Artspeak

Artspeak, Or Gallery, and Bodgers' and Kludgers' Co-operative present:

International Chilliwack Biennial

July 28 – July 29, 2010

The International Chilliwack Biennial takes place July 28 and 29 at the Delta Grove campsite of Cultus Lake Provincial Park near Chilliwack, BC. The event is an open question on large-scale exhibitions and takes a consciously precarious approach. This is the DIY, near-zero budget biennial - the bodged biennial. Shoe-horned amidst other campers in a state-run camping area, the International Chilliwack Biennial quietly goes about its business. This is the biennial that doesn’t sit up quite right, that wobbles, that is, perhaps, rained-out. Offsite, contingent, last minute favours: borrow your dad’s sleeping bag and your neighbour’s tent. The International Chilliwack Biennial hopes to make you feel different about camping.

Understood as a prototype, the event will consider the biennial as studio or performance. Works will be created, rearranged, consumed, found and dusted off. Tents, trailers, and other portable or temporary structures will form pavilions for international projects. At our symposia smoke may get in your eyes. We don’t have a PA system, but we may be able to offer you a marshmallow. Enjoy.

See www.chilliwackbiennial.org for updated information.

This is the final program in Artspeak’s two-year OFFSITE series.

Park: Cultus Lake Provincial Park

Campground: Delta Grove

Directions: Cultus Lake Provincial Park is located 11km southwest of Chilliwack, BC. Access to the park is off Highway 1 at the Yarrow or Sardis exits. It is 16 km to the park entrance from Yarrow and 10 km from Sardis via the Columbia Valley Highway, which bisects the southeast section of the park.

Artspeak presents:

Oscar Tuazon

Oscar Tuazon’s practice engages with do-it-yourself architectural concepts. Responding to the circumstances of camping at Cultus Lake for the International Chilliwack Biennial, Tuazon will read a campfire tale.

Oscar Tuazon is an artist, writer, publisher, and curator based in Paris, France, and Tacoma, Washington. He co-founded Castillo Corrales, a collectively run gallery in Paris, and Section 7 Books, its in-house bookstore. Tuazon’s work has appeared in recent solo exhibitions at ICA London, Kunsthalle Bern, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

Markus Miessen

The work of architect and writer Markus Miessen considers spatial strategies and cultural analysis, accommodating change through research, criticism, writing, teaching, and design. The editor of a trilogy of publications on participation, his most recent book, The Nightmare of Participation (Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality), is due out later this year. For the International Chilliwack Biennial Miessen not only provided six of his texts from this book for distribution and discussion in relation to the collective and offsite activities of the ICB, but also designed the ICB’s camp headquarters.

Miessen is an architect, consultant, and writer based in Berlin. He runs the collaborative agency for spatial practice Studio Miessen, and is co-founder of the architectural practice nOffice. Miessen has taught at numerous institutions, including the Architectural Association, Columbia, MIT, and the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is currently a Harvard Fellow, and completing his PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture (Goldsmiths, London). His books include When Economies Become Form (Berlage Institute, 2009), Institution Building – Artists, Curators, Architects and the Struggle for Space (Sternberg, 2009), East Coast Europe (Sternberg, 2008), The Violence of Participation (Sternberg, 2007), With/Without –Spatial Products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East (Bidoun, 2007), Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice (MIT Press, 2006), and Spaces of Uncertainty (Müller+Busmann, 2002). His work has been exhibited at the Lyon, Venice, Performa, and Shenzhen Biennials, and will be included in the upcoming Manifesta (2010).

Ron Tran

Ron Tran’s practice typically examines the influence of chance and coincidence in daily life. Contending with the campfire ban and as of yet unforeseen culinary hurtles, Ron is designing a dinner menu for the Wednesday evening of the International Chilliwack Biennial.

Ron Tran is a Vancouver based artist. He studied at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and has participated in exhibitions at Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montreal; Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver; Artspeak, Vancouver; Liu-Haisu Museum, Shanghai; East International 2007, Norwich, UK; Berlin Biennial 6; and he has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver.