Project Outline-Richmond Art Gallery
I am working in Richmond Art gallery with a team, The Making of an Archive is a name of the project that we need to work on through months. At the beginning, I got an expectation of my technical improvement, for example, I would record submissions of people’s photographs in digital archive, or I need to learn how to use professional softwares such as Photography and video editors, then make a use to organize websites and documents that are whatever relevant to this project. After first meeting with my supervisor Shaun Dacey, and his curatorial assistant, Paula Booker, above assumptions have been changed exactly. They gave me full information of this ongoing project and tried to inform more details with their personal expectation on that, which was an necessary step to understand the project I would work and others I need to cooperate with.
The Making of an Archive is not only a way to collect images of everyday life photographed by Canadian immigrants and their family, but also an opportunity providing for social artists who can show up their artworks as any forms in the public exhibition on October 21st and 22nd. For my own perspective, it means more requirements of my cultural knowledge and social skills, even I have to share my ideas with each one working in this team while doing photographs recording. In addition, Paula expects me to translate English into Mandarin, and make posters with other student Fiona Zhang, who is working for her SFU co-op program. Such task may be given usually during my weekly work time, I am planning to improve my skills on translating, based on precise translation of whole meanings, the increasing ability of organizing graceful sentences has been one of my goals. Besides, there are social and cultural informations I am to respond for, it is crucial to understand original introduction of this project in details, so that I could deal with them and access to another language, which suppose to do more researches both on relative artists and projects holder, the grunt gallery and Richmond gallery where I am working. So far, the difficulties in the project has exceeded far than my imagination, my primary partners Fiona and Paula, they get expectation of my translation and common sense within this project, through the making process, I also plan to combine my academic knowledge with its social aspects, the problem of Canadian immigrants’ everyday life would be seen as one of my essay topic in other discourse, as an international student, learning about cultural differences between Western countries and China is still significant way to reduce potential conflicts.
We do have directly conversation for each week, in fact, most time Paula assigns weekly task to me and Fiona, and give us some advice. The feedback of my work will be informed through my working process, usually we contact each other via e-mail after work if some questions are existing. Below I listed several events and preparations for The Making of an Archive:
- Sep.19th: First work and translate poster with a partner
- Sep.26th: Classify three files of the project and sent them to galleries in Vancouver
- Oct.3rd: continue classifying files and make a graphic design with Fiona
- Oct.21st & 22nd: set exhibition and help with the show of photography.
- Following task: recording digital archive, may introduce goals of this project in mandarin to Chinese visitors.
Usually I work for three or four hours each week, but my work time is flexible depending on what task I will be given. The total work time will be fifty hours for sure, and parts of project will be ended before December.