old trivia
Clare Yow is an independent visual artist working in a library in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
She is a fan of nightbirding and shutter depression,
heartthrobs, blueprints, and changes of scenery.
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![It’s neat to return to my [digital] archive of San Francisco photos from 2006 and compare them to the kinds of photos I took a week ago (not counting my film exposures as they have yet to be processed).
The first time round* I took more street photography shots, was more liberal — or, random — with what I took pictures of, had close to no ‘social’ pictures (read: pictures of the people I was with), and often flip-flopped between colour and black-and-white. This time, I definitely feel like I showed more restraint in my snap-happiness. I was also using a different camera which would account for the lack of street photography and increase in images of people I spent time with. I also took multiple short videos of various things. Six years ago, I carried a small digital camera (on top of my main camera and something like three other film cameras) that shot video but without sound — an early version of a favourite make of a camera my family often used versions of up until not too long ago. It was nice having the option to shoot video but I continuously lament at not having a [light/non-aluminum] tripod to tote around.
Undoubtedly, I’ve grown a lot in my practice over the last number of years. I’m more calculated in the photographs I take but at the same time, would say that I occasionally can lapse into ‘sloppiness’ with the convenience and portability of a small, quick and dirty digital camera.
*I visited San Francisco for the first time as a child but with no recollection of it, I refer to my 2006 visit as my first real visit.
At the top is from August 2006, during the sunset at Twin Peaks(?). Below (from May) is of the Pacific Ocean along the Great Highway, our third last stop before leaving the city last Tuesday night (I’m truly in disbelief that was almost a week ago).](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4rhliZ0HN1qzoz7oo1_1280.jpg)
It’s neat to return to my [digital] archive of San Francisco photos from 2006 and compare them to the kinds of photos I took a week ago (not counting my film exposures as they have yet to be processed).
The first time round* I took more street photography shots, was more liberal — or, random — with what I took pictures of, had close to no ‘social’ pictures (read: pictures of the people I was with), and often flip-flopped between colour and black-and-white. This time, I definitely feel like I showed more restraint in my snap-happiness. I was also using a different camera which would account for the lack of street photography and increase in images of people I spent time with. I also took multiple short videos of various things. Six years ago, I carried a small digital camera (on top of my main camera and something like three other film cameras) that shot video but without sound — an early version of a favourite make of a camera my family often used versions of up until not too long ago. It was nice having the option to shoot video but I continuously lament at not having a [light/non-aluminum] tripod to tote around.
Undoubtedly, I’ve grown a lot in my practice over the last number of years. I’m more calculated in the photographs I take but at the same time, would say that I occasionally can lapse into ‘sloppiness’ with the convenience and portability of a small, quick and dirty digital camera.
*I visited San Francisco for the first time as a child but with no recollection of it, I refer to my 2006 visit as my first real visit.
At the top is from August 2006, during the sunset at Twin Peaks(?). Below (from May) is of the Pacific Ocean along the Great Highway, our third last stop before leaving the city last Tuesday night (I’m truly in disbelief that was almost a week ago).
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The last week has been a blurry maze and haze of memories. Christian and I started our roadtrip to San Francisco on Friday afternoon. An advertised wait of fifteen minutes at one of the three border crossings turned into almost an hour due to my picking the slowest of all the lanes (I have the worst luck with this, especially at the supermarket). Following a three-to-six A.M. sleep at a rest stop in Oregon - where it was a chilly 5°C outside and I was smartly wearing sandals despite having sneakers and socks somewhere in the car - we finally made it to the city around 2 o’clock. Showing up unannounced at a friend’s apartment was all sorts of fun.
We then had about three and a half days in San Francisco before finally deciding at 10pm on Tuesday then we should probably hit the road back up North. Our intended departure of Tuesday morning or early afternoon was foiled by plans to fit in a number of last minute stops including a fast paced tour of SFMOMA and ice cream at the Ben & Jerry’s at the famous Haight and Ashbury intersection. As we’d taken the speedy I-5 down, we decided to return home on the scenic - and much slower paced - 101 route.
