Ok, this is intense and amazing.

There’s a lot of videos out there talking up Vancouver in advance of the 2010 Winter Games but none of them are as profoundly moving and inspiring as this one.

This video showcases many amazing features of our local landscape from the Museum of Anthropology to traditional craftsmen creating new totem poles to – believe it or not – Bernar Venet’s Arcs 217.5 X 13, a legacy piece from the last Vancouver Biennale.  It appears around the 1 minute mark of this video.

It’s hard to argue with Tewanee Joseph, Executive Director, Host First Nations, when he writes…

“The 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games are going to be the biggest potlach the world has ever seen!

Spectacular. Overwhelming.

Transformational and fuelled by an unprecedented groundswell of support from aboriginal peoples across Canada. The 2010 Winter Games offer a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to show the world who we are. We invite you to stand with us and celebrate in 2010.

This time. Our time.”

Done and done!

Here’s another excellent video featuring our Host First Nations, their history, traditions and vital importance to our culture and our future.

photo by Dan Fairchild

A-Mazing Laughter, a sculpture by China’s Yue Minjun, is being installed at the Morton Triangle, near the corner of Denman Street and Davie Street in Vancouver’s famous West End.

The installation will feature several figurative sculptures depicting Yue Min Jun’s famous Laughing Figures.  The Vancouver Biennale blog did a feature on some of Yue Min Jun’s work earlier this summer.

The current sculpture that occupies the Morton Triangle is the Vancouver Biennale Legacy Work by France’s Bernar Venet called Arcs 217.5 X 13. It will be relocated to Sunset Beach.

Click below to check out the photos of the installation – or as we in the business call it, the digging – by the incomparable Dan Fairchild.

Read more…

The problem with art is that it always seems to come into our lives from out of nowhere, like a surprise party.

One day you’re doing some very normal things – jogging the seawall, awaiting the arrival of your half-caff latte, thinking about sushi – when BAM, there it is.  Something way out of the ordinary, something strange, something so arresting that it gives you pause to think.  Opens a little door inside you, more light comes shining in.

For instance, say you’re strolling north along Davie Street toward English Bay in Vancouver’s Westend and you come across some giant upturned metal arcs that seem at first glance to be a kind of exposed ribcage or an unfinished sketch for a skateboarder’s half-pipe.  Other eyes from another angle might see it to be a pair of cupped hands embracing a view of foreign oil freighters bobbing in the water and still others see it as an open-air homage to the curly fry.

Standing there among such incredible natural vistas and yet also within the normal sights, smells and sounds of the city this curious piece of sculpture quietly challenges our imagination.

Over the next 22 months the city of Vancouver will become an open-air museum for sculpture, new media and performance art as the Vancouver Biennale 2009-2011 takes flight for a celebration of international art and culture in public spaces.

The ludicrous supernatural beauty of Vancouver will become enhanced by installations of  international art in local parks, SkyTrain stations, plazas, parking lots and will adorn our transit vehicles taking the vision of the Vancouver Biennale into neighborhoods throughout the city.

Work by artists from Poland, Mexico, India, China, USA, Germany, England, Spain, Australia, Korea, Lithuania and Canada will adorn Vancouver over the next 22 months.

This blog will catalog the arrivals, celebrations and events surrounding these art pieces.

It will also take a closer look at the history, context and personalities of the works and artists that you will see, experience and come to know over the next few years.