The Polygon Gallery presents Dislocating N. Vancouver, the last in a series of public talks in conjunction with the exhibition N. Vancouver, with Clint Burnham, Tim Lee and Fabien Pinaroli.

Artist Tim Lee will reflect on American artist Robert Smithson’s 1970 visit to Vancouver, in relation to his own artwork responding to the North Vancouver landscape. Curator Fabien Pinaroli will discuss the strategies of North Vancouver’s N.E. Thing Company, as responses to the territories and borders of technology, suburbia, and art. Rodney Graham’s historically layered photograph Paddler, Mouth of the Seymour (2012-2013) will provide a reference point for author Clint Burnham’s discussion on Jordan Abel’s writing. Burnham explores how text, image, and landscape help us to understand the complexities of reconciliation.

The discussion will be followed by a book launch of Re: Towards a minor history of exhibitions and performances, a collection of textual and visual essays based on the 1976 exhibition Celebration of the Body organised by N.E. Thing Company in Kingston, Ontario, and its reactivation in 2012 in Lyon, Saint-Fons and London, by Fabien Pinaroli and others.

Clint Burnham is the author of numerous works of poetry and fiction, as well as book-length studies of Steve McCaffery and Frederic Jameson. He has written several articles and essays on photography for publications including ESPACE art actuel, Canadian Art, and Artforum. Burnham is a professor of English Literature at Simon Fraser University.

Tim Lee is a Vancouver-based artist working primarily in photography, text, video, and sculpture. In his self-portraits, Lee poses as a wide range of artists, thinkers, and composers, interpolating himself into pivotal moments in history and popular culture, and testing the boundaries between parody and homage. In 2008, Lee was the recipient of the Sobey Award.

Fabien Pinaroli lives and works in Lyon, France. He recently curated the exhibition indexmakers (2017) based on a personal interpretation of Seth Siegelaub’s methodology, and organised CoB#2 (2012), a series of reenactments of the 1976 exhibition Celebration of the Body by N.E. Thing Company, currently at the McKenzie Art Gallery In Regina. Pinaroli’s presentation is supported in part by the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris.

Image: Installation view, N.E. Thing Company, Still Life with Jungle Gym, Maplewood School, 1968; Kodachrome transparency and lightbox, 34.7 x 50.2 x 13.1 cm; Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, gift of Ingrid Baxter and Iain Baxter, 1995; Photo by SITE Photography, 2017