The views of the mighty Pacific Ocean waves were devastating (in a good way) and we made a few stops along the way, including one that involved a small hike down a cliff right to the beach. I left my digital camera in the car and was carrying my film camera, only to take the last shot of the roll when we were only halfway down the cliff. At that point, Christian’s camera battery was dead, so we cherished the view, skipped rocks and picked rocks. The rain started soon after (it was Wednesday at this point) but I can’t remember if we were still in California or had moved into Oregon by then… In any case, the rain persisted all the way into Washington. We sped through Portland and Seattle in the middle of the night, and following a stop at Duty Free, we finally crossed back into Canada at 4:30 in the morning. I crawled into bed at 6 after a shower and made it to work just before 9am where I was greeted with a number of meetings, missed calls, and a full Inbox. Thursday ended with my turning down of tickets to ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ AND Judith Butler (!) in order to go to pre-planned bowling with my lovely co-workers.
What an amazing, albeit too quick, trip though. I think I really needed it, having worked straight through the last ten months for the most part. The sunshine was glorious and I think it’s the first time I have a tan in May. I burned my forehead walking through the Presidio on Sunday and on Monday the corner of my lip was tingling. By Tuesday I had sprouted a gnarly sun blister (which I learned is simply also a cold sore). Sigh. I guess my body was trying to tell me to slow down. It’s hard to when you want to do so much in so little time, right?
Pictures to follow.
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Last week, Wednesday was a weird day. Between the woman yelling loudly and furiously outside my window at eight in the morning (and realizing I took Feminist Theory with her three years ago) and having unexpected frustration directed at me from someone with requests I had to decline, I learned that Mary had passed away. You know that heavy, sinking heart feeling? I got it in the middle of the day, amidst all the regular and irregular tasks that work brought. Four meetings and a phone call with her. I did not know Mary very much at all but with my undertaking of a public art piece for The Sharing Farm - which she initiated nearly a decade ago as the Richmond Fruit Tree Project - she was, in every encounter we had, there with her kind eyes, welcoming me into her world. It was utterly evident how much passion she had for the Farm when she excitedly gave me a tour that one Sunday morning in January. With the receipt of an email today, the project officially moves forward. I just hope that I will be able to bring to light even just a sliver of all that Mary had hoped for in this art piece.
Mary, you are deeply missed.
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It took over a year but I finally went to see some live music again (Hall & Oates at the PNE did not count). Chilly Gonzales was very different than Interpol - pictured above - and was oh so marvelous. He is a musical genius, a total madman pounding away on the piano (at one point he played while standing on the keys and at another, he sat on the floor with his head underneath the piano) and was incredibly hilarious and charming in his stage banter. We each got one of his albums as a souvenir of the night. Perhaps it’s time to replace his compadre and collaborator, Feist’s Metals, with his in my stereo… or at least add it to the rotation.
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A few hours ago, it suddenly hailed and rained all of a sudden. I took a few short videos. It felt good not to wake at 6:30am this morning. Hello, four day weekend. It was film night (With Our Memory on the Future (Con la memoria en el futuro), Cuba, 2006) at the Women’s Centre last night and it’s always a pleasure seeing familiar faces and exchanging big hugs. I shared with the group, my experience of being a woman - a Chinese woman at that - and a tourist when I visited back in 2010, I also ran into two former classmates yesterday and caught up with them. Phone conversations with my homeslice, little sis and le boy. Back-and-forth text messages with an old flame. Birthday ginger cookies with candles and colleagues. Thursday was a day for re-connecting.
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Life whizzes by. Metals on constant repeat. Meetings, meet, meet, meet things. I feel busy. There seems to be enough hours in the day for me to do it all but yet I’m unable to and/or don’t want to. Hardworking and yet also hardly working. Things happen all around. Two girls with handfuls of colourful balloons just walked past on the sidewalk outside. Mary was on two forms of life support - I was shocked and saddened to find out. But she is slowly healing and The Sharing Farm project will happen in its own time. She is a firecracker whose first words after days of not being able to speak, was “Hot damn!!!” Amazing… Adrienne Rich passed away earlier this week. Her conception of white solipsism was an important discovery for me for my thesis over two years ago. I’d observed one of Sherene Ranzack’s books at the store today. She was another woman whose ideas (on race and space) I drew on in my research. Oh, two years ago… time flew, time flies.
