Continuing the breakneck pace of programming this year, the Ill Repute series continues with Vancouver Can’t Argue With the Dead by Sxwchálten (Dustin Rivers). This project includes video on the window monitor, a publication, and photo-based work in the gallery (which already houses Patrick Cruz’s Yin Yang Temple and Chun Hua Catherine Dong & Ek Rzepka’s We Give A Shit Because We Care). The publication is going to be the second book in the Ill Repute series; the first was Wil George’s Survival In Its Many Shapes, which we launched last month.
Ill Repute was envisioned as a series of riffs on the history of the Pitt, and by extension the history of Vancouver, especially the “wrong” side of that history: movements of resistance, scandals, subcultures, undergrounds, and life outside the law. Since the Pitt’s history includes First Nations curators, artists and cultural workers, we asked Cease Wyss to curate some commissions from emerging First Nations artists. What those artists bring to the concepts of “history” and “resistance” is distinct because of the scope of history and the personal nature of resistance in their lives. And that shouldn’t be surprising.
