Henry Tsang, Social Space, Olympus 2006

On Tuesday, I had the privilege of hearing Henry Tsang speak about his work to Sadira Rodrigues and Jeremy Todd's Interdisciplinary Forums course at Emily Carr. Henry spoke about four pieces/projects: two installations of Chinook Jargon and translations, including recent banners created for the World Peace Forum in Vancouver in June; "Orange County," a four channel video installation featuring footage shot in Orange County, California, and "Orange County" China, a two-phase suburban development/gated community on the outskirts of Beijing; and his most recent work, "Olympus, 2006."

In an emailed invitation to the talk, Olypus 2005 is described as "an interactive new media video project that selects video clips based on information gathered over the internet and premiered in Torino, Italy during the 2006 Olympics" and which "depicts one man's journey in two cities hosting the recent and upcoming Winter Olympic Games: Torino and Vancouver." The interactive element of "Olympus 2006" comes from the fact that it responds to "changes in popularity of the Torino2006 and Vancouver2010 websites" by changing the order of clips (see Ciao da Vancouver - Henry Tsang www.onedge.tv).

What impressed me about Henry's talk, in addition to the obvious, depth, wit and scope of his work, was his decision to frame it within particular theories of social space and spectacle (DeBord, Lefebvre, Soja) and what I see as a somewhat uncanny return to question of industrialization, labour, trade and racialization that underpin the work, particularly this latest piece.

Thinking about the question of direct action raised by Ashok Mathur, about the way Henry might position himself and his work in relation to histories of direct action, the FLQ and Paris '68 being examples, I was struck by certain trajectories in the work viz. French thought, as well as a comment Henry made during his talk on the association between Torino and Fiat (Fabbica Italiana Automobili Torino), on the fact that alpine area around Torino was developed by the Agnelli family (of Fiat fame) as winter play ground for their friends.

This association reminded that me of one of the few moments in Henri Lefebvre's conceptions of Social Space/Everyday Life that has to do with his question of race, specifically his thinking about migrant labourers a Renault factory outside Paris. Lefebvre's notion that social space is a priori contradictory and contradicted and that each epoque produces and reproduces various spatial realities seems to me to be crucial to understanding the re-invigoration of nationalist discourses around the intersections of race, citizenship, and labour, especially in relation to the eruption of protests and violence in France in October and Nov 2005.

In the context of Vancouver and the run up to the 2010 Olympics, one is left to wonder about the links between the heavily industrialized sites of Europe (Italy and France) and the not-yet, never-quite industrialized spaces of BC. Moving from these colonial centres to a central colony, or at least its Western periphery, one is left to think about the Asian labourer both evoked and transformed (to athlete, consumer, location scout) in Henry's solo journey back into the terrain of BC's mountains.

Just a few thoughts to follow up on later, perhaps.