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I think a running theme in this blog is my mentioning how small a world it is. Today at work, Julie had been speaking to someone who used to work in the Learning Commons and who used to be one of my students. Abigail. Another one of my former students also works in the building and I often have email interactions with her. Renee. When I saw her at an event - probably in the Fall - I searched my brain for her name. I taught nine different studio classes, with each one having 15-20 students. That’s a lot of people. Three years on, Renee had grown her hair out and I’d cut mine. (On a related note, I dealt with a patron a few weeks ago and she kept telling me I looked familiar. I kept naming instances where we may have met or have had a mutual friend but no dice. The weird thing is that we first met, she looked really familiar to me too.)
Last week, I had a wonderful encounter with a colleague. Interactions with folks across UBC are frequent and often, brief (there are nearly ten thousand full time employees at the Point Grey campus!). Meeting people is something I adore and is thankfully, a big part of my work. Peng had visited to check out a room for next week’s “Addressing Injustice: UBC’s Response to the Interment of Japanese Canadian Students - Then and Now,” an event I’ll be attending, aside from having a very small hand in its preparation.
Before we met, we spoke over the phone and I thought I could detect a hint of a Singaporean accent. In person, when she mentioned she’d just returned from there, I immediately and excitedly asked if she was also from my little island. We spent something like the next twenty minutes chatting a lot about back there versus here. Now, Peng is closer in age to my parents than to me (she immigrated here in 1988, whereas I came in 1995 as a child), and so she had the obvious upper hand when talking about her experiences in Singaporean work culture. I felt like my parents could certainly relate to what she spoke of (leaving a well-paying, stable career to move a new country, folks back home putting extreme value on luxuries like country clubs and Prada bags, for instance).
Another thing we spoke of in depthly were the arts. She relayed a story about how she’d ended up in a Science program for top students across the country but realized her heart was really in the Arts. I told Peng I couldn’t picture myself pursuing an artistic practice in Singapore (this may well be false). My parents moved our family to Canada for the proverbial ‘better life’ and I wonder what path I would have taken had we remained in Asia. I told Peng how I was an awful student in school - I was poor at Mandarin and have such clear recollections of being scolded by teachers (thank you, Math teacher who made me miss my bus and stay after school to learn division and who slapped my hand with a ruler when I just didn’t get it). When I arrived here in the Fifth Grade, it was a breath of fresh air that teachers suddenly found me intelligent and mature, and in a class of twenty (not forty or forty five), I appreciated the extra attention and relished in all the new experiences I had.
Every so often I wonder if I can still claim I am Singaporean, being that I’ve been slowly working my way up towards twenty years in Canada now. One of my advisors once said that I can’t be an immigrant - I don’t look or sound it… I protested his statement. When I told Peng I was also from Singapore, she asked when I’d moved and exclaimed that I’m not Singaporean because I was so young when I immigrated (but the age of ten is not that little). It’s funny because in an email to my parents a few days prior, I told them: you can take the girl out of Singapore, but you cannot take Singapore out of the girl. I hold Singapore dear to my heart as it will always be a home and I take pride in being an immigrant - as challenging as that may be in itself.
After a hug, Peng and I promised to connect again with each other once next week’s event is over (how often do I hug someone I’ve just met? Pretty much never.) I’ll bring you pineapple tarts next time I go back, she told me. Bonding over pineapple tarts and the same primary school (!) - there’s nothing better. Here’s to a new friend.
*Photos from the Singapore City Gallery last year. The Central Area Model is one of the largest architectual models in the world and its scale is 1:400. From a didactic panel: “This model represents about 16km² or 2.3% of the whole land area of Singapore. Of the 16km², almost half is land reclaimed from the sea.”
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Spent the late morning and early afternoon with my head up in the clouds. It was an incredibly long and arduous hike up (and back down) Dog Mountain at Mount Seymour Provincial Park, but the view from above and being surrounded by winter was pretty spectacular. Above, is a view of other parts of North Van, downtown Vancouver (you can also vaguely see the yellow sulphur piles at Stanley Park), and UBC, while below is of I’m-not-sure-what. Google Maps tells me you can get to this lake and clearing via a private road so I’m not sure sure if it’s entirely residential or part industrial. In any case, I thought it was a rather neat, tucked-away gem.
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Thursday was International Women’s Day and I donned my well-loved hot pink Guerrilla Girls tee (with their 1988 poster), proudly. I realized I wanted to show people my shirt and have them read it but this was impossible without having someone stare at my chest. Catch 22.
