Deep Dive Praxis Proposal

I live in the inner-city of Vancouver, B.C. on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. I work as a chaplain, artist and advocate. These things fluidly intermingle with each other. I am vocationally trans-local and interdisciplinary. My work has allowed me to travel and teach on faith based development work from an artists’ perspective. Locally, I collaborate with an arts research group to challenge the stigma toward illicit drug users. I have lead community murals and participate in intersectional community building through art. In March 2020 my role did a pandemic pivot from street outreach to communicating with people through murals. It’s the first time my art practice has been the primary focus of my work in the inner city. My investment in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has stirred a passion to learn about conflict engagement and social change in contested territories. 

In recent years, I spent a month in Israel and Palestine and made several trips to Northern Ireland. I went to learn from the facts-on-the-ground to attempt to better understand the conflicts and bear witness to the reconciliation work in these places.  As a chaplain, I feel drawn to sites of sectarianism and collective trauma. 

In 2018 I had a show that was loosely autobiographical called Origin Stories in Edmonton, Alberta. Iterations of work made from trips to Israel/Palestine, Belfast, and the Downtown Eastside were displayed in B.C. in recent years. Last November I gave an artist talk in Prague addressing intersections of art, faith and community development work. 

In 2019 I exhibited new work from a residency in Belfast. Pushing Through a Brick Wall is a ‘soft manifesto.’ The works seek to subvert or dismantle divisive structures, physical and ideological, through absurd artistic interventions; graphite rubbings of text from memorials and tombstones on linen and maps embroidered on handkerchiefs.  A charcoal brick rubbing on a damask tablecloth hung like a curtain to partially obscure the view of a wall covered in prints of lace and fence patterns. A video documenting the journey of a plastic bag blown along, through and over Peace Walls. These mundane materials, with the visual language of domestic craft, created a “soft space” for dialogue. 

I am eager to explore the Praxis Deep Dive program in order to focus in on what feels most relevant and alive in my practice. I want to find ways to combine my arts practice with my interest in conflict engagement and peace building. I also look forward to working alongside others with interdisciplinary creative practices. At this point in my career I need the intellectual challenge and the mentorship.

Research Proposal 

(Thinking about psychogeography, authoritarian structures, protection, shelter, division, eviction, border politics, migration, pedagogy of walking, contested territories, etc.) 

Vancouver has a history of displacement and protest. Oppenheimer park, a local public space in my neighborhood, has been a site of activism since its founding in 1902. Interspersed throughout our collective (though unequal) pandemic experience is a gathering of individuals to lament, protest and challenge the status quo. The impetus for this project is the basic human right to shelter.

I live in a city of extreme disparities: the wealth gap, a housing crisis, a drug overdose epidemic and a pervading sense of loneliness across all demographics. It’s not an obvious “conflict zone” but there are histories of contestation and injustice at every level. In my neighborhood alone, there was the original displacement of the Coast Salish Peoples, the head tax and economic oppression of the Chinese population, the expulsion and internment of Japanese Canadian residents from their homes and business in Japantown, the razing of Vancouver’s vibrant African-Canadian neighbourhood to make way for cars, and the continued displacement and gentrification of low income residents.

The Downtown Eastside is a well established community alive with activism and art. And yet it is segregated from the rest of the city. To my knowledge, there are few artist initiatives that seek to bridge this gap. My hope is that through a social practice, collective engagement, empathy and creativity, solutions for healthy and intersectional communities can emerge. We are desperately in need of creative solutions for sustainable living. How can I employ peacebuilding elements with my practice to engage with the simmering tensions in this place?

Project goals in three sentences

My research project will build from the foundation of my current visual arts practice. It will explore the role of the visual artist as peace-builder in divided communities. I will create an installation/public artwork informed by the social practice stream, gain a deeper understanding of where my niche is in the field of conflict engagement and peace-building, and identify where I fit into the contemporary art world.

Contextual/literature review

My practice has been influenced by many practitioners and artists that engage with these themes. I admire how Francis Alys enters charged contexts as an outsider and transcribes events, places and people with poetic precision; disarming the viewer of judgment. I am intrigued by the place-based aesthetic of his projects and how they become productions where the locals are involved in integral ways.  Alys’ artistic process is characterized by proliferation and distillation . I have adopted this process for researching and creating.

Suzanne Lacy’s social practice takes a different angle from Alys, whose work involves participants fulfilling a scripted task. Lacy includes her collaborators in the process of sculpting the dialogue. I want this for my practice and am terrified to release control of the outcome. It’s a growth point. I want to find the balance between the artists’ aesthetic vision and allowing the project to be shaped by the participants. 

John Paul Lederach comes from a similar faith tradition to myself and is rooted in the field of reconciliation, mediation and conflict transformation. He has worked with locals at the grass root level to government officials and everyone between. He is a poet and advocates for creativity as a powerful tool in the field. 

Methodology

My practice is fueled by place-based research. Before landing in a location, I dig through written resources to get a grasp of what questions I want to pursue. I am an excavator; always seeking the story beneath the story. To this end, I immerse myself in the place, walk around, connect with locals and story-share. I experiment with found materials in the studio and look for opportunities to collaborate with local artists. Much of my research happens through relational connections.  My natural inclination to collect (objects, materials, information) has become a methodology in itself. Then comes the wrestling with theological, socio-political and interpersonal issues.  Art making is an intuitive process for me; I speculate, research, analyze and construct/deconstruct. My recent body of work is a series of flags, banners and tarps pieced together with materials collected from a tent city near my home. Gathering and working with the materials provided a way of engaging relationally and dynamically with local displacement.

What support do you need? 

I will need regular check-ins to discuss the work and a team who will challenge me in constructive ways. I need to learn how to talk about my work and find my niche within the art world. My advisory team will have expertise in the area of conflict engagement and social practice. I would also appreciate the occasional tip for professional opportunities to share my work.