Ten Thousand Things
- Hamish Ballantyne
- S F Ho
- Tiziana La Melia
Western Front is pleased to present Ten Thousand Things, a reading by Hamish Ballantyne, S F Ho, and Tiziana La Melia.
In Daoist cosmology, The Ten Thousand Things (萬物) signifies a vastness that metaphorizes into an uncountable infinity. During the reading, Ballantyne, Ho, and La Melia will expand into the hybrid territory of drone/poetry with accompaniment by the Wounded Healer house band composed of artists-in-residence Julian Hou, Prince Nifty, Eddy Wang, and Fan Wu.
About the Artists
Hamish Ballantyne is a writer and translator based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples (Vancouver, Canada). Following such writers as Cesar Vallejo, Peter Culley, Bernadette Mayer, and Yoshimasu Gozo, his writing explores history, myth, and temporal fractures that manifest as local vernacular. He works as a community organizer and commercial mushroom picker.
S F Ho is a porous object based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples (Vancouver, Canada). Their practice operates somewhere between words and whatever words can’t be. They are pinched and squeezed by the material and cultural lineages of their permeability. They wrote a book about love and aliens called George the Parasite (2021).
Tiziana La Melia is an artist and writer born in Palermo, Italy and raised on an orchard-garden on Syilx/Okanagan territories. In her writing and art practice, La Melia gleans the detritus of the everyday and transmutes it into material textures, and iterative shapes and symbols, which move through layers of diasporic time. They are a sessional instructor in painting and writing at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Accessibility
The Grand Luxe Hall is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of 26 stairs. While plans for a full building upgrade to facilitate access for wheelchair and scooter users are still underway, events in the Grand Luxe Hall are made available virtually via high-quality livestream (see link above). Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here.
Acknowledgements
Presented in partnership with Second Spring.
Western Front is a non-profit
artist-run centre in Vancouver.
We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.