Departments » Langara Centre for Art in Public Spaces » Past Projects
Vehicle by Kristina Lee Podesva
Artist in Residence: Kristina Lee Podesva
Inaugural Artist in Residence from June 2008 until April, 2009. Known for her collaborative approach to contemporary art, Podesva worked with concepts of global mobility and transitional spaces in relation to Langara’s student body, campus and curriculum. Kristina is the founder of colourschool, a free school within a school most recently hosted by Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. She is cofounder of Cornershop Projects, an open framework for the examination of the relationship between art and economic transactions, and is Assistant Editor at The Fillip Review.
Project: Vehicle: Thinking through the box
The project re-purposes the symbolic and architectural space of shipping containers to catalyze conversations and collaborations with the Langara College community, neighbourhood and beyond about our experience and understanding of globalization. Shipping containers, which are normally used as vehicles for international commerce, become in this project an intimate and interactive site. Located outside the main entrance to the college, the project provides a discursive space for participants, housing a series of reading rooms developed by Podesva in collaboration with invited local and international guests Jeffrey Swartz, Jeff Khonsary, and Vanessa Kwan. Inspired by Aleksandr Rodchenko’s Workers’ Club from the 1925 Paris Exposition, Vehicle takes a contemporary approach, hosting a program of performances, workshops, recitals and events that facilitate playful, poetic, and more serious investigations that re-signify the symbolic space of globalization. Vehicle constitutes a temporary zone of exception where new forms of “global” knowledge are encouraged, produced and articulated.