An attempted walk to the bookstore over my lunch resulted in my stumbling upon a rally by the Knoll. The Genocide Awareness Project (I refuse to link to them) had giant signs up, graphically illustrating how abortion was akin to genocide. A woman em-ceeing the rally was taking questions/comments from the crowd while a counter-protest occurred concurrently, steps away. Students held up hand-written, pro-choice signs and as it neared 2 o’clock (when the rally was to be disbanded), a brave person stripped her clothes off and sat on a chair with a sign at her feet: autonomy is beautiful not violent. Security spoke to her but did not ask her to get dressed or leave.
As the GAP boards came down, I hung around, delaying my return to the office but also half-anticipating what else may happen at the end. As I finally left the area, I overheard three guys walking away talking about how nice the woman’s breasts were. Can’t say I’m surprised at that remark.
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Brought together by the YWCA and their Connect to Success program, I met Rocio tonight on Granville Island. It’s a small world - she knew who I was before this because I’d participated in the Connecting the Dots show last Fall, which she’d co-curated with Masha for Culture Days. I love discovering small but significant connections like that. Masha and I met in the pie shop down the street from my house and I’d showed her prints as we ate big slabs of pie. Rocio and I met down the way from Emily Carr University which she attends and I had a giant cookie while she had a cranberry square and tea. I really enjoyed and appreciated Rocio’s honesty and candidness, alongside her kind and encouraging words. It was insightful to hear of her experiences on this day, the day before we’re about to celebrate women across the globe. There’s a lot to be said about someone pursuing their passions, returning to school, and raising a family after years of being in the corporate world. It’s not backwards or wrong and I believe there is merit in whichever path we land on.
That said, I was in the shower recalling “impostor syndrome,” something my dear friend Gail had mentioned just about a year ago, and again in conversation more recently this year. And so when Rocio and I were talking today, I realized that perhaps this is something that afflicts me. Christian has picked up on this, mentioning it multiple times before (unbeknownst to my talk with Gail), and his sense of intuition is so so keen. This is a bit revealing to admit in a venue such as this, but I am putting this out there… I have been working really hard at maintaining an art practice and juggling a basic need to live by finding decent, stable employment. Now that I’m finally in the groove of it all (going into my eighth month), I admit to living with a slight fear that everything I’m trying my best to grow can potentially be easily taken away. By who or what? I don’t exactly know. One of the things I took away from Rocio today was the need as an artist, as a strong, female artist, is to demand and to command a feeling of entitlement, and to feel deserving of one’s successes. There’s something about this growing fire in my belly…
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I’m swimming in books again after a short hiatus. The last time I read this much while I worked on my performance piece in the Fall. I feel like a student again and am even getting feelings of nervousness and anxiety about this work. Eeeeee. The good weather has disappeared again. I am still hoping that this weekend may be decent enough for another site visit. Amid the jittery feelings, I am excited though. It’s been really great telling people about this new project in the works! … Charlotte’s office on Bowen Island, a separate building from the main part of the house. Oh, what a great time that was. Floor to ceiling bookshelves? Yes please.
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I fought back some fatigue to attend Wednesday’s night’s Eco Art Salon presented by the Community Arts Council of Vancouver. It’s admittedly difficult to leave the house again once one has returned from the work, eaten, and it is pouring outside. I’m glad I did, as I met a number of new artists and re-connected with an ex-student. Robin was “my” student for oh, an hour an a half back in October 2010 when I substitute-taught a seminar class at Emily Carr for a friend. I looked at her from across the room, trying to place where I recognized her from (it didn’t take too long). She came and sat by me later and I’d asked if she went to ECU and if she had taken Josh’s class - she did - and we caught up as if we’d known each other for much, much longer than the length of a class. What a passionate ( and sweet person.
Cut to Friday at work when I reconnected with another individual from my past, from when I’d just moved to Vancouver to pursue my MFA. My thesis advisor urged me to join Chris Lee’s fourth year English class that was to be led through a tour of Chinatown on a Saturday afternoon. Hayne gave the insightful tour, which culminated with a meal at Ho Ho’s. I never imagined this girl, who a month earlier was still living in good ol’ Southern Ontario, would be having lunch with a table full of strangers on the other side of the country. And so on Friday, I met Hayne again, nearly three and a half years later, and as was the case with Robin and I a few days earlier, our chat was short but relaxed and I left telling him that I hope our paths would cross again. On a related note, my current colleague, Allan, was also present for that tour those few years ago - something I mentioned to him when when I started working here again. It’s truly a small, small world.
