• 10 years ago
• Posted in:Uncategorized
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• Author: ninaxu

Located on 221A’s new outdoor site, Vancouver Especially (A Vancouver Special scaled to its property value in 1973, then increased by 8 fold) is the newest public art installation by Canadian artist Ken Lum, best known in Vancouver for his work Monument for East Vancouver. The installation is a 1:3 replica of the “Vancouver Special”, a mass-produced style of homes popular in Vancouver from the 1960s until legislation-driven obsolescence in the 1980s. The installation was meant to be sized according to what its $45 000 budget would have purchased in today’s housing market, but Ken Lum soon realized his original vision would have created a house too small to be noticeable, necessitating its current scale.

Vancouver Especially, like Monument for East Vancouver, engages with conversations on space, immigration, power, subjugation, and control. The bland beige-and-brick walls of the piece synthesizes with legislation enacted against the actual “Vancouver Specials” to situate Vancouver Especially at the confluence of two forces in pursuit of homogeneity: one cultural, the other legislative. Indicative of a copy-paste aesthetic that allowed housing to be constructed quickly, cheaply, and without individuation, the monotonous sameness of these homes’ exteriority suggests a culture that values physical sameness. The exhibition asks us to consider whether difference can be tolerated when external aesthetics are identical.

Yet even the homogeneity of the “Vancouver Special” came under attack in the 1980s. Aggressive legislation, designed to encourage urban density, made the proliferation of the “Vancouver Special” impossible, and instead, condominiums began to take their place. The minor elements of individualism homeowners were allowed with the “Vancouver Special” were replaced by the massive concrete and glass structures so ubiquitous in Vancouver today.

The exhibition’s physical location, at the boundaries of Vancouver’s Chinatown and what is now known as Hogan’s Alley[1] (an historic black neighbourhood that was forcibly displaced by urban planning when the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts were constructed in the early 1970s), is an additional chilling reminder of how political power colludes with capital and commercial interests to push out the unwanted. Chinatown was saved from destruction in the 1960s when local residents protested the full extent of the Georgia Viaduct project. Vancouver Especially reminds us that our city is not an urban area that somehow grew organically; it is a city that was clinically planned and legislated, and power exerted in these spaces frequently affects the most politically vulnerable.

Vancouver Especially is a timely caution that the displacement that is now being forced on the residents of Chinatown, less than a block away, has been attempted before. The few lonely reminders of Hogan’s Alley, scattered around Union Street near Vancouver Especially, remind us of a once vibrant and ethnically diverse community that was forcefully removed by urban planning and legislation.

Works Cited

Compton, Wayde. “Bluesprint Guest Lecture.” University of British Columbia. Buchanan D219, Vancouver, BC. 12 Nov. 2014. Guest Lecture.

[1] The area extended beyond the actual boundaries of Hogan’s Alley, and, according to interviews with former residents conducted by local writer and scholar Wayde Compton, was not referred to as “Hogan’s Alley” by those who lived in it (Compton).