During the sixteen days of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, I'll be working nightly with Vancouver writer Alex Leslie on a project we're calling BLACKOUT AT THE CANDAHAR.
BLACKOUT is a site-specific collaborative installation featuring the found visual and process-based works of audience members, artists, and curators of the arts salon at The Candahar. Leslie and I will be on-site, providing the opportunity for our collaborators (that's you) to selectively erase months worth of local and national pre-Olympic news with a bucketful of Sharpies. All poems will be shown during the last few nights of the salon and the best of the blackouts will appear in SubTerrain magazine.
Presentation House Gallery is staging The Candahar at the Playwrights Centre Theatre on Granville Island as "a locus for social interaction and the host site for an ambitious series of nightly events — musical programs, theatrical presentations, and performances. Highlights include an opening intervention and inquiry into the pub itself by Vancouver based artist Rebecca Belmore (Feb 12), presentations by authors Timothy Taylor (Feb 22) and Lee Henderson (Feb 15) musical performances by The Rodney Graham band (Feb 26), Tom Anselmi’s Hello World, (Feb 20), Lisa Marr (Feb 14) and Kevin Schmidt (Feb 27), talks by Nicolaus Schafhausen (Feb 13) and Skeena Reece (Feb 19) a performance by Althea Thauberger (Feb 21) as well as video screenings of Olympic interviews by Nardwuar the Human Serviette (Feb 16 and 23). Evenings are capped by guest DJ’s including Vancouver artists Stan Douglas, Adrian Buitenhaus, Stephen Murray and Tim Lee as well as an Olympic “wrap up” salon with talks by Jeff Derksen, Peter Dickenson, Clint Burnham and Ken Lum among many others. For precise program details and regular updates visit www.presentationhousegall.com beginning February 1. The Candahar is programmed by Vancouver author Michael Turner and invited guests.
BLACKOUT AT THE CANDAHAR acknowledges the support of SubTerrain magazine, the City of Vancouver, and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
