Take a look at the events of the 2010 Memory Festival.
Browse the entries to the One-Sentence-Memory Contest.
Memory and the Valley
Memory in Belgrade
2010 Memory Festival
Creating and Recording Collective Memory
Remembering the Memory Festival
Rewind: Memory on Tape
Storytelling by Thursdays Writers Collective and Bladerunners
Four writers, three video artists, ten minutes of tape. The result is four separate short films on memory featuring unforgettable Downtown Eastside writers Irit Shimrat, Antonette Rea, Joan Morelli and Muriel Marjorie facing the camera in compelling vignettes. This project is a collaboration between the Roundhouse, Bladerunners, a youth and media training program, and the Thursdays Writers Collective, named by Geist magazine as “the biggest, boldest, and by far the most vital conspiracy of writers operating in Vancouver at present.”
Memory and the Valley
Photographs and Text by David Campion and Sandra Shields
Memory and the Valley was viewed by over 800 people, during its nine-day-long exhibition run at the Roundhouse Community Center. You can see many of these photographs in a special Geist digital offprint, by clicking here.
These photographs by the photographer David Campion, and text by the writer Sandra Shields, focus on the Fraser River Valley, site of the 100-year-old city of Vancouver as well as villages that date back to the time of Mesopotamia. In scrutinizing this place, Campion and Shields speak to the history of people who have lived here for thousands of years. Their work explores the ways in which memory persists in the landscape: What does it mean to know (or not to know) that a longhouse once stood where the railway tracks now run? What is the nature of knowledge and remembering, and how is the past visible in our lives today?
Workshop: The Art of the Sentence
The Art of the Sentence was attended by 14 writers, who learned the art of crafting strong sentences: how to identify them and how to write them so that they cut straight to the heart of the story or essay. The workshop, lead by Stephen Osborne, offered attendees practical tips and copious examples on how to liven up their writing by using strong verbs and precise language, and how to spot trouble by rooting out excessive modifiers, insalubrious emphasis and weak constructions. Osborne is an award-winning writer and the publisher of Geist.
Emigrant and Immigrant
Exhibition: Photography by Goran Basaric
Emigrant and Immigrant was exhibited at the Roundhouse Community Center from November 10 to 19, and was viewed by over 800 people. You can see many of the photographs from this exhibition at geist.com.
For the past ten years, Goran Basaric has been photographing the memory places of his son, who knows only Canada as his home. For “Emigrant and Immigrant,” Basaric travelled to Belgrade to photograph the memory places from his own childhood. Belgrade has changed dramatically since Basaric left for Canada in the early 1990s, and these photographs show a new yet familiar city, imposed onto the landscape of Basaric’s memories. What emerges from his photographs of Serbia and Canada are two visual narratives that point to the nature of immigrant lives and childhood memories.
Before we get into the event—I would like to hear from you in what way you think that my love affected you
Event: Multimedia Performance by Marcus Youssef
In one of the final performances at the 2010 Memory Festival, Marcus Youssef (playwright, actor, director and writer) performed in a multimedia show about his mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. Youssef is in the midst of archiving and organizing his seventy-year-old mother’s journals, which she maintained through the early and middle-stages of early onset Alzheiemer’s disease, until she became physically incapable of putting pen to paper. He’s also continuing to write about their absurdly difficult relationship, an act of remembering and reconstruction that has gone on for many years. Youssef is a recipient of the Alcan Performing Arts Award and the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, and he is the Artistic Producer of Neworld Theatre in Vancouver.
The event was attended by about 60 people, whose participation in the discussion period of the show became an intergral part of Youssef’s performance.
Big Graphic Stories
Event: Reading and discussion by Lee Henderson, Hiromi Goto and Sarah Leavitt
Hosted by Charles Demers
Big Graphic Stories featured the work of Lee Henderson (The Man Game, Broken Record Technique), Hiromi Goto (Half World, Chorus of Mushrooms) and Sarah Leavitt (Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me). Each reader’s stories wereaccompanied by BIG images for a storybook-style reading of ingenious fabrications of memory and poignant reminiscences.
The event was hosted by the activist writer and comedian, Charles Demers (Vancouver Special and The Prescription Errors) and brought in over 60 spectators.
Rewind: Memory on Film
Film Launch by Thursdays Writing Collective
Explosive live readings accompanied the official launch party celebrating four short video memoirs by Downtown Eastside writers Irit Shimrat, Antonette Rea, Joan Morelli and Muriel Marjorie. These videos are the result of a Roundhouse residency which brought together the Thursdays Writers Collective (named by Geist as “the biggest, boldest, and by far the most vital conspiracy of writers operating in Vancouver at present”) with W2’s Bladerunners youth media training program.
Rewind: Memory on Film was attended by over 75 spectators.
The Ecology of Memory
Talk with Hal Wake and Faith Moosang
Faith Moosang (First Son: Portraits of C.D. Hoy) was interviewed by Hal Wake, Artistic Director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival, on her process of collecting abandoned photo albums, home movies, slides and other ephemera related to the remembrance of the family. Moosang has amassed hundreds of personal photo albums from flea markets, garage sales, eBay and back alleys. In this discussion, she discussed the phenomenon of being a collector, as well as the nature and significance of the items she collects. Her special interest in everyday photography and her study of found objects has positioned her as part detective, who pieces together family histories from discarded images, and part anthropologist, who preserves lost artifacts and family memories.
The Ecology of Memory was attended by some 50 people and generated many questions from the audience.
The Photography Panel
Featuring Goran Basaric, David Campion and Christopher Grabowski. Moderated by Stephen Osborne.
On the opening night of the 2010 Memory Festival, Stephen Osborne, publisher of Geist, and the photographers Goran Basaric, David Campion and Christopher Grabowski, discussed many of the themes central to the festival. Panel members described how they use photography to grapple with history, memory and the acts of remembering and forgetting, how they comprehend the role of the photographer in preserving memory, and how the camera itself informs this process.
This event was attended by over 100 spectators.
