<Making of an Archive> 

Glance & Gain

Few weeks ago, I was working with my team to edit, collect and categorize information of one project, Making of an Archive, hosted by the artist Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn. So far I have made and posted multiple posters both on the Internet and other public sphere, the preparation of the artists’ talk and the process of calling for free donations of fascinating artworks are not simple tasks to be conducted and completed, but it gives me an opportunity to improve the ability of communicating, translating and cooperating with audiences as well as teammates. It is inevitable for a newcomer to make several mistakes through her working time, fortunately, my curator and partner help me to figure out problems and troubles taking place anytime, thus I learn to be unflappable amid changes other than the skills mentioned above. More importantly, there are lots of concepts and purposes attached to the Nguyen’s artistic enterprise guiding a way to specify features and foundations of my own practices of art within an impact of the space and time.

Process

The artist’s talk for Making of an Archive was hold on the weekend, Oct 21st and 22nd. I was responsible for the work of translation and introduction on Saturday. My job started at 2pm, but I arrived there early for categorizing archives that we have already received since our announcement posting online, then it is necessary to design and edit a paper poster both in English and Mandarin as the main Chinese population living on the Richmond area.

I put the title of artist’s talk at the center of our poster in order to attract more visitors easily. With the help of a curator from the grunt gallery, we were giving out leaflets together at the entrance of the library. During this time, I was trying to introduce the talk holding in the afternoon with people that I met, however, it filled with fully frustrations on me at first because of my inability to interest visitors in this event, people are busier and indifferent beyond my imagination and most of them have no idea about the artist.

After several failures, I changed the way to talk with others which may begin at laconic introduction. There are many parents sitting on the coat leisurely who were waiting for their children reading in the library, so I devoted myself to them with logical introductions of artist’s talk, by judging attitudes and responses showing on their face and words, I would decide whether they want to participant in the event or not.

Besides, the invitation was supposed to company with much  enthusiasm that possibly gave audiences first deep impressions. Following these two strategies that I found after experiencing many failures, finally three people who were visiting Vancouver only for few days have strong interests of artist’s talk, and also my curator successfully introduced more passengers to join into our event. I was excited to hand out brochures and samples of photos picking up from archives of the project, some invited audiences needed mandarin translation and others lacked relevant knowledge of artist herself and established artworks, I translated the main information as well as the theme of her project to mandarin speakers, at the same time, through our communication most audiences dissected her project and questioned about her motives. Based on the truth, I share my personal ideas with them, which let me consider and learn more details about conventional vision and constant missions of  the Making of an Archive.

 

Artist Talk

First of all, Nguyen presented a short vision of collective photos of  Canadian immigrants recording their everyday life. In my opinion, the idea of multiculturalism highlights the whole part of her works,     emphasizing the expansion of sharing  space of cultural practices among communities and institutions in the western society, since she is working on making archives, the platform of speaking and talking will be created as a new form through direct representation of immigrants’ everyday life. Those communities will focus more on the status of Canadian immigrants, which may help them integrate into western culture as well as society.

By viewing the changes from the last ten years to now, it is obvious to have consideration to the impact of multiple cultures, we have not only to get along with citizens from distinctive backgrounds, but also learn how to deal with the term”cultural shock”, in order to develop more comfortable life. Moreover, she invited us to  scan and submit photos into the album that she made for this projects, I introduced audience who are from China to use that album, recording their life moment. it would be an important document to discover the real life of immigrants, also revealing the historical differences and development between native speakers and immigrants. I discussed with many audiences and Nguyen, the purpose of her talk gave a way for us to conduct arts of the life, she hopes this project will inspire citizens to pay more attention on each other especially for those immigrants, then potentially influenced the Canadian government to highly recognize status of them so that the government could fix and built up the protection of multiple cultures in Canada.

I was given an impression of this talk, and I learns many people having lots of interests in the process of making archives of photos, but the lack of artistic knowledge and English speaking skills   possibly keep them away from the theme. As an linguistic learners, there is no doubt that I should understand and study histories better, but absolutely it is crucial to convey true meanings to other who haven’t  known about, calling for more population to join in such activities is a long-term project that is supposed to be worked on.

Info

If you are interested in her projects, please visit – http://www.jacquelinehoangnguyen.com/The-Making-of-an-Archive.