PARKED (2024)

After my previous version of PARKING at the AHVA Gallery at UBC in 2019, I had hoped for another opportunity to gather car names and create madrigal for a choir to sing in a church. 

Then I met Jenny Hawkinson and this idea looked like it might be possible. Jenny was in the midst of her MFA in Creative Research at the Transart Institute, Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. She had worked in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) for a number of years and was working on  invited me to participate in her thesis project based in a former gallery space in Vancouver's DTES. She also told me that she had done sound recordings in Saint James Church. 

In the mean time, I organized the gathering of car names to take place on Saturday April 20th, 2024, from 1-5pm. As with PARKING (2011) where I noted all the cars parked on Gottingen st. in Halifax, a group of us would note all 264 vehicles "parked" on Cordova St. at this particular time.

Saint James Anglican Church is located at the corner of Cordova and Gore Streets. At 1 pm, about 10 of us set out from the church walking in giant loop around the whole of Cordova Street, stopping to sing the names of each vehicle along the way. In the following weeks I listed the names in black marker on the walls of Both Kinds Gallery as a part of FeedBack Loop. I also invited composer and choir director, Earl Peach, to score a madrigal using all the names of the vehicles into a four part harmony to be sung by a choir. I'm anticipating that this will be performed in 2025.  

You can listen to the pre-installation call and response sound walk of the parked vehicle names lead by Cathy. Recorded April 20, 2024, Cordova St, Vancouver.