did you ever see a thorn between to roses

The Internet as a space has always interested me, not just because I use it all the time, but because it is such a strange space, a space we’re all familiar with, but contains things one couldn’t even fathom. I wouldn’t say this a kind of mere exoticism of looking at the internet, as in I don’t feel outside or ‘other’ to the internet, because I don’t–I use the internet all the time. I’m a child of the internet. But at the same time I can look at a distance and…read more

Unfortunately this blog post might be more unfocused and disorganized as I tried to go the MOA archives on Friday, but Alissa was not in during the time it was open so I couldn’t look at any of the physical fonds unfortunately and have only had time for a very cursory look through the Eric Parker fonds. This will probably be more like general thoughts/questions I had when looking at the Eric Parker fonds and from reading the articles. 1] Again, it was hard looking at the online Eric Parker…read more

    Pre blog notes: 1] Sorry this is very late, I’ve been behind on some things, not an excuse of course. 2] As we were talking in class about equally archiving and remembering the darker, more offensive parts of our history, I was reminded of a very important (I think) archive I know of called “Without Sanctuary”, both a website (http://withoutsanctuary.org/) and a book. Its contents are of American lynching photography, photographs, many in the form of casual postcards, mainly documenting the lynching of African Americans (and other discriminated groups) across the…read more

Pre-Post Notes: [First, before getting to the quotes-before-text bit people (like me) like doing, I’m going to apologize for the ridiculously long blog post] [also, for as per some peoples’ request and after Jim Wong-Chu showing his wonderful photographs to us, here are some of my own black and white (and some colour) ‘documentary’ photography: https://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonleung/] The Blog Post: “Established in 1973 the Western Front is one of Canada’s leading artist-run-centers for contemporary art and new music. We produce and present visual art, exhibitions, new music concerts and workshops, media-art…read more

  (click on pictures to go to source) I learned about Douglas Coupland’s archive from his show at the Vancouver Art Gallery a couple years ago and since then I’ve been wanting to go through it. I thought it would be so cool, as diverse as his exhibit was. Here already was my imagining of Coupland. Finally, last week I got the chance to see his mythic archive, which I already had known to be large, vast and messy (a la the blog documenting its organization: http://about.library.ubc.ca/2012/07/30/unpacking-the-douglas-coupland-fonds/). Upon entering RBSC, I had my…read more

     “Did you ever see a thorn between to [sic] roses” Hi, my name is Brandon Leung and I’m in my third year at UBC, planning on an English Honours major and Art History minor. Above is a line written by an anonymous hand from the back of a snapshot photograph I bought. In this ordinary memento, there is humour, narrative and personality (‘to’ accidentally written instead of ‘two’, partially erased, but not replaced). In another snapshot I have collected, we see a mother and (presumably) her baby. In…read more