Today’s Poll

High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese, final week of exhibition

Contributor
By Contributor
July 16th, 2014

After its successful Artwalk opening last week, High Muck a Muck is running for another week at the Oxygen Art Centre until July 19th. 

Visitors can get their fortune told with a Pak Ah Pu lottery card, and then immerse themselves in a multi-media, multi-artist interpretation of the Chinese immigration experience.

Some of the recorded voices in the exhibit are Nelson residents descended from some of the 1000 people who lived in Nelson’s Chinatown a century ago.

“That’s what inspired this piece,” says Nicola Harwood, the project organizer.

“We are digging into and expressing tensions and stories from an Asian Canadian perspective.”

 One of the many artistic contributors to the project is Fred Wah, former poet laureate of Canada, former resident of Nelson, and son of a Chinese immigrant.

 High Muck a Muck is both a gallery exhibit and a website.

 “The installation and the website are companion pieces,” says Harwood.  “They are two different ways of experiencing the work and interacting with it.”

Visitors to the website can click on images to immerse themselves in music, written text, video, and audio oral history, in any order, in any combination.

 Visitors to the gallery can do the same, but will find themselves physically surrounded by it. Oxygen invites the public to settle in, put headphones on, and have a meditative experience in which the music is both traditional and electronic and the text is both contemporary poetry and recorded oral history.

Gallery opening times are: Wednesday to Saturday from 1-5 p.m.  Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

Other News Stories

Opinion