Event Details
Saturday, August 24 | 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Steveston Waterfront – Imperial Landing (map)
11:00am — Sound Walk #1
2:00 pm — Sound Walk #2
FREE. Drop In.
Nestled in the mouth of the Fraser River, Richmond consists of a series of islands formed by sand, silt, and gravel carried by the river as it flows towards the sea. Yet while the river is a constant companion for Richmondites, its presence and influence often goes unnoticed except as a backdrop for our daily lives. Dragon boats, however, place us firmly in the realm of the river whether we are paddlers or spectators.
A new site specific work created by Sidi Chen (@sherlchen) for the Steveston Dragon Boat Festival, Crossing Point | 共渡 is a participatory installation that invites us to experience the river’s presence through movement and embodied listening.
The installation will be augmented by free, all ages workshops at 11 am and 2 pm, featuring collective sound walks along the shoreline of the Fraser River. Sidi will guide an experience of active listening through a sound performance, drawing participants into a personal sound experience of local ecologies that deepen understanding of various relations held within our environment.
About the Artist
Sidi Chen is a traveling queer artist whose practice addresses the intersectionality of the body, community space, and the land. For the creative process, Chen empathizes the body as a unit of measurement, a vessel of relationships, a repository of experience, and an instrument for creativity.
Through his interdisciplinary research crossing arts to science and social movements, Chen’s interested in how the embodied experience informs the relations and agencies of the bodies that are human, ecological, and planetary.
Chen graduated from the University of the Fraser Valley with BFA with the honor of distinction in 2018 and is a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts Program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (September 2021). Chen has participated in a wide range of residencies, exhibitions, performances, and projects in North America. Sidi Chen is currently working as a practicing artist, an independent arts administrator, and a community worker in the historical Chinatown, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, known as Vancouver, BC.
This project is presented by Cinevolution in partnership with Dragon Boat BC.