA Repertory Dancers present a contemporary dance concert featuring the work of Yossi Berg and Oded Graf Dance Theatre, Henry Daniel and Marla Eist, Judith Garay, Vanessa Goodman, and Wen Wei Wang. Mar 29–Apr 1, 8-10 pm, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre (149 W. Hastings). Tix $20/15/7, info www.face book.com/events/1274877912560044/.

NEW WORKS AT NIGHT: RAICES Y ALAS FLAMENCO Multimedia collaboration del Mar centres around the theme of water. Apr 1, 8 pm, Waterfront Theatre (1412 Cartwright St., Granville Island). Tix $20, info www.newworks.ca/.

MUSIC 2THIS WEEK UBC CHOIRS: SPRING CONCERT University Singers, Chamber Choir, UBC Women’s Choir, and UBC Men’s Choir present the world premiere of Andrew Bortz’s Requiem. Mar 31, 8 pm, Chan Shun

Concert Hall (6265 Crescent Rd., Chan Centre at UBC). Tix $8, info www.music. ubc.ca/choirs/. THE MUSIC OF MOZART AND BRUCKNER James Gaffigan conducts violinist Henning Kraggerud and the VSO in a program of Brucker’s Symphony No. 7 in E Major and Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C Minor and Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major. Apr 1, 8 pm; Apr 2, 2 pm; Apr 3, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Info www.vancouversymphony.ca/. ROBERT SILVERMAN Classical pianist performs works by Beethoven and Chopin. He will be joined by his wife Ellen for four-hand pieces by Mozart and Moszkowski. Apr 2, 2 pm, Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture (6184 Ash). Tix $5 at the door, info www.peretz-centre.org/.

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ANGELS IN AMERICA, PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Tony Kushner’s tale of companionship and abandonment that takes place in New York City at the height of the Reagan era and the beginning of the AIDS crisis. To Apr 23, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage (2750 Granville). Tix from $29, info www.artsclub.com/.

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SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD Fabulist Theatre presents a song cycle that explores themes of immigration, war, motherhood, poverty, and the singular moments that transform our lives. To Apr 1, 8-9:45 pm, PAL Theatre (8th floor, 581 Cardero). Tix $12-28, info www.fabsongs.bpt.me/.

TOWN ISSUE

VALLEY SONG Pacific Theatre presents the story of a South African man who tills land he will never own while his granddaughter dreams of the Johannesburg stage. To Apr 8, 8-10 pm, Pacific Theatre (1440 W. 12th). Tix $34.95, info www.pacific theatre.org/season/2016-2017-season/ mainstage/valley-song/.

DISCOVER DANCE! AERIOSA Vancouver aerial-dance company brings together the athleticism of rock climbing and the grace and artistry of dance. Mar 30, Scotiabank Dance Centre (677 Davie). Tix $14/12, info www.thedancecentre.ca/.

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MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 29

Arts time out

Apr 7-8 2BYRON BERTRAM Apr 13-15 2DAMONDE TSCHRITTER Apr 20-22 2EDDIE DELLA SIEPE Apr 27-29

JEAN-EFFLAM BAVOUZET Pianist performs works by Haydn, Beethoven, Ravel, and Debussy. Apr 2, 3 pm, Vancouver Playhouse Recital Hall (601 Cambie). Tix $40/30/20, info www.chopinsociety.org/.

VANCOUVER THEATRESPORTS LEAGUE Some of the world’s most daring and innovative improv. Firecracker! (Wed, 9:15 pm); #NoFilter (Thu, 9:15 pm); Ok Tinder (Fri and Sat, 11:15 pm); Rookie Night (Sun, 7:30 pm); TheatreSports (Wed, Thu, Fri, and Sat, 7:30 pm; Fri and Sat, 9:30 pm). Mar 29–Apr 5, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Info www.vtsl.com/.

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COMEDY 2ONGOING THE COMEDY MIX 1015 Burrard, Century Plaza Hotel & Spa, 604-684-5050, www. thecomedymix.com/. Comedy club with pro-am night Tue at 8:30 pm, showcase Wed at 8:30 pm, and featured headliners Thu at 8:30 pm and Fri-Sat at 8 and 10:30 pm. Cover $8 Tue, $10 Wed, $15 Thu, $18 Fri, $20 Sat. 2SARAH TIANA Mar 30-Apr 1 2DAN SODER Apr 6-8 2IVAN DECKER Apr 13-15 2CHARLIE DEMERS Apr 20-22 2DINO ARCHIE Apr 27-29 2BRYAN CALLEN May 4-6 YUK YUK’S COMEDY CLUB 2837 Cambie, 604-696-9857, www.yukyuks.com/vancouver/. Comedy club with Top Talent Tue at 8 pm, amateur night Wed at 8 pm, and professional headliners Thu-Fri at 8 pm and Sat at 7 and 9:30 pm. Cover Tue $10, Wed $7, Thu $10, and Fri-Sat $20. 2JASON ROUSE Mar 30-Apr 1 2MICHAEL YO

LITERARY EVENTS 2THIS WEEK WHEREVER I FIND MYSELF: STORIES OF CANADIAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN Hear from Vancouver authors who have written about the joys and struggles of living in Canada as an immigrant woman. Apr 4, 7-8:30 pm, Alice MacKay Room (350 W. Georgia). Info www.vpl.ca/events/.

ET CETERA 2THIS WEEK KATE BUSH: LIVE BAND BURLESQUE TRIBUTE Kitty Nights presents a Kate Bush tribute featuring performances

by Burgundy Brixx, Kevin Kreisz, Sister Mary Madly, Jayne Fondue, Lace Cadet, Androsia Wilde, Trixie Hobbitses, Cleo Victory, Lux Sterling, RainbowGlitz, and Aurora Wilde. Mar 31, 8-10 pm, Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway). Tix $20, info www.kitty nights.com/kate_bush.html/.

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL BURLESQUE FESTIVAL Event welcomes burlesque performers from around the world. Includes sets by headliners Poison Ivory and Bazuka Joe. Mar 31–Apr 1, 8-10 pm, Vancouver Playhouse (600 Hamilton). Tix $37.75, info www.vibf.ca/. CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL Annual not-for-profit festival aims to nurture emerging talent, engage community, and spark public dialogue about photography as an art form and a vessel for communication. Apr 1-28, various Vancouver venues. Info www.capturephotofest.com/.