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Went to a craft fair today at the Roundhouse (second one this weekend!) and was regaled by an older gentleman’s harrowing tale of a close encounter with a buffalo and a car in Manitoba. It was because we were standing next to a booth selling handmade leather goods and the stall owner was talking about the difference between the materials. “Thanks for sharing,” I answered to his “thanks for listening.”
These are from Yellowstone National Park way back in August 2008, passing through on our way to Vancity. The animals seemed to pay no attention to us and the cars ahead all crawled along.
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Go, BC Lions! Winners of the 99th Grey Cup on home soil!
I don’t follow sports, really, but having been around those who do and being that Vancouver has been my home for some time now… team spirit has naturally developed. This shot was from back in August when I did the “Football 101” class for Ly’s birthday and here, the team was warming up before kickoff on Empire Field (they’ve since moved back to the gigantic BC Place). We got to be on the field pre-game, and the in-class learning was taught by two players and alumni, Jamie Taras at their training facility in Surrey. Taras is a self-proclaimed “runt of the litter,” which we didn’t believe until he introduced us to one of his pals who stood next to him. To add to my fake street cred, I now have a Lions blanket for signing up for a credit card I’ll never use. One simply cannot turn down free swag, whatever it may be… they always taste better, feel better (a half truth).
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I’ve been attending a number of public talks as of late - the most recent being Thursday night’s “Remembering Our Chinatowns: A Trio of Readings and Booklaunch” at the Museum of Vancouver. Rebeca Lau spoke about her maternal grandmother’s story of growing up in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico (Mami); Chad Reimer, a historian, researched the historical space and peoples in Chiliwack’s Chinatown (Chilliwack’s Chinatowns, A History); Larry Wong recounted his tales of growing up in Vancouver (Dim Sum Stories). Wong’s reading of a few of his stories from the 40s to the 60s was so charmingly hilarious and I really enjoyed them.
Beforehand, I toured the two key exhibits happening there: Bhangra.me (closes New Year’s Day) and Neon Vancouver | Ugly Vancouver (until August 2012). Bhangra, I learned afterwards, was curated by one of my teachers from a ten day Museum Studies courses I took during my first summer of grad studies at UBC. I like seeing small connections like that. It’s an interactive show recounting the history of Bhangra following it’s rise in the Lower Mainland since the 1970s. The latter show was not as big as I was expecting but being able to stand next to glowing neon signs (from the 1950s era and beyond) was an immersive experience. Collectively, the way the signs hummed was slightly eerie, considering there were no other visitors and there was a feeling that I could be electrocuted at any moment, or that radiation was seeping into my bloodstream. I can still hear the buzzing.
Last weekend, Ethan Zuckerman at the Chan Centre engaged us — as part of the 2nd annual Human Rights Lecture — on “Cute Cats and the Arab Spring: when social media meets social change.“ A new term I learned was Slacktivism which made me think of how many people I know who participate in this act, myself included. Zuckerman’s talk will be posted on CBC Radio’s Ideas in early December, if you’re interested in hearing it.
Prior to this was a talk at the Museum of Anthropology with Joy Kogawa (author), Marie Clements (playwright), and jamie griffiths (photographer and artist) on “Artists’ Responsibilities” in the depiction of challenging or contentious topics. This session was held in the physical space of the MOA’s main exhibition, hiroshima, which consists of beautifully lit photographs by Ishiuchi Miyako (it’s the first time this work has been shown outside of Japan; I highly recommend it).
The photographs depict items that individuals were wearing or had on hand when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in 1945. From false teeth, a tube of lipstick, to a camera (fried beyond immediate recognition), a memorable image for me was of a shirt - cream coloured with dark polka dots. As a result of the explosion, the polka dots had all fallen out and it was mentioned that they’d burned impressions onto the body of the girl or woman who’d been wearing it. Kogawa herself is a survivor of the internment camps many Japanese-Canadians in British Columbia were shipped to following a growth of anti-Japanese sentiment throughout Canada at that time.
Image of Martin Creed’s installation of Work No. 890: Don’t Worry, 2008 as part of the Singapore Biennale earlier this year, in the Old Kallang Airport.
