Paul Wong

The Hotel featured 12 site-specific performances and art installations created by Wong, which wowed the thousands who attended. This 17-minute video is both document of and art which captures the manic beauty and chaos of Wong’s mise en scène event.

Between Pictures: The Lens of Tamio Wakayama tells the epic journey of the late Japanese Canadian photographer Tamio Wakayama who decides to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the deep south during the 1960’s American civil rights movement. Learning the art of dark room photography along the way, this transformative moment in time allows him to confront his own identity and return ‘home’ to the west coast of Canada to begin a body of photographic work that continues to celebrate, re-present and document the spirit of Japanese Canadians who resided in the former Paueru Gai/Powell Street neighborhoods.

Storm, quite simply is a video recording of a car ride at night in hurricane forces. This is visual art that delivers us from the purely visual back to the world of the physical experience with all our senses awakened. Instead of bringing us the installation photographic image – or the digitally enhanced photographic simulation – these artists direct us from the world of images to the world of things, inviting us to grapple with them at first hand.

Icon of Jesus is marched through town in the days leading up to Easter.

“Early in the morning on Thursday Feb 26, 1976, a young First Nations man named Eugene Lloyd Pelly was fatally stabbed in an apartment at 4272 Watson Street, east of Main near 28th. After escaping out a window Pelly collapsed in the middle of the road and, as snow fell, succumbed to his injuries. That same morning Jeanette Reinhardt noticed Pelly’s bloody body from her window. Paul Wong, whom she was living with at the time, shot a roll of 35mm film documenting the scene – first from their window, and later at roadside. The quiet violence of the scene captivated Wong, and together with collaborator Kenneth Fletcher, the two embarked on a project to research the crime in full detail." – Allison Collins & Michael Turner, Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage 1972-1982

The Mainstreeters initiated a number of commercial enterprises. Support Modelling was a modelling agency comprised of members of the local art and punk rock scene. To promote the project, Paul Wong made a three-channel video (later adapted to single channel) that featured certain Mainstreeters in various states of undress, accompanied by a disco soundtrack. Support Modelling also appears as a series of concept ads (weddings, funerals) in Ennui magazine.

"Paul Wong’s Mahjong is rooted in the visual and oral sensuality of the game–the saturated colours of green in the game pieces and table top, the characters and names, floral patterns and coloured numbers on the dice and game pieces. It is this rich iconography that allows the participants to invent their own rules and play the game according to the images at hand." - Jordan Strom

Miss Chinatown juxtaposes the views of eight subjects against the background image of a beauty pageant: the Miss Chinese-Vancouver 1996. The subjects are all full or part ethnic Chinese, together they represent a diverse face of the Chinese-Canadian community, they present different perspectives on identity, home, sex and race. The contestants are seen going through the paces in the cheong-san (traditional side slit dress) segment of the live television spectacle.

A skillful, sensual rendering of an intriguing performance orchestrated by the artist. Through a fog-laden atmosphere, iconic figures emerge to perform on a huge turntable. Our look at this garishly lit spectacle is mediated by the gaze of a female Red Guard. All flesh and brilliance, this tape appears to critique popular culture by robbing it of any ostensible content. Hollywood proverb says, beneath the surface of fake tinsel lies only the real tinsel – the detritus of our times.

Excerpts featuring Paul Wong as the Wiry Man in Season 3, Episode 19 of the X-Files (1996). Part of Paul Wong’s ‘5’, a series of site-specific events and installations commissioned by the City Of Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Programs.

Based on slides shot in 1978 of the Austrian aktion artist Hermann Nitsch. Put away for 24 years, the color transparencies are spread out on a light table. The images are examined with a macro lens and captured with digital video. Not so much a reconstruction, or documentary of an event but a process of re-imagining. A hundred frames record a 12-hour, noon to midnight performance in an Roman amphitheatre in the center of Trieste in Northern Italy. Hermann Nitsch has been creating his unique rituals since the early 1970’s. The blood flows over naked bodies strapped on crosses, carried blindfolded, senses are tweaked with percussion sounds and blaring brass instruments. Religious iconography, operatic orchestrations of cast, crew, friends, and the public who eat, dance, drink.

A couple of bumbling guys on a dark road in Nicaragua spot a snake. They bound after the serpent that has slitered into the tall grass. Using bare hands they seize the Diamondback Rattler.

A two-channel installation from the Modern Television Loop series. Rock Garden shows two continuous shots of stone piles. On one monitor we see a close-up of hands grasping stones off the pile and tossing them off until the pile dwindles. The second monitor is a long shot of tossing stones to yet another pile.

The artist records everyday activities in the streets and alleys around the Main and Hasting Street intersection. On the right, the view is from a fixed camera positioned on top of a dashboard in a moving car. On the left, he walks with a handheld camera with a wide angle lens. Along the way he encounters a street artist, engages with two women in Pigeon Park, crack users, dealers and homeless people.

A foreign landowner negotiates with the locals and oversees digging of a well on his property.

Approx. 6000 images, 1000 still photographs a minute flash on and off the screen. A year of pictures mash into an intense viewing experience. Using the iphoto software, Last Year is the result of compiling all 2009 photographs from several different computer sources onto one central database. The images were put into ‘a chronology’ according to iphoto logic. Part journal, part diaristic we see Wong’s incessant recording of everyday life from Chinese New Year celebrations in Vancouver, Beijing Olympics, artists, art exhibitions, architecture, friends, family, New York streets, parties, music concerts, film festivals, Calgary Stampede, Pride Parade, Toronto moments.

Mixing together of Pantages’ Implosion of a longtime down town east side landmark: the Woodwards building, with Wong’s Downtown Eastside alleys.

After losing on a bad investment and falling in debt with a loan shark, Peter Yang turns to gambling, but with the help of an honest gambler, Bobby Chu, starts to win big time. This infuriates a ruthless game player, Tommy Chao, who does everything in his power to cheat them.

A made for the camera video collaboration with Steve Paxton, a unique pas de deux between videographer and dancer.

This three-channel installation, from the Modern Television Loop Series, utilizes the qualities of real and edited time. “Three views of Toronto’s underground action; trains pull in, pause, doors open, crowds exchange places, whirl off into oblivion. It is mesmerizing, this subsurface world. You could sit and watch for hours as the hypnotic qualities of TV sets and passing trains act together”. - Peggy Gale, 1977, Only Paper Today.