GALLERIES CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY 555 Nelson, 604-681-2700, www.contemporary artgallery.ca. 2SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD (work by Vikky Alexander, Robert Arndt, Gerard Byrne, Jacqueline Hoà ng Nguyen, Kelly Jazvac, Kelly Lycan, Niamh O’Malley, Dawit L. Petros, Greg Staats, and Lisa Tan) Apr 1–Jun 18

straight choices

CHOPIN CACHE Ethnic stereotyping would suggest that Polish-Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska must specialize in the works of FrÊdÊric Chopin. And, for once, ethic stereotyping would not be wrong. Join this accomplished and insightful musician as she previews her next record at the Kay Meek Centre on Thursday (March 30), and thrill to her fleet-fingered interpretations of 14 deathless polonaises, nocturnes, impromptus, ballades, waltzes, fantaisies, scherzos, preludes, and mazurkas. VANCOUVER ART GALLERY 750 Hornby, 604-662-4719, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/. 2WE COME TO WITNESS: SONNY ASSU IN DIALOGUE WITH EMILY CARR (Sonny Assu creates a new series of digital tags on a body of Emily Carr paintings) to Apr 23 2SUSAN POINT: SPINDLE WHORL (exhibition surveys Point’s entire career through more than a hundred artworks

that take the spindle whorl as their starting point) to May 28 2PACIFIC CROSSINGS: HONG KONG ARTISTS IN VANCOUVER (exhibition presents works from wellknown Hong Kong artists created after their relocation to Vancouver throughout the 1960-90s) to May 28 2HOWIE TSUI: RETAINERS OF ANARCHY (solo exhibition featuring new work from Howie Tsui that considers wuxia as a narrative tool for dissidence and resistance) to May 28

MUSEUMS THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC 6393 NW Marine Drive, 604-822-5087, www.moa.ubc.ca/. 2AMAZONIA: THE RIGHTS OF NATURE (exhibition features Amazonian basketry, textiles, carvings, feather works, and ceramics) to Jan 28 2LAYERS OF INFLUENCE: UNFOLDING CLOTH ACROSS CULTURES (more than 130 diverse cultural garments, from Japanese kimonos, to colourful Indian saris, to the elaborate feather cloaks of the Maori people) to Apr 9

TIME OUT ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

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“Required viewing for dance fans!

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Heymann crafts a definitive portrait of a brilliant innovator who’s influenced dance across the planet.�

Variety

“An uplifting film about a man clearly born to move and create, MR. GAGA is a revealing portrait of a true visionary, as singular and uncompromising as they come.�

A film by Tomer Heymann EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT STARTS FRIDAY! 30 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

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“The most exciting documentary for fans of modern dance since PINA.�

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88 WEST PENDER • 604-806-0799

SEE WWW.RIOTHEATRE.CA FOR COMPLETE LISTINGS & UPDATED CALENDAR

MOVIES

A ban to keep out the Muslims, a wall to

BY ADR IAN M ACK

keep out the Mexicans, the ghosts of segregation stirring once again: nothing is new in the vast spectrum of reactionary human stupidity; it’s just always on the comeback trail. South Africa had 43 years of institutionalized racism under its belt when apartheid ended in 1991, with its demise lending a still potent symbol of resistance to a world increasingly in need of a good example or two. But even after vanquishing an enemy that looked indomitable, the fight never really ended. “Back when we started, there was way more idealism and optimism in South Africa than there is now,” Vancouver South African Film Festival cofounder David Chudnovsky says in a call to the Georgia Straight. “When people come together and find those values and principles they can unite on and learn to live with their differences, they can change the world. But the South African experience since 1994 tells us

These visions of Joburg The see

A visitor to Johannesburg naively stumbles into a nest of human traffickers in Vaya, the gripping opener at the Vancouver South African Film Festival.

anything bad about him.” continues to take potshots at those who need it,” Above all, Chudnovsky adds, he says. “To this day.” Uys made a vital choice in the Vancouver South African Film Festival wants us to wake of a historic win. “Then The Vancouver South African Film Festival takes all facets of a complex and still struggling nation democracy comes and he re- place at the SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre that the struggle for justice goes on, that there mains a social commentator, and he continues to for the Arts from Friday (March 31) to April 2. More will always be complications and setbacks and be critical of what needs to be criticized, and he information is at www.vsaff.org/. disappointments. Once you’ve achieved a great If you’re not treating yourself to the full, weekend-long pass, here are three highvictory, as they did in South Africa, you can’t sit lights you don’t want to miss at this year’s Vancouver South African Film Festival. on your laurels.” This might seem like lofty talk when the more VAYA Johannesburg’s sprawling criminal underclass lies in wait for four immediate concern for a small three-day festival naive rural visitors in this gripping feature from actor turned director Akin is to get some bums in seats, but it’s impossible Omotoso. Zanele wants to deliver nine-year-old Zodwa to her mom, a “famous to ignore the political/social threads weaving singer”; Nhlanhla believes there’s a job waiting for him in the big city with his their way through this year’s selection of films cousin; Nkulu has been sent to retrieve his father’s body after a mining accident. If the entwined at VSAFF. Opener Vaya, set inside the heartless plotting of these stories feels a little contrived, the film’s humid energy and queasy sense of peril ghettos of Johannesburg, excites with bravura more than compensate, and every performance is fantastic—particularly Mncedisi Shabangu as storytelling while sparing nothing in its deMadoda. The seediest of kingpins, his character couldn’t be more dangerous, yet we understand piction of the corrosive effects of poverty. Two the allure of this big, confident man for the lost innocents who enter his realm. Highly recomnights later, Sink enters the manicured neighmended. SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, March 31 (7 p.m.) bourhoods of middle-class white suburbia to close the festival with a melodramatic critique of THE GOOD TERRORIST After bombing a Johannesburg train station in 1964, John Harris became the privilege and postcolonial racism. sole white anti-apartheid activist to be handed a death sentence. This artful doc manages to pack a lot of Midfestival offerings are even more dirnuance into 50 minutes, humanizing Harris through family photos and Super 8 footage (very cleverly ect in their concerns, whether it’s fracking woven, at one point, into the account of his hanging), and seeking to understand a bright and successful (Unearthed), animal cruelty and government man so radicalized by the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 that he ditched nonviolent resistance. Appearing corruption (Poachers Pipeline), or the fate of on camera over half a century later, once-anonymous members of the African Resistance Movement mixed-race communities after apartheid (Word (ARM) still grapple with the meaning of their colleague’s actions. Their insights, none of which you’d of Honour: Reclaiming Mandela’s Promise). describe as simple, take on renewed currency in a time when a Sharpeville massacre seems to happen Even the comedy has some serious bite. Noevery day, and not just on other people’s continents. SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, April 1 (2 p.m.) body’s Died Laughing is a portrait of Pieter-Dirk Uys, a cross-dressing satirist who fearlessly SINK In contrast to the vibrant urban sizzle of Vaya, this winner of multiple South African Film and vented against the apartheid regime and beTelevision Awards plants the viewer inside the colourless world of two white professionals and their came an icon in the process. Chudnovsky calls traumatized Mozambican domestic help—whose child died under their very roof. While dancing on the him Tef lon Man. verge of hysteria for most of its running time, Sink somehow retains the cool intensity of a psychological “He got away with stuff other people couldn’t thriller, up until an excruciating final 10 minutes that will either tear viewers to shreds or alienate those get away with,” he says. “In the movie, you see that who prefer their subtext delivered without the sledgehammer. As a massive, irradiating blast of white everybody loves him. Tutu is in hysterics talking guilt, however, there’s no arguing the film’s effectiveness. SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, April 2 (7 p.m.) about him; Mandela makes speeches about him; > ADRIAN MACK the old Afrikaaner leadership even doesn’t mind him. I mean, they hated him, but they couldn’t say

