Art Connects | Weekend Chime Listening Party

Hosted by Brady Cranfield with special guests Betty Mulat, Russell Wallace and Casey Wei

Thursday, February 25 |  6 PM

REGISTER

As part of the launch of the new public artwork Weekend Chime, artist Brady Cranfield will host a listening party with musicians and artists Betty Mulat, Russell Wallace and Casey Wei. Each panelist will respond to Cranfield’s work by sharing a song and reflecting on popular music’s engagement with social and political issues.

Weekend Chime is a sound installation by Cranfield, located in the city’s new public plaza at Robson Square between the Provincial Court of British Columbia and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Every Friday at 5 pm, the artwork plays two notes taken from the chorus of Loverboy’s iconic song “Working for the Weekend,” signalling the end of the traditional workweek. The work explores themes of class, labour struggles and the versatility of pop music. Cranfield says, “I see a parallel between the way everyday people use, reuse, remake and occupy that space and the way that we use, reuse, remake and occupy pop songs. Weekend Chime will hopefully act as a reminder that we’re all workers, the true producers of value in the world.”

Weekend Chime is a public artwork commissioned by the City of Vancouver Public Art Program.

Questions? Submit them during the Zoom presentation using the Q&A function. You can also engage with your fellow attendees and panelists during the event using the Chat function.

New to Zoom? Learn how to register and attend a webinar here »

ACCESIBILITY INFORMATION

CART Services (Communication Access Realtime Translation) are available for Public Programs upon request. Please provide seven business days of advance notice prior to an event. We will make every effort to meet requests made outside of this window of time.

To place a request, please contact Public Programs Coordinator Stephanie Bokenfohr by email at sbokenfohr@vanartgallery.bc.ca or by phone at (604) 662-4700.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Brady Cranfield is a Vancouver-based sound and visual artist, musician, writer and educator. He holds an MA in Communications and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. He is the founder and co-organizer (in collaboration with the artist Kathy Slade) of the ongoing public art project The Music Appreciation Society, and he frequently collaborates with artist Jamie Hilder. He has presented work at the Contemporary Art Gallery (2020), Gordon Smith Gallery for Canadian Art (2018), Or Gallery (2012), the Western Front (2004), the Charles H. Scott Gallery (2008) and Artspeak (2008) in Vancouver. He is also a member of the improv/electronic/jazz trio Alfred Jarry and the duo Vomit Fraud with Kay Higgins.

Betty Mulat, aka Venetta, is an Ethiopian-Canadian visual artist, producer, DJ and event organizer, based in Vancouver, BC. Venetta is the co-founder of NuZi, a music collective dedicated to providing a platform for Black women in the Vancouver electronic music scene. Her productions and DJ sets are energetic and unpredictable, displaying an affinity for acid, techno and electro. Mulat’s visual art explores the social frameworks of Black identity, drawing on the African diasporic identity and celebrating Black womanhood. She is committed to reclaiming the Black and Brown roots of electronic dance music and creating Black political spaces as a source of empowerment.

Russell Wallace is an award-winning composer and a traditional singer from the Lil’wat Nation. He is an alumnus of Capilano University, the University of British Columbia, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Spirit Song Native Theatre. Wallace is one of the founding members of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast and graduated from the UBC Creative Writing program. He has been a guest programmer for Word Vancouver and has programmed and managed the Aboriginal Electronic Music Festival for a number of years. In 2018, Wallace was the recipient of a Leo Award for Best Musical Score for the documentary series, “1491: The Untold History of the Americas Before Columbus.”

Casey Wei/KC Wei is an interdisciplinary artist, musician and writer, based in Vancouver, BC. Her practice has evolved from filmmaking (Murky Colors [2012], Vater und Sohn / Father and Son / 父与子 [2013]) into works that cross over between art, music and the community at large (Kingsgate Mall Happenings [2014], Chinatown Happenings [2015], the Karaoke Music Video Free Store [2017], the art rock? concert series [2015-2018], which resulted in her most recent film, art rock? The Popular Esoteric [2018]). In 2016, she began Agony Klub, a music and printed matter label that releases material under the framework of the “popular esoteric.” The label has twenty-five releases to date, including a bi-annual magazine+mixtape called AK, which features local and international collaborators. She plays in the music project Kamikaze Nurse and sometimes produces music videos and texts under the alias Karen Zolo. She is also co-founder and editor at ReIssue.pub and founder and Executive Director of Artworld Software.