ClarkWalk was an event that explored the ever changing nature of Clark Drive in Vancouver BC. It had a soundtrack. Photographers walked a length of Clark Drive, arriving at an interdisciplinary art/music venue called Merge, where the photos were collected and curated. A week later, attendees of the event were encouraged to download the same music, and walk the same route, and take photographs and tag them to Instagram. Arriving at the venue, the participants were greeted with an exhibition of the photographs taken the week before, and a live performance by some of the musicians featured on the soundtrack. That was over 4 years ago. Today, December 26, 2022, I revisited the route. That photo second from the end, that's where the venue Merge was located. It fell victim to the ongoing gentrification of this land between neighborhoods. Not long after, the location that replaced it fell victim to the ravages of Covid. It's been an unkind few years.
Stan Douglas documented a stretch of Hastings St in Vancouver. That stretch of Hastings is mostly unrecognizable in comparison. The buildings have all been painted fashionable (and Heritage Guideline friendly) a mostly uniform charcoal colour. There's a spin bike studio, and a pretentious coffee shop. I think the Boba shop is still there, but the Noodle Box location shut down a couple of years ago. Covid was hard on even the businesses that were part of the gentrification of Hastings St.
ClarkWalk is a more dynamic and ongoing version of this urban documentation. It's snippets from many perspectives that, hopefully, come together as a whole picture of what a place was like over a period of time. There are echos of what was seen in 2018. And some things have changed. I'll probably do it all again in a year or two. Where Stan Douglas created a complete time capsule of a time and place, ClarkWalk is more of a story about the evolution of a time and place, with more stories, and a less clear but more dynamic big picture.
Or something like that.