2

ACTIVISTS BEHIND THE C AME RA >>>

> BY ADRIAN MACK

W

hether it’s physical peril or financial risk, dissident filmmaking has its dangers. Pick any of the topics covered at this year’s Just Film Festival—the Syrian conflict, U.S. support of Israel, indigenous land rights in Peru, the fate of the B.C. coast, Canada’s shadier international mining interests—and you’re encountering the kind of work that can ruin a career or even cost a life. While he’s encouraged that these movies are being made at all, festival committee member Don Wright adds that he’s grateful that we still have places to show them—in this case the Vancity Theatre, which hosts the Just Film Festival from Thursday until Saturday (March 30 to April 1). “To actually be in a room with other people is very powerful in itself,” Wright tells the Straight. “It deepens your engagement, because you’re mindful of others who are also interested in the issue or maybe even connected to the issue.” There are nine features and a slew of shorts playing at this year’s fest. Here are three of the Straight’s picks. More information is at justfilm.ca/. ON THE BRIDE’S SIDE (Italy) A caper film with real-life consequences, this amazing doc embeds the viewer inside a fake wedding

☞

contempt for the rule of law and the media support he enjoys point to the deeper realities Paz y Paz is up against. Aside from its obvious virtues, Burden of Peace provides a timely look at the culture and mechanics of political impunity as our neighbour to the immediate south emerges as the biggest banana republic of them all. Vancity Theatre, March 31 (7 p.m.)

A Palestinian expat with a German passport risks it all to help Syrian war refugees find a haven in On the Bride’s Side.

party as it makes the hazardous journey from Milan to Stockholm with a mix of five Palestinian and Syrian refugees concealed within its ranks (including one rapping 11-year-old boy). Sometimes they’re forced to use exotic routes established by human smugglers, like an ad hoc footpath across the mountainous French-Italian border. Other times they brazen their way through checkpoints in tux-

miracles in a criminal state hollowed out by corruption and haunted by the U.S.–backed genocide of the ’80s. The number of prosecutions skyrockets under her watch, climaxing in the arrest and trial in 2013 of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt (whose wealthy defenders are reduced to calling the BURDEN OF PEACE (U.K.) As the state prosecutor “fatty”). What hapfirst female attorney general of Guate- pens next is both amazing and heartmala, Claudia Paz y Paz accomplishes breaking, although Montt’s jovial edos and gowns. Oscillating between tension, euphoria, and moments of unspeakable sadness and horror, this might be the best antidote to the antirefugee spew on your sister-in-law’s friend’s dad’s Facebook feed. Vancity Theatre, March 30 (7 p.m.)

THE QUEEN OF IRELAND (Ireland) It’s possible that nobody did more to swing the Irish in favour of same-sex marriage than a cross-dressing cabaret comedian called Pandora Panti Bliss. The Queen of Ireland offers a peek inside the Panti, as it were, getting up close and personal with Rory O’Neill, the actor who found himself at the centre of a national scandal after denouncing media homophobia on a Saturday-night talk show. Sixteen months and much public debate later, the Marriage Equality referendum yielded its historic result. While amiable and light as a feather, The Queen of Ireland also subtly reminds us that the establishment we’re handed is often woefully poor at recognizing the desires and beliefs of its citizens (to take the generous view). Vancity Theatre, April 1 (9:55 p.m.) -

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 31

MOVIES

“POWERFUL, RIVETING AND SUSPENSEFUL...

STAYS WITH YOU LONG AFTER YOU LEAVE THE THEATRE.” Peter Hammond, Deadline Hollywood

“JESSICA CHASTAIN SHINES.” David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Devery Jacobs is Lia, an unhappy city dweller who finds peace in the subarctic in R2R’s gala opener, The Sun at Midnight.

The kids are all Reel 2 Real A venerable film festival for youth continues its long crusade against crass > B Y A D R IA N M A C K

“C STARTS FRIDAY!

Check theatre directory for locations and showtimes!

onsequences of a Thief” is a charming, supernatural riff on cultural heritage and appropriation made by kids on Haida Gwaii. It’s also a perfect illustration of what the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth has been up to for the past 19 years. Produced through R2R with Our World—a program that brings filmmaking workshops to First Nations communities—the six-minute short screens, along with a whopping 24 other titles, as part of the festival’s Youth Filmmakers Showcase. The series is just one of five extensive programs designed by

R2R to introduce both the means of production and the pleasures of critical engagement to our youngest moviegoers. In total, Reel 2 Real— which runs at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre and Vancity Theatre from Sunday (April 2) to April 8—remains a powerful assault on the brain-frying, no-calorie hegemony of commercial film and a haven for safe expression. It’s also responsible for bringing some of the best youth-oriented international cinema to Vancouver, with nine features on this year’s roster, all of them a Canadian, West Coast, or local premiere. Here are three of our picks. More information is at www.2017.r2rfestival.org/.

THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT (Canada) With her single-parent dad forced to leave Vancouver for work, moody 16-year-old Lia is packed off to the Northwest Territories to stay with a maternal grandmother she doesn’t know inside a culture, Gwich’in, that is alien to her. In this feature debut by Kirsten Carthew, immersion inside a vast and forbidding subarctic landscape is every bit as important as the film’s narrative beats, which find Lia ditching Grandma (after a spot of small-town bullying) in a desperate bid to reach Dawson City by boat. Of course, this goes wrong almost immediately. Enter Alfred,

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MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 33

MOVIES

Inside the great human zoo REV IEWS THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE Starring Jessica Chastain. Rated 14A

A zoo is a fitting place to act out

2 the drama of man’s inhuman-

EVENTS

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ity to man—and beast, of course. The Zookeeper’s Wife, adapted from Diane Ackerman’s nonfiction book of the same name, does a fairly solid job of getting that notion across. Here, solid is also a word encapsulating handsome, stiff, and stolid, with this ambitious movie coming off as more museum piece than living history. Things begin with Jessica Chastain—also one of the film’s executive producers—as Antonina Żabińska, beginning her daily rounds at the Warsaw Zoo. As the empathic partner to zoologist Jan Żabiński (Flemish actor Johan Heldenbergh), she nuzzles lion cubs that sleep with their young son, throws apples to devoted elephants, and bicycles through the grounds with a small camel in tow. You don’t even need to be told that it’s August of 1939 to know that any idyll this beautiful can’t last. Soon enough, the Germans invade and, in a disturbing sequence that presages all to come, this sanctuary is devastated in a series of attacks. (Definitely not the sort of thing Matt Damon signed on for in We Bought a Zoo.) Also on the scene is Lutz Heck, Berlin’s head zoologist and, inevitably, a believer in fake eugenics. War Bride scribe Angela Workman inserts a quasi-romance between Antonina and Heck—in real life a fusty middle-ager who resembled Hitler more than he did Rush’s dashing Daniel Brühl. This helps to raise the personal stakes for the Żabińskis, but seems a trivial side issue when they begin spiriting Jews out of the teeming Warsaw Ghetto and hiding them in their ironically cage-lined cellar. The bigger problem is that director Niki Caro, a New Zealander who started out promisingly with 2002’s Whale Rider, stages the whole, exposition-laden tale with the kind of awkward solemnity you frequently get with multinational costume dramas, especially when they are entirely in English. It doesn’t help that Chastain, almost too radiant for

As Antonina Zabinska, Jessica Chastain helps to spirit Jews out of the Warsaw Ghetto in director Niki Caro’s adaptation of The Zookeeper’s Wife.

the role, is stuck with a thick RussoPolish accent, and with a leading man heavy on gravitas (festgoers may know him from Belgium’s The Broken Circle Breakdown) and light on screen appeal. By packaging its horrors in such customary form, the two-hour-plus movie also risks fetishizing familiar history at the expense of horrors unfolding today.

