Vines 2021: Our Stories Embodied

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Cost: Free
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Vines is an arts organization and festival that is responsive to and nurturing of artists that are working toward land, water, and relational justice. We support underrepresented voices in developing their work. We bring imagination into everyday spaces by presenting work for free on “earthstages” – populated and natural public spaces in Vancouver and throughout the province.

Our bodies are more than just flesh, they are tributaries and connective pathways for our Ancestors and stories, beyond just containing the unfathomable expanse of our possibilities. This event promises breathtaking stories that transcend the fabrics woven by histories kept and histories hidden.

Artists: Corrina Keeling, David Ullock, Erica Hiroko Isomura, Laura Fukumoto, Carolyn Nakagawa, Josh Cameron, Shion Skye, Kisyuu Carter, Vanessa Lefan Yuen, Kellen Jackson, xoma-leon phîlip babur and Bea Miller

Artist: Now or Never and Vanessa Lefan Yuen

NOW OR NEVER – BreakN the Park
A durational dance and art installation which deterritorializes the busking street show from the concrete, city core to ignite a more natural landscape. The piece aims to recontextualize the crowd-performer interaction of busking by steering from the traditional, capital centric ends of these shows. Instead this piece is an amplification of the foundational pillars of Hip Hop (Peace, Unity, Love, Having Fun) and the ongoing work required on the individual and systemic levels to achieve these ideals.

XOMA-LEON PHÎLIP BABUR – the creature is calling you
The artist provides a space for communion:
to listen, to be heard, to be seen, to see, to feel, to be felt, to be with the heart.

“the creature is calling you” is a poetic and musically embodied solo performance based on ecological displacement/remembrance/
childhood climates.

Stories are sung from all the waters they’ve been in, the lands they’ve heard, the creatures they’ve traversed.
One may find within the performance :
a ballad to belong, a lullaby to comfort pain, surrender to Ubuntu, a call to be animal.

SHION SKYE CARTER & KISYUU – Flow Tide
Flow Tide is a performance by dance artist Shion Skye Carter and calligraphy artist Kisyuu, exploring the relationship between movement and the traditional art of Japanese calligraphy. Approaching the performance as a meditation, the artists take the entire duration of the work to write one “kanji” character, using a large brush and “sumi” ink. Each brushstroke adds a call to which the dancer responds, taking the form of a meditative, abstract conversation.

VANESSA LEFAN YUEN – What Holds Us Together
“What Holds Us Together” is the title of Van Lefan’s first album, co-created with Thomas Hoeller, scheduled to be released in Spring 2022. The project is an exploration and embodiment of what connects us as human beings. While we may come from different places and have lived different sets of experiences, what are the things we have in common? How can we relate to each other? See each other? Hold each other, in this process of transforming, healing, and creating the world our ancestors dreamed of?

ERICA HIROKO ISOMURA, LAURA FUKUMOTO & CAROLYN NAKAGAWA – yonsei writing: SOFT POEMS 4 HARD TIMES
Writers Erica Hiroko Isomura, Carolyn Nakagawa, and Laura Fukumoto read new poetic works against the backdrop of New Brighton Park, where so-called Vancouver began 150+ years ago and beside the location of 1942’s Japanese Canadian incarceration at Hastings Park. Their writing explores yonsei (fourth-generation) multi-racial settler identity, politics, solidarity with marginalized communities, and the realities of climate catastrophe. Their words offer gratitude to these lands that once provided a home to their Japanese grand- and great-grandparents, a century ago.

CORRINA KEELING

DAVID ULLOCK – It Is What It Isn’t
A compositional exploration of abstract form in physical space.
This freestanding sculpture has been created entirely with reclaimed materials, diverting useful resources from the landfill.
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