Vancouver Vernacular

Description:

VANCOUVER VERNACULAR (2015) was an installation by Nils Norman developed as part of Urgent Imagination: Art and Urban Development, Part 1. With VANCOUVER VERNACULAR, Norman turns his eye to the form of the highly-designed condo billboard. Intervening on the exterior of Western Front, Norman created six billboards with words taken directly from the hyperbolic and aspirational language of local real estate projects to point to failures of an urban planning process in which cities are no longer designed, but marketed. With the words “livability,” “enviable,” “revel,” “togetherness,” “shifted,” “quintessential,” and “sold out” emblazoned across the building, Norman’s work can also be read as a poetic indictment that brings the institution’s own role in this urban transformation into sharper focus.

Urgent Imagination: Art and Urban Development was a two-part project that proposed creative alternatives to developer-driven architecture and urban planning in Vancouver. The project generated events, artworks, conferences, and an online platform for critical inquiry into issues concerning urban development, spatial justice, and critical theory.

Curated by Caitlin Jones.