> KEN EISNER

MR. GAGA A documentary by Tomer Heymann. In English and Hebrew, with English subtitles. Rated PG

“Movement, in its purest form,

2 is above gender.” So says Ohad

Naharin, a veteran dancer and choreographer whose profoundly witty work compares favourably to Pina Bausch’s. Thus, much of his choreography speaks to the fluidity of gender, as well as various standing (and falling) traditions. Naharin is now pushing 65, but retirement isn’t likely for the Israeli artist, even if repeated injuries have dampened his intense physicality, or at least transferred it to others in his company. (His choreographer mother is still active at 90.) According to this self-narrated tour, he grew up on a kibbutz and only became fascinated by structured movement as a way to reach his apparently autistic twin brother.

The kids are all Reel 2 Real

from page 32

a taciturn Gwich’in hunter who first protects and then bonds with this lost kid, providing a connection to her unfamiliar heritage as surely as he teaches her to use a rif le. As Lia, Devery Jacobs (Rhymes for Young Ghouls) manages to remain the magnetic centre of the tale; no small feat, considering that she’s competing for our attention with The Revenant’s Duane Howard as Alfred, or that both of them are liable to be overwhelmed by the otherworldly nature on display. Eventually, the film takes Lia all the way to a weather station so remote that it might as well be sitting on one of the moons of Saturn. (Whereupon she takes a selfie and promptly encounters a wolf.) Although it goes without saying that The Sun at Midnight deserves to be seen on a big screen, some of its smaller, quirkier details really stick, like Alfred’s insistence on shaving every day (in honour of his dead wife) or Lia’s great-grandmother’s unhealthy taste for Cheez Whiz (surely a poor dietary choice when you’re about 150 years old and you could be feasting on caribou). This delightful gala opener is followed by a Q & A with Carthew and Howard, who will be joined by Jacobs via Skype. Vancity Theatre, April 2 (4:30 p.m.) and April 4 (12 p.m.) PLAY YOUR GENDER (Canada) Kinnie Starr hosts this eye-opening doc—more of a call to arms, really—about the appalling gender gap in the music industry. In a business still worth more than $400 billion annually, and dressed up with plenty of female pop stars, the dominance of men behind the scenes is staggering. (Fewer than 20 percent of songs are written by women; fewer than five percent of production or engineering jobs are held by women.) Along with visits to Toronto and Los Angeles, Starr rounds up some of her old Vancouverite friends (Lily Frost, Ndidi Onukwulu) to discuss their experiences, all of them illuminating. Hole’s Patty Schemel talks about the insidious gendering of instruments like guitar and drums. Sara Quinn (Tegan and Sara) describes the “deep, deep isolation” that comes with the industry’s

34 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

Biographical details mostly go uncorroborated in filmmaker Tomer Heymann’s 100-minute doc, so we never know how much of the tale is self-mythologized. It is clear, through archival footage and stills, that Naharin was unusually handsome, straight, and old when he moved to Manhattan in his early 20s, post-army, to begin his formal training, with Martha Graham and others. He returned to Tel Aviv in 1990 to run Batsheva, a top modern troupe. Consequently, there’s much excellent footage to collect here, in this breezily assembled film. Good thing the work, seen in both rehearsal and filmed performance, is strong enough to survive the dearth of context provided— although some of his dancers do illuminate both the process and their boss’s sometimes difficult personality. There’s an interesting digression into Israeli politics, as Naharin fights for autonomy in an increasingly Orthodox state. On the other hand, we also see him bully his late wife, lead dancer Mari Kajiwara, in some discomfiting scenes. Mr. Gaga doesn’t really explain why the demanding choreographer is called Mr. Gaga, but dance fans will still be in thrall to this charismatic figure and his rule-bending art. > KEN EISNER

casual misogyny and homophobia. Rapper Doug “Plex” Bedard eagerly admits that he played this invisible power game in his early days, remarking: “It’s why I don’t really share a lot of my older catalogue.” Indeed, beyond the encouragement offered to female viewers—particularly the testimony provided by Six Shooter Records cofounder Helen Britton and Ohbijou’s Heather Kirby, who organized a workshop in engineering and sound production for women—Play Your Gender extends a gentle challenge to the boys, wisely couched not only in Starr’s likable and open presence but also in Stephanie Clattenburg’s bright and breezy direction. As such, the film actually has a very good shot at reaching that crucial other half of the audience. (Both Clattenburg and Starr will conduct a Q & A after the first screening.) Vancity Theatre, April 6 (6:30 p.m.) and April 7 (7:45 p.m.) LOUISE BY THE SHORE (France) It has surely not gone unnoticed by the suits down in Hollywood (or has it?) that audiences, especially kids, are turning up in droves for the gentle supernatural fantasias of Studio Ghibli and the thoughtful visual touch of European fare like this, a French wonder that closes this year’s Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth on a near perfect note. There are only three characters in Jean-François Laguionie’s hand-drawn animated feature: Louise, an elderly woman who finds herself stranded and alone in a Breton seaside town when she misses the last train of the summer season; a stray dog named Pepper; and a dead Second World War pilot suspended from a tree by his parachute. At first, Louise establishes a daily routine of showering on the beach and foraging for food. Eventually, we find ourselves seamlessly lowered into a timeless dimension where dogs and the dead can speak, and where an endearingly grouchy senior reckons with memory and loneliness. With an inner monologue provided by Dominique Frot, Louise by the Shore adopts a walking pace to turn this thinnest of material into a hypnagogic adventure. It might be low on 3-D fireballs and crossover-marketing opportunities, but the deep emotional satisfaction compensates. Vancity Theatre, April 8 (7 p.m.) -

OPENING NIGHT

LOOK

Friday March 31

THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU SUZANNE’S CAREER MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S

Introduced by Robert Ingram

FOR OUR

TH 50

ANNIVERSARY

ERIC ROHMER’S SIX MORAL TALES MARCH 31 - APRIL 9

ISSUE COMING MAY 4 ➤TO ADVERTISE CALL 604-730-7000

THE GROCER’S WIFE + STROKE MONDAY, APRIL 3 - 7PM

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Cultivating g Film Appreciation pp

* IMAGINE * CREATE * ENJOY * Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street R Roundhouse Community Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews

Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth Regular admission: $7 child/youth/senior; $10 adult Opening Night Gala: $12 child/youth/senior; $15 adult (includes reception)

= Guests TL

= Talent Lab

Tickets: www.r2rfestival.org | Message line: 604-224-6162

MARCH 30 - APRIL 1

justfilm.ca

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1181 Seymour St.

