Impassioned Objects And Seething Absences: The Olympics In Canada, National Identity and Consumer Culture

This dissertation critically analyzes the commercial practices and products of the 1976 Montreal, 1988 Calgary and 2010 Vancouver Olympics. The central questions I ask are: how did the Olympics in Canada become a platform for the intersection of patriotism and consumption? What were the key ideas about Canadian identity, history, and citizenship that Olympic organizers and corporate sponsors promoted? How did commodities symbolize these ideas? Finally, how do these ideas relate to political policies and practices? This work contributes to an understanding of how branded commodities shape Canadian identity and citizenship norms by arguing that the objects sold during the Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver Olympics embodied unresolved contradictions in the meaning of national identity. Commodities (like mascots, Petro-Canada glassware and Hudson’s Bay Company mittens) represented a version of national identity that glorified European settlement in Canada and obscured the disparity between Indigenous and Settler Canadians’ quality of life. Further, by buying these commodities, Settler Canadians constructed their identity as valued citizens who make important material contributions to the nation. The production, consumption and promotion of branded products helped popularize the idea that reconciliation between Indigenous and Settler Canadians has been achieved when, in fact, it is an ongoing and unfinished process. Moreover, these practices deepened pre-existing conflicts involving land and natural resources in Canada, often at the expense of Indigenous peoples’ interests and well-being. The research is grounded in material from Olympic archives in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver, which I use to conduct the first book-length study of the Olympics hosted in Canada. The theoretical framework that underpins this project is based on Anne McClintock’s conceptualization of fetish and Avery Gordon’s theory of “ghostly hauntings.” McClintock’s work helps explain how commodities can hold together contradictory ideas about Canadian identity while Gordon’s theory provides a basis for understanding how the absence of information (e.g. facts about Canada’s colonial past) can become perceptible or, in her words, “seething absences.” Using this approach, I demonstrate the importance of studying the symbolic significance of Olympic commodities rather than focusing exclusively on Olympic-related sponsorship and marketing practices. I argue that the production, consumption, promotion, and symbolism of the commodities have significant social and political consequences which include: shaping Canadian identity, influencing public knowledge about the nation’s past, intervening in debates about land possession and resource allocation, including and excluding citizens from participation in civic life, educating children and teens about the nation, and influencing reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples

“Trade Routes of the Mind”: A Brief History of Information Art in Canada

H& IT ON probes the turbulent social environments generated by information technologies. In a suite of all-new photo- and language-based works, conceptual artist IAIN BAXTER& (a.k.a. Iain Baxter) stages a satirical theatre of far-from-equilibrium behaviours and trends characteristic of a chronically web-surfing culture. The artist’s intervention loosely adapts the irreverent format of Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 collaboration with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage—a constant inspiration to “the&Man,” as BAXTER& has recently re-branded himself—to explore the effects of social media on the contemporary information landscape. But make no mistake, there is nothing nostalgic about BAXTER’s nod to the “McCoolman,” as he calls him. As in all his work since 1968, BAXTER&’s approach to information is always hands on. H& IT ON follows BAXTER& as he plays with and repurposes artifacts and affects circulating within the trade routes of the Information Society to create an unruly collage of observation and ideas. H& IT ON also includes new essays by Adam Lauder and Dennis Durham that, for the first time, situate BAXTER&’s pioneering information- based practice historically within a North American context. Lauder’s essay positions BAXTER& within a distinctly Canadian tradition of information art characterized by a persistent focus on affect, embodiment, and the multitude. The first history of information art in Canada, Lauder’s “Trade Routes of the Mind” explores Canadian artists’s reading against the grain of indigenous formulations of information and the Information Society in the work of Harold A. Innis, McLuhan and others—from Bertram Brooker to General Idea and beyond. Durham’s essay compares and contrasts BAXTER&’s art of Visual Sensitivity Information as Co-President of the Vancouver- based N.E. Thing Co. with cybernetic representations of entropy found in the contemporaneous work of American artists Robert Smithson and Dan Graham. Durham’s essay is essential reading for understanding the international significance of BAXTER&. H& IT ON also includes a preface by renowned McLuhan and BAXTER& scholar, Richard Cavell

Web Portal Design Guidelines as Identified by Children through the Processes of Design and Evaluation

The Web is an important source of information for school projects, but young users do not always find it easy to locate relevant material. A critical factor in success is the portal through which they search or browse web content. Traditionally web portals have been designed by adults with young users in mind, but there is very little evidence that the latter make use of them. In this paper design guidelines are elaborated for such portals that are based upon focus group and operational evaluations by elementary school students of two prototype web portals designed by two intergenerational teams, each comprising elementary school students and adult designers. The evaluations offer strong support for involving children throughout the design process for portals that both in presentation and functionality reflect the cognitive and affective needs of young users rather than adults

