Fifty Years on This Land

September 15, 2022 through 2023

50-years Anniversary: Open Space invites you to join us for ongoing programming as we acknowledge what it means to be in operation for 50-years on this land, lək̓ʷəŋən Traditional Territory. Throughout the next year, the program will critically engage with 50 years of multi-layered history through research, programming, and community gatherings.

Archives

Archival Video Screening

50 Years Zine Issue 01: Networks

FIFTY YEARS is an irregularly-published, xeroxed zine which functions as a container for research, archival selections, and participatory engagements as Open Space considers what it means to be in operation for 50 years on lək̓ʷəŋən land.

This issue pulls from Open Space’s archive to build a non-chronological assemblage of images, clippings, correspondences, and artist projects. Drawing inspiration from early mail art networks, the zine features an “Artist Classifieds” list which compiles requests and contact information submitted to us by artists. 

Both mail art and artist-run culture arose from a desire to build decentralized networks and alternative avenues for artistic production and collaboration. Over fifty years later, our lives are arguably more interconnected than ever, and artist-run centres have become established in the ecology of the Canadian art system. By considering what the methodology of networks might offer us today, we can create a generative tie between pre- and post- internet life. Through this temporal relationship we can explore how we have — and continue to — tend to our networks, human or otherwise. As we negotiate the artist-run centre’s current and potential role within the arts system, this archival engagement provides an insight into the ethos which built it, and considers the artistic and bureaucratic relationships which sustain it. 

Artist-Run Reading Room:

  •  DECENTRE: CONCERNING ARTIST-RUN CULTURE

  •  SPACES BY ARTISTS PARALLELOGRAMME  RETROSPECTIVE 3

  • OTHER CONUNDRUMS: RACE, CULTURE, AND ART BY MONIKA GAGNON

  • POLICY MATTERS: ADMINISTRATIONS OF ART AND CULTURE BY CLIVE ROBERTSON

  • MAKING CULTURE: ENGLISH-CANADIAN  INSTITUTIONS AND THE ARTS BEFORE THE  MASSEY COMMISSION BY MARIA TIPPETT

  • VANCOUVER ANTHOLOGY ED. STAN DOUGLAS

  • NO CULTURE, NO FUTURE BY SIMON BRAULT

Parallel Programming:

  • OPEN WORD: Issue 1 (Spring 2022); Issue 2 (Winter 2023)

    Envisioned as a series of 3 issues, the broadsheet highlights literary artists with existing relationships to Open Space while reflecting on what it means to be 50 Years on This Land, prompted by Open Space’s 50th Anniversary.

  • Wayfinders, the ones we breathe with (January-October, 2023)

    Throughout 2023, Open Space will present a series of exhibitions, residencies and events under the title Wayfinders, the ones we breathe with. Through the work of artists from coastal neighbours and nations across the Pacific Ocean, Wayfinders recalls ancient way finding practices utilizing the stars, wind, water and land markers to find paths across the sea and into the intertwined histories, practices, migrations and contemporary lives of adjacent homelands.

  • Tidelines (August 9, 2022 - March 4, 2023)

    Beginning August 2022 and continuing into the new year, Open Space Elder-in-Residence Gerry Ambers will lead Tide Lines, a project focused on the intersections of Indigenous art and activism across the Pacific Coast region during the 1960s and 1970s, and how these two realms continue to influence each other.

  • For Love, Loss & Land (August 6 -October 29, 2022)

    For Love, Loss & Land addresses ancestral homelands, territories of residence and global realities of the love and the loss of land. Considering these unfolding and developing histories alongside what it means to live on Indigenous lands in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, the ongoing, uncovering of children’s graves at Residential Schools crime scenes, and expressions of love towards the lands on which we live and come from, this exhibition tenderly keeps these conversations at the forefront through the works in the gallery by Rain Cabana-Boucher and Jinny Yu and performances by Guadalupe Martinez and Manuel Axel Strain.

Events:

  • Thursday, June 15, 7-9 pm Archival Video Screening

    As a part of Open Space’s Fifty Years on This Land programming, join us for an in-person screening which features video works from Open Space’s archives.

  • December 9, 6-9pm Seasonal Gathering

    Join us on Friday, December 9 from 6-9pm in person for a seasonal gathering. Light refreshments will be provided! To acknowledge and celebrate 50 Years on This Land Open Space is hosting a series of engagements and gatherings over the next year. On December 9 we invite you to share some food and drink and explore artists relationships and connections.