6

THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT

DIR Kirsten Carthew | Canada | 2016 | 83 min In English and some Gwich’in Sixteen-year-old Lia is sent to live with her Gwich’in grandmother in the Northwest Territories. Desperate to return to the city she came from, she sets out into the wilderness. Alfred, a taciturn hunter, finds her and persuades her to join his search for missing caribou. Filled with hope, each frame is punctuated with intimate details of life in the subarctic and its magnificent landscapes. SUNDAY, APRIL 2, 4:30 PM, VANCITY THEATRE* TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 12:00 PM, VANCITY THEATRE

TL

*FOLLOWED BY R2R’S OPENING NIGHT PARTY!

SUNDAY FUN DAY ĂĚMS VORLSJOPS

Bring the whole family to see an amazing selection of animation, live-action, and documentaries from around the world. Then take part in hands-on animation workshops. Visit our website for program details.

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Come early and enjoy an all-you-can-eat breakfast of homemade pancakes and sizzling bacon. We’ll also have juice, and gallons of hot coffee for the grown-ups. Vegan and gluten-free options are available. SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM ROUNDHOUSE

AN EXCLUSIVE PERFORMANCE BY KINNIE STARR

Special price: $5 per person, includes films + workshops and a pancake breakfast

LIVE MUSIC BY MISS CHRISTIE LEE LIGHT SNACKS CATERED BY CEDAR FEAST HOUSE CATERING

AFTER SPRING Follows two Syrian families in Zaatari refugee camp, illustrating hope, resourcefulness and tenacity.

14

An Irish drag performance artist who is a hit in Japan as Panti, returns to Ireland to engage in politics around same sex marriage.

BURDEN OF PEACE The impressive story of Guatemala's first female Public Prosecutor who took on corruption, drug lords, and a dictator. SEE JUSTFILM.CA FOR ENTIRE LINEUP

11

CONSIDERING LOVE & OTHER MAGIC

PLAY YOUR GENDER

DIR Dave Schultz | Canada | 2016 | 93 min While trying to make sense of her home life since her brother’s death, Jessie agrees to tutor Tommy, a reclusive boy living in an anachronistic mansion with his elusive uncle and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist named Veronica Guest. Tommy is convinced he’s a work of fiction – a boy invented from the pages of a short story. Fact and fiction collide, and Jessie begins to think she may have bitten off more than she can chew.

DIR Stephanie Clattenburg | Canada | 2016 | 79 min Women account for less than 5% of producers and engineers, even though many of the most bankable stars in the industry are female. While celebrating women’s achievements, director Stephanie Clattenburg and musician Kinnie Starr take us on a quest to understand how it came to be that the gendered authorship gap exists. These candid and insightful discussions, with some of Canada’s best known artists, will have you drumming along in your seat and leave you inspired to follow your art.

FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 5:30 PM, VANCITY THEATRE

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 6:30 PM, VANCITY THEATRE FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 7:45 PM, VANCITY THEATRE

Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth is grateful for the support of:

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 35

the evolution of

36 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

MUSIC

Just how dangerous is the wall-sitting game that Susto often plays, which it has cheekily dubbed “Humpty-Dumpty”? Well, let’s just say that the alt-country band used to have a sixth member.

The power of truth-telling

With a ready chuckle, Osborne is an engaging storyteller. Recounting tales from both good and bad moments in his life, he speaks in forensic detail of the experiences that took him from being a churchgoing Protestant Susto’s Justin Osborne felt compelled to write honest in the American South to a rebellious touring songs, even if it meant losing a few of his former fans musician living it up on The last time that Justin Osborne of up- the road. That honesty is, Osborne says, a new and-coming alt-country band Susto tried to thing. Attributing its development to his time BY KATE W ILSON cross into Canada for a show in Vancouver, three living in Cuba, the South Carolina native has let border security agents threatened to put the the trait transform both his attitude to life and brakes on his plans. his method of songwriting. “When I was on a solo tour, I tried to sneak into “I started playing in bands when I was 13,” the country to play a free concert at a coffee shop,” the singer recalls. “I created my old group, Sethe American singer and guitarist tells the Straight quoyah Prep School, in my late teens, and I was on the line from a Detroit tour stop. “It was the in that band until I was 26. We toured a lot and Fourth of July, and my girlfriend and I had a weed put out three albums. Nine years later, I got pipe in the car. It didn’t have any marijuana in it, tired of playing songs that I’d written early on. but we figured we should hide it. When we came I just didn’t feel like I could relate to them anyup to the border, the guards pulled us over. I’d more. So I put music down, and gave it all up. just got ACID BOYS tattooed on my knuckles, so “A few years after that, I started Susto as a I could see why they’d think we were suspicious. casual project to work on,” he continues. “I felt We were praying that we wouldn’t get fined, be- like I was holding back in my old band lyriccause we were completely broke, and we were way ally, because I was worried about what my paracross the country from our families. They asked, ents would think. With Susto, I learned to let ‘Is there anything in the car that you want to tell loose, and that it’s okay to sing about dark stuff us about?’ So we explained about the bowl, and in a f lirtatious way, and to tell the truth withthat it was all cleaned out. After they finished out holding back or censoring myself. When searching, they pulled us aside. They said, ‘We I started writing like that, the repercussions found the pipe—thank you for being honest with definitely came. For a while, my family didn’t us. And you’re both under arrest.’ even want to talk to me. My old fans from Se“My girlfriend and I turned to each other, and quoyah Prep School didn’t like it either, because we were thinking, ‘Holy shit—what are we going to it wasn’t as sunshiny or singsongy. But it was do?’ And then the officers looked around and started worth it for the songs to be able to come from cracking up. They said, ‘Just kidding—welcome to an authentic place.” Canada.’ We ended up having one really cool, interSusto’s latest release, & I’m Fine Today, is esting night in Vancouver. They got us for sure.” testament to the power of that truth-telling. The

CHECK THIS OUT

THEY REALLY GOT HIM Kinks guitarist Dave Davies recently told Vulture.com that he has had several experiences with UFOs and believes he received “psychic impressions from aliens”. Rock stars sure did a lot of interesting drugs in the 1960s.

TINARIWEN Unlikely though it might sound, one of the greatest

rock bands in the world hails from the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. And that’s not just our opinion: Wilco’s Nels Cline, former Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Alain Johannes, and members of TV on the Radio agree, all having collaborated with the Tuareg musical collective known as Tinariwen. Reflecting both the harsh but beautiful Sahara and the troubled political conditions in the band’s homeland, Tinariwen’s new LP, Elwan, is stunning—and it will be a particular pleasure to hear its emotionally charged songs in the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Wednesday (April 5). -

Susto plays the Cobalt on Monday (April 3).

