Pine Street: Charlotte Zhang
April 16, 2020 - April 22, 2020Pine Street: Charlotte Zhang
Online Launch: April 14, 2020 | 6:00PM EST
Critical Distance is pleased to co-present Charlotte Zhang’s Pine Street in partnership with the 2020 Images Festival and Centre A.
Pine Street, Now and Again (2019) is a looping two-channel video installation by Nanaimo-raised and Los Angeles-based artist Charlotte Zhang. Commissioned by the Nanaimo Art Gallery for the group exhibition Estuary, the film is composed of sequences conceived in collaboration with former Chinatown residents and people who are connected to them. For this installation, Zhang was thinking about the parallel structure of conversation and “the ways in which we build and dismantle Chinatown over and over again through conversing.”
The sequences are edited to appear at moments that sonically conflict: a cast of local residents armed with metal detectors swarm an unassuming hill; we witness a conversation between former classmates at the Chinese senior home; the artist goes hunting in a chicken coop. With every loop, these and other images, dialogues, and sounds are recut through the process of recollection.
This double presentation mirrors the structure of Zhang’s work itself, two channels facing one another with overlapping audio. Critical Distance is located at Artscape Youngplace Toronto and Centre A at BC Artscape Sun Wah in Vancouver’s Chinatown. In noting that both venues are located within artistic and community-driven spaces entangled in creative city planning, Pine Street wades into the forces of erasure Zhang’s grapples with in her film.
Co-presented with the Images Festival and Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Vancouver)
Pine Street was initially scheduled to exhibit at Centre A and Critical Distance Centre for Curators as part of Images Festival’s OFF Screen program and has since been adapted for their online program.
On April 14, we will post the links to view Pine Street, Now and Again. Please see below!
You can follow the recommended viewing instructions to experience the work at home. The installation will also be hosted on the main festival site and Centre A (Vancouver). This work is closed captioned in English and Traditional Chinese.
Pine Street — Channel 1
Pine Street — Channel 2
Download the Viewing Instructions here.
Translation: Henry Heng Lu
Captioning: Karina Iskandarsjah