Vancouver Independent
Archives Week

Recollective

Fri. 02.11.18 / 3 pm Direct Action and the Archive

A Screening of Sid Chow Tan's Video Journalism and Woodsquat Open Archive by Josh Gabert-Doyon
Pollyanna 圖書館 Library

  1. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  2. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  3. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  4. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  5. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  6. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  7. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  8. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  9. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  10. Sid Chow Tan in conversation with Vincent Tao at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  11. Sid Chow Tan screening his documentation of the Chinese Head Tax Exclusion Redress Ceremony in Vancouver (1988) at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

  12. Sid Chow Tan screening his documentation of the Chinese Head Tax Exclusion Redress Ceremony in Vancouver (1988) at Pollyanna Library. Photo: Sungpil Yoon

Join 221A for a screening of selections from Sid Chow Tan's archive of self-produced video journalism. For decades, Chow Tan worked as a documentarian and organizer across social movements in the Lower Mainland, including environmental activism, anti-Olympics actions, and the struggle for housing. In conversation with Librarian Vincent Tao, Chow Tan spoke to how his video practice has critically informed his political organizing.

The screening included Chow Tan's video documenting the 2002 Woodward's Squat. To supplement the work, the library hosted an open archive of print materials from the squat, collected by past 221A Fellow Josh Gabert-Doyon.

Venue

Pollyanna 圖書館 Library
221 E. Georgia St

Bios

Sid Chow Tan is a video documentarian, community organizer, and media producer based in Vancouver. He is best known for his leadership in the struggle for redress of the Chinese head tax and exclusion laws.

Josh Gabert-Doyon is a writer and radio producer who lives in London and Vancouver.

Nathan Crompton is a writer and housing activist in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. He is currently an editor at The Mainlander and a PhD candidate in the department of history at Simon Fraser University.

Additional support for this event is generously provided by

Responses


Josh Gabert-Doyon

Woodwards Oral History Collection & Woodward's Amateur Historical Society (W.W.A.S.), October 2019

Introduction by Josh-Gabert-Doyon (PDF)

Interviews (PDFs):

Audio excerpt from Interview with Penelope Hetherington


Nathan Crompton

Old Mole, October 2019

"The housing movement in Vancouver has always moved according to the logic of the old mole. In the face of an imagined state of balance that never existed, the struggle for housing represents a blind spot in the tunnel vision of middle-class history. This struggle has been at times explosive, and at other times marked by a slow but persistent energy.”

– Excerpt from Nathan Crompton's "Old Mole"

Full Response (PDF):

View Response

Thank You

Thank you to Debbie Krull, Ivan Drury, Jim Carrico, John Richardson, Joel Snowden, Julie Chapman, Mike Krebs, Patrick Oleman and Penelope Hetherington; the W.W.A.S. research collective consisting of Brit Bachmann, Byron Peters, Gabi Dao, Jakob Knudsen; Recollective 2018 presenter Sid Chow Tan; and organizer Vincent Tao, whose leadership and support was essential in realizing this project.

wwas.221a.ca

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