MUSIC Let’s talk about

You gotta see

11-track sophomore album by the five-piece takes listeners on a deeper exploration of Osborne’s psyche. Framed by the singer’s southern drawl and soft acoustic-guitar chords, tracks like “Hard Drugs” balance a straight-talking story with tight harmonies—a theme that runs through the record as a whole. More cinematic and nuanced than the band’s first LP, & I’m Fine Today introduces a new palette of sounds, including string sections, funk bass lines, and Caribbean rhythms that adeptly scaffold the songs’ emotional narratives. “I think the track ‘Far Out Feeling’ best matches the music and lyrics,” Osborne says. “The summer I wrote it, my two brothers were going through rehab, my dad got cancer, and I’d just quit everything to tour across the country. I felt as if we were never going to break through, and I wanted it so badly—not just for me, but for my family. That song is definitely the most dramatic on the album, and I’m glad that we were able to take those feelings and translate them sonically.” The emotional poignancy of & I’m Fine Today has propelled the group to new heights. Personally picked by Grammy nominees the Lumineers to open on their latest tour, Susto is currently finishing up a slew of support slots for the Americana giants before embarking on its own headline performances. “It’s a real privilege to play to so many people every night,” Osborne says. “It’s often at least 5,000. We’ve seen that growth in the socialmedia world, and also we’ve seen it when we top the bill. People are coming out to see us, and it feels like individuals are starting to pay attention. We’re selling out shows by ourselves in cities that I never would have dreamed of. I always prayed that we’d be able to do this. If the band never got any bigger than what it is now, I’d still be happy.” -

THE ROTTEN TRUTH As if to prove that all rock ’n’ rollers lean to the right as they age, John Lydon has made headlines in recent weeks by criticizing Donald Trump opponents, defending Brexit, and announcing that he will miss Queen Elizabeth II when she dies. Say it ain’t so, Johnny! OFF WITH HER ED No one sensible listens to Ed Sheeran, but in the U.K. it could get you arrested. A woman in Willenhall was sentenced to eight weeks in prison after a neighbour complained she blasted “Shape of You” for 30 minutes straight. GHOULS NIGHT OUT Glenn Danzig has announced something called Blackest of the Black Festival, slated for May 26 and 27 in Silverado, California, and billed as an “experience of pain, pleasure, and metal”. Because the promise of pain is worth shelling out US$66.66 a ticket for.

Fresh and local PEACE MAGIC CITIES

Peace’s latest release is also, sadly, its last word. The longrunning Vancouver four-piece played its final show last summer, with Magic Cities already recorded but unreleased until now. Admirers of Peace’s 2012 studio outing, The World Is Too Much With Us, will find the new disc a logical continuation of the postpunk act’s shift to a more melodic sound delivered with deftness and subtlety. Singer-guitarist Dan Geddes still leans on his half-spoken delivery sometimes, but his baritone croon is abundantly tuneful on numbers like “Prayer” and “Pink Cloud”, where it receives confident support from bassist Connor Mayer, drummer Geoff Dembicki, and guitarist Mike Willock. Rest in peace, Peace; we hardly knew ye. -

MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 37

MUSIC

West is unreasonably driven

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uying his first turntables around the turn of the millennium, Joel West—DJ, actor, teacher, and sometime producer—was soon spinning records for money. Booking regular shows in Guelph and scoring residencies in Toronto, the performer quickly made a name for himself in Ontario’s underground scene. A B.C. native, however, West eventually returned to his hometown of Nelson, where the artist—born Joel Cottingham—found his calling. While working in a coffee shop in the mountain town, the house and techno DJ witnessed a fire that burned the low-income-housing building across the street to the ground, causing 80 people to lose their homes. West decided he had to do something to help. Rallying the community, he threw a musical fundraiser that featured 13 acts. Everybody agreed to play, and nobody took a paycheque. Having raised a considerable sum for the displaced individuals, the DJ credits the event for opening his eyes to the power of networking and collaboration. Now settled on the West Coast, West has brought that ethos to Vancouver since launching Groundwerk in 2015 as a monthly meet-up group for electronic-music enthusiasts, West has grown the project into a vibrant community, helping to build the careers of DJs and producers in the local scene by exchanging techniques and ideas. Establishing a number of ventures to advance Vancouver’s budding artists, West and his fellow organizers recently launched the Groundwerk label, offering the opportunity for the city’s best tracks to have a formal release. A dedicated performer who once drove for two days after a serious surgery to make his set time at FozzyFest in the East Kootenays, West has, as he puts it, an “unreasonable drive” to play music. BEST GIG EVER

DJ Joel West played at Gorg-O-Mish over his birthday weekend. Unlike us, he’s cool enough to know what Gorg-O-Mish is. Chris Marcinkiewicz photo.

submission. He’s just become the father of twins, and in the breakdown of this techno track he’s sampled the ultrasound of the heartbeat of his kids before they were born. Both of those tracks are great, but when we listened to them together, we decided that they needed a lead single—so he wrote an absolute banger. It doesn’t have a title yet, but look out for it when the label releases the EP.”

“I played at Gorg-O-Mish over my birthday weekend. It was about 5 in SONG THAT CLEARED THE DANCE the morning, so it was getting to that FLOOR time where you really have to tap into “I don’t remember one, to be honyour energy reserves. I was looking est. The last time that I felt like I was dealing with a down at the mixer, crowd that should and suddenly I So Many DJs have been bigger, saw something flit it was snow that into the booth. Kate Wilson cleared the floor. Then something else floated in—and I realized it was There was a really big dump of powmoney. Somebody was making it rain der right around Christmas in Nel$5 bills onto the decks. I gathered it all son. It’s a ski town, so everyone saves up when I was done a few hours later, their energy because they know and there was about $100 there. I of- they’re going to be out early the next fered it to the guy who had been run- morning to make fresh tracks. Noning lights in the club all night, but body’s going out the night before.” he told me to keep it, so I took my DJ FAVOURITE VANCOUVER partner out for lunch.” PRODUCER

TOP TRACK RIGHT NOW

NEW ORLEANS INSPIRED CUISINE

“The GOAT—Chris Marcinkiewicz— has got a three-track EP that’s going to drop on Groundwerk Recordings between now and summer. One is a really smoky, lo-fi house track, which we’ve both played out on numerous occasions. The other was a Groundwerk

9

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38 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

FOUNDING

“I think that if you’re producing electronic music, it’s very easy to be solitary. Most of us are working on our computers, so often people become isolated. I was feeling that myself, especially when I moved to a new city and didn’t have any networks or communities. Groundwerk’s meetups are a place to create together, to forge support networks, and to facilitate peer-to-peer mentorships. Then on top of that we do showcases at events like Vancouver Mural Festival, Car Free Day, and talks at TEDx and Bass Coast festival.” ODDEST REQUEST YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED

“I’ll be playing underground techno with no vocals, and every gig there’s always one person who comes up to me and requests Drake. And not to diss mainstream artists like that, but the people who make those suggestions have no sense of where they are at that time. They’re unwilling to step outside of the familiar and embrace what they might not have heard before, and instead want to assert their own will over the night.” -

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MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 39

MUSIC The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.

Abramson found her pod It was a dream about a pink be-

2 luga whale in a swimming pool

Scan to confess Emotional overload I pissed so much time away worrying about other people’s issues that it got really overwhelming. Now it’s time that I take a step back and look after myself. My solution is to focus on my own problems because as much as I empathize, I cannot be responsible for someone else’s happiness.

My freaking ears! I always cover my ears with my hands when there is a police or ambulance siren nearby. I find it unbearable, it’s so loud, I don’t understand how people can just stand there with a blaring siren close by. But I am the only person I ever see do this, so I realize I am the outlier here.

Being honest with our feelings I wish we live in a world where we can be honest about our romantic feelings for another person, and where that person doesn’t act like a jerk towards us for having feelings for them.

