Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog

Maybe it’s our tendency to romanticize the past as better-then-the-present, but it often seems that Vancouver was genuinely hip and cool a few decades back, before it was trying to vie for the world-spotlight by packaging itself as hip and cool. This archive site is a nice find, particularly in light of the embarrassing and horrific cuts to the arts announced here in BC (from an annual $47.6M to $3.6M).

Ruins In Process is a research archive and educational resource that brings together still and moving images, ephemera, essays and interviews to explore the diverse artistic practices of Vancouver art in the 1960s and early 1970s. Drawn from private collections and archives as well as public sources, it uses the capacity of the internet as an ideal medium to present the interdisciplinary activities and technologies that emerged at that time. With hundreds of images, texts, audio and video recordings, Ruins In Process will reward repeat visits and ongoing research.

Pictured above is “Vancouver Art Gallery curator Doris Shadbolt sitting on a electronic sound sculpture by Dennis Vance. The work entitled “Fat Emma” was featured in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibition Direction 69. “Fat Emma” was a fiberglass module that picked up various radio stations through movement.” I just love this.