You look familiar As a single gal I like my fair share of using dating apps to hopefully find love. I get paranoid in public though, thinking that someone may recognize me off an app and be sitting or standing across from me on transit…

When you suddenly realize... ...that your partner is kind of selfish and not really a very nice person.

Visit

to post a Confession

that committed Vancouver singer and multi-instrumentalist Leah Abramson to her latest musical project. Recalling her nighttime narratives after chancing across an LP of orca calls recorded near B.C.’s Alert Bay, the self-described “sound enthusiast” quickly found that she could re-create whales’ haunting noises with her theremin. She soon became obsessed with marine mammals. Setting up a residency in Alaska to gather field recordings of cetaceans’ ambient environments and camping for two weeks at a bay that orcas are known to frequent, Abramson was lucky to capture on tape the sounds of whales breathing as they rubbed their bellies over the stones of the shallow waters. Now on the cusp of finalizing her latest offering, Songs for a Lost Pod, the ambitious musician has combined scientific research, nonfiction writing, and whale vocalizations to create a number of poignant tracks. “The songs are mainly linked by theme on the album,” Abramson tells the Straight on the line from her Vancouver home. “One that really stuck out for me was the idea of connection and family. When I was researching, I discovered so much about whales’ social structure, and often the pod is the most integral thing to survival. A single orca, for example, doesn’t normally live very long. I ended up writing a lot of the songs from the marine mammals’ perspective, which meant that most of the lyrics are written from a ‘we’ viewpoint rather than an ‘I’ outlook. In turn, it made me look at my own life and see how important connection is to humans. Some of the tracks are about orcas being captured, and there are some echoes there with my family’s Holocaust survival history. The more that I wrote, the more I realized there was

music/ timeout

Leah Abramson often forces the guys in her band to stay up late drinking tea and listening to one of her stories about how whales communicate.

this hidden back-and-forth between the human and animal world.” Aiming to make her songs as authentic as possible, Abramson went to great lengths to replicate the whales’ experiences and best imagine their everyday realities. “In this project I tried to get out of my own understanding of the world,” she says. “I did a scuba diving class, even though I have asthma. I wanted to feel what it was like to stay underwater for a long time, or breathe like a fish. “I was researching whale brains, too,” she continues, “so I was thinking about communication and how whales experience things. There’s a line in one of the album’s songs, ‘Pender Harbour’, which goes, ‘Our jaws are aching with her name.’ That explicitly relates to the fact that orcas ‘hear’ through vibrations in their jawbones, and that each orca has a signature whistle, which is sort of like a name. Each lyric is very thought out, and there’s a lot of significance behind the words.” A collaborative project, Songs for a Lost Pod involved Abramson sending her notes and field recordings to various artists, who would create a musical backing track. Sometimes receiving work as minimal as a guitar drone,

2JUST ANNOUNCED RISING APPALACHIA American folk-roots band led by sisters Leah and Chloe Smith, with guest Dustin Thomas. May 23, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, The Imperial (319 Main). Tix on sale Mar 31, 10 am, $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. LOW AND MONO American indie-rock band and Japanese instrumental rockers coheadline in support of latest releases Ones and Sixes and Requiem for Hell. Jun 17, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, The Imperial (319 Main). Tix on sale Mar 31, 10 am, $20 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat, Zulu Records, and www.ticketweb.ca/. TIGER ARMY AND MURDER BY DEATH California psychobilly band coheadlines with Indiana-based indie-rock ensemble, with guest Tim Barry. Jul 3, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Mar 31, 10 am, $35 (plus service charges and fees) at www. livenation.com/. MATCHBOX TWENTY AND COUNTING CROWS American pop-rock bands coheadline on their A Brief History of Everything Tour, with guests Rivers & Rust. Jul 16, doors 6 pm, show 7 pm, Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tix on sale Apr 7, 10 am, $115/95/75/39 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. THE DECEMBERISTS American indierock band tours in support of latest studio album What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, with guest Olivia Chaney. Aug 8, doors 6 pm, show 7 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Tix on sale Mar 31, 10 am, $42.50/35 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

40 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

> KATE WILSON

Leah Abramson plays the Wise Hall on Thursday (March 30).

FLEET FOXES American indie-folk band tours in support of its third album Crack-Up. Sep 13, doors 5:30 pm, show 7 pm, Malkin Bowl (610 Pipeline Road, Stanley Park). Tix on sale Mar 31, 10 am, $46 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

QUARTET Apr 21 2JAMES DANDERFER’S EAST-WEST QUINTET FEATURING QUINCY DAVIS AND NEIL SWAINSON Apr 28

APOCALYPTICA Finnish orchestral rockers perform on their Plays Metallica By Four Cellos Tour. Sep 23, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Mar 31, $39.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

IVANHOE PUB 1038 Main, 604-608-1444. Pub with live bands on weekends and open jam night Sun from 4 to 8 pm. 2BLIND PIGEON Mar 31

THE PIANO GUYS Utah classical-crossover ensemble composed of Jon Schmidt, Steven Sharp Nelson, Paul Anderson, and Al van der Beek. Oct 4, doors 6:30 pm, show 7:30 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre (650 Hamilton). Tix on sale Mar 31, 10 am, $99.50/79.50/59.50/39.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.

CONCERTS < CLUBS & VENUES < OUT OF TOWN < 2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS

CONCERTS

and sometimes given a near-complete song with intricate melodies, Abramson would then record her own vocal and piano parts over the top, creating crisp and harmony-rich arrangements. Providing her partners with only one rule—that any whale sounds, including whale song, could not be recognizable within their composition—the singer’s delicate creations are both highly listenable and immersive. Now set to perform the songs live for the first time this week, Abramson has called on eight singers and a band to try to re-create the ambitious recording project. “It’s a lot of people on-stage,” she says, “but most of the songs have many vocal parts, and because the tracks are written from a pod perspective, it’s nice to incorporate that aspect of community. This is my own musical family—my own pod. I’ve been rehearsing with these singers for a couple months now, and I don’t know how to describe the feeling. I feel really supported and amazed at people’s willingness to try things, and to give their time. It floors me.”

B3 FOR BUNNY: FROM NYC MIKE LEDONNE WITH CORY WEEDS New York’s LeDonne, a double threat on piano and Hammond B3 organ, joins Vancouver alto saxophonist Cory Weeds in this notto-be-missed show. Presented by Coastal Jazz. Apr 7-8, 8 pm, Frankie’s Jazz Club (765 Beatty). Tix $20, info www.coastaljazz.ca/.

CLUBS & VENUES ALEXANDER GASTOWN 91 Powell, 778379-0407. 2WESTERN CANADA COMEDY TOUR Apr 8 2GHOST-NOTE Apr 14 2JMSN May 17 2SMINO May 24 BACKSTAGE LOUNGE 1585 Johnston, Granville Island, 604-687-1354. 2THE LITE STRIPES, VICKY SJOHALL, AMANDA HAMILTON, MATTHEW PRESIDENTE Mar 29 BILTMORE CABARET 2755 Prince Edward, 604-676-0541. 2COLONY HOUSE Apr 1 2MITSKI Apr 7 2JENN GRANT Apr 8 2WHITNEY Apr 10

FUNKY WINKER BEANS 37 W. Hastings. Evil Bastard Karaoke Experience Sun-Thurs.

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For up-to-the-minute, searchable Music Time Out listings, visit

BLUE MARTINI JAZZ CAFE 1516 Yew, 604-428-2691. Live jazz, soul, and blues. 2NEIL RYAN Mar 29 2RAY AYOTTE IMPROMPTU Mar 30 COMMODORE BALLROOM 868 Granville, 604-739-4550. 2MOTHER MOTHER Mar 29-30 2THE TEA PARTY Mar 31 FRANKIE’S JAZZ CLUB 765 Beatty, 778727-0337. 2B3 FOR BUNNY: FROM NYC MIKE LEDONNE WITH CORY WEEDS Apr 7 2CARI BURDETT Apr 9 2P.J. PERRY

WISE HALL 1882 Adanac, 604-254-5858. 2INHABITANTS Mar 30 2DROP IN ROCK CHOIR Apr 4 2DANIEL CHAMPAGNE Apr 6

TIME OUT MUSIC LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

EMPLOYMENT

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42 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

savage love Gay guy here. Met a guy online. He came over. We had incredible sex and then a great conversation lasting several hours. But—and you knew there was one coming—he told me that he lied about his HIV status. (I asked him before meeting him, like I do with anyone.) He is undetectable, but he told me initially he was “HIV/ STD–negative”. I got very upset— more from the lie than his status. (I know that undetectable is practically the same as negative.) I really like him, but that was a big lie. He told me all about his life and any other secrets after that. Should I swear off him for lying about such a big topic? Or is the fact he did tell me and our connection enough to give him a second chance? I had not been that happy up till the reveal in, well, maybe ever. But I want to be wise. > DID ASK, DIDN’T TELL

Why would he lie? To avoid rejection. Obviously. Guys often refuse to hook up with guys who are honest about being HIV-positive even though a positive guy with an undetectable viral load is less of a risk—at least where HIV transmission is concerned—than a guy who believes himself to be negative because he was the last time he got tested or because he doesn’t think he could ever get infected and so has never been tested. Someone who was recently infected is highly infectious; someone who doesn’t think he could ever get infected— because he doesn’t sleep with older guys, because he only tops, because his ass is magic and he uses unicorn

spit for lube—is a fucking idiot, and fucking idiots are higher risk for fucking everything. Sometimes positive guys get sick of being punished for being honest, and so they lie—and it’s particularly tempting to lie to someone you don’t expect to see again, i.e., a quick hookup. HIV-positive people shouldn’t lie to their sex partners. Obviously. People should be honest; informed consent is consent; and lying about your HIV status can be risky for people with HIV. Thanks to stupid laws passed by ill-informed idiots, failing to inform a sex partner you’re HIV-positive is a crime in many areas. There are people in prison today—mostly men, mostly black—for failing to disclose. These disclosure laws incentivize not knowing your status—you can’t be punished for not disclosing what you don’t know—putting everyone at higher risk. Why would he tell the truth? It’s possible he lied to you about his status—a lie he regarded as harmless thanks to his undetectable viral load—because he assumed this would be a hook-up and nothing more. He wasn’t going to infect you and he wasn’t going to see you again. But after you two hit it off, DADT, he decided to tell you the truth right away instead of waiting weeks or months. The connection you describe is hard to find—this could be the start of something great—but the lie he told was big, yes, but understandable. I think he deserves credit for coming clean right away—and a second chance.

> BY DAN SAVAGE

I want to fuck my 31-year-old husband more often than he wants to fuck me, his 27-year-old wife. We have been married for three years and together for four. My question is twofold: one, how do I gracefully accept his “no”? We have sex usually two times a week—I wish it was more like five—which means he turns me down two or three times a week. I want to be better at hearing “no” from him without getting upset. The more I freak out, the less likely he is to fuck me the next time I ask. It’s a bad cycle. Two, he watches porn every day. I know because I was naughty and snooped. I love porn and I watch a lot of it myself. But it doesn’t replace sex for me. Is there a conversation to be had about this? Should I just keep my mouth shut? I love him but I am so frustrated.

than you’d like and you’re constantly feeling rejected—but blowing up about porn isn’t going to help anything. So what do you do with your feelings of frustration? Regarding frequency, SPOUSE, you directly address the issue with your husband and propose a low-stakes, low-pressure (and mutually pleasurable) compromise. Tell him you’d like to aim for three times a week, but put mutual masturbation on the table for that third time and/or the husband giving you a masturbatory assist. He may not be up for PIV more than twice a week, but he may be up for crawling into bed with you and either having a wank with you or holding you and talking porny while you have a wank. As for your frustration around always initiating, well, sometimes we have to accept the shit we cannot > SINCERELY PERPLEXED OVER change. As the person with the higher UNWANTED SEXUAL ENERGY libido in your relationship, SPOUSE, you may be stuck being the initiator. You want to have sex five times a week, SPOUSE; you watch a lot of I’m a teenage girl and I’m really porn; and porn doesn’t replace sex horny. I always think about sex, and I’d for you. Isn’t it possible that it works like to masturbate sometimes. I can’t the same way for your husband? He live in this way; sometimes I feel physwants to have sex twice a week; he ically and psychologically bad because watches a lot of porn; porn doesn’t of this terrible need to have sex or stuff. replace sex for him. Don’t assume I’m single, and I don’t want to lose my your husband is having a wank every virginity with a random guy. I really time he visits a porn site. Lots of need some advice from you! How can people—men and women—like to I masturbate or quit this exaggerated take a quick peek at porn sites, get a libido? > DON’T REVEAL MY NAME little erotic charge, and then get on with whatever they’re doing without stopping everything to have a wank. Your libido is your libido, DRMN. It That said, SPOUSE, I can cer- isn’t exaggerated; it simply is. Some tainly understand why you’re frus- people have high libidos; some trated: you’re having a lot less sex people have low libidos; some people

have no libidos; and an individual’s libido can wax and wane and wax again over the years. You’re at the stage of life when people tend to be at their horniest and, consequently, think about sex a lot. Women and girls too. (Don’t let anyone tell you that women aren’t as horny as men: reread the last letter.) If you fi nd yourself distracted by sexual thoughts, DRMN, masturbating can help: most people fi nd they can concentrate on other things for at least an hour once they’ve rubbed one or two or three out. As for how you masturbate… Masturbate on your own or with a partner, in private, and whenever you feel the desire or need to. Enjoy! CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Filmmakers, lovers, wannabe porn stars, sex-positive types, kinksters, and other creative types are invited to create short porn fi lms—five minutes max—for HUMP! 2017, my dirty little fi lm festival! HUMP! fi lms can be hard-core, soft-core, live-action, stop-motion, animated, musical, kinky, vanilla, straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, genderqueer—your fi lm can be anything because everyone and everything is welcome at HUMP! For more information on submitting a fi lm—including info about the big cash prizes!—go to tinyurl.com/hump2017! On the Lovecast, Dan spars with rival advice columnist Minda Honey: sav agelovecast.com . Email: mail@sav agelove.net. Follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansavage. ITMFA.org/.

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778-710-8828 www.straight.com

5531 Victoria Dr. & 40th Ave, Vancouver | 604-564-1333

Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+ MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 43

44 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 30 – APRIL 6 / 2017

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