Investigating the narration of nations: promoting Canadian passion for winter sports and their aboriginal heritage in VANOC’s 2010 Olympic brand identity and marketing campaign

This dissertation is an analysis of VANOC's images in their 2010 Olympic brand identity and marketing campaign. It attempts to provide an in-depth analysis of how VANOC's images helped to produce romanticised and mythologised narratives of Canadian society, culture and values to attract tourism from abroad and create a 'feel-good factor' for the Canadian public. By using semiological analysis I show how two narratives emphasised core Canadian characteristics that would make the host attractive to an international audience whilst also reminding the home audience of their shared values. In chapter four I argue that Canadian passion for winter sports was emphasised through various images. Central to my analysis of the winter sports images are Vancouver's atypical winter climate, the Northern myth and hockey. In chapter five I discus how VANOC misrepresented and appropriated Aboriginal heritage to produce an outdated and uncontroversial representation that emphasised the 'Performing Indian' and 'Vanishing Indian' myths. I conclude this dissertation by considering how the two narratives are related and by proposing future research that could enable us to better understand host narratives

Quee(Re)appropriations and sovereign art statements in the work of Kent Monkman

Kent Monkman is a First Nations artist who employs a number of strategies that I term quee(re)appropriations. Quee(re)appropriations are a specific form of reappropriation, a form that challenges the heteronormativity of dominant hegemony and highlights the confrontational and direct nature of the reclamation in the form of re-appropriation. Queer, here an adjective, describes practices that explicitly create alternatives to dominant culture. Historically, appropriation, seizure and confiscation have been used by conquerors as tools of empire, often through the field of anthropology under the guise of documentation and preservation. The seemingly documentarian collection of indigenous images and culture, selectively appropriated by colonial powers, have been used to justify a hierarchical power structure that led to expansion, relocation and genocide. Monkman uses quee(re)appropriation, or the queer re-appropriation of images previously appropriated by colonial powers, to shift the power structure and challenge hegemony. Quee(re)appropriations enable Monkman to make his own sovereign decolonial and two spirited artistic statements

Branding the Games: Commercialism and the Olympic City

This chapter examines the role of branding and sponsorship in the Olympic games - with particular reference to the urban. The chapter identifies tensions between Olympic values, branding activities and a projected legacy. The chapter offers a social-theoretical account of the Olympic brand to analyisis on :London2012. It is a contributiuon to wider analysis in a book drawing upon historical, cultural, economic and socio-demographic perspectives. Olympic Cities examines the role of London hosting the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games as a means to promote urban regeneration and social renewal in East London

Pedal off the Metal: An Investigation into Global Design and the Politics of Consumption

The research presented in this thesis is an investigation into global design and the politics of consumption. The aim of the research is to provide a survey of seventy-nine key global design events held in 2014 and present the results of an empirical study of the key components witnessed in the staging of a global design event. The second aim of the study is to discuss the role that global design events play in perpetuating global inequalities as cities are further shaped by creative economic policy. The written research component of this thesis is used to inform my creative projects and communication design practice

Considering the Feather Headdress

During the Spring 2016 course Ethnohistory of the Native Northeast, students are studying Native American objects in the Penn Museum collections by combining close material analyses (elements, construction, design, condition, etc.) with other forms of evidence: textual, photographic, historical, and ethnographic. In many cases, the objects we’re studying have little to no provenance data. So, we are seeking out similar objects, reaching out to consult with Indigenous cultural experts, and considering non-material evidence, such as community identity, memory, oral traditions, and other Indigenous knowledges that might illuminate these objects. By sharing this research via social media, we hope to recover object histories, and draw links among museums, archives, and Native communities, in ways that can encourage broader cross-cultural conversations outside of the Museum

POINT OF ORIGIN: THE GLOBAL POSITIONING OF RECENT VANCOUVER ART

This thesis examines the way in which Vancouver art is positioned in terms of its geographical origin, “Vancouver Art,” by “Vancouver Artists” in three case studies, Baja to Vancouver (2003-2005), Intertidal (2005-2006) and Vancouver’s Cultural Olympiad (2007-2010) that accompanied the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. It is my contention that the three case studies taken up in this thesis embraced place-promotion through the arts and culture, the Floridian language of economic instrumentalization of art and creativity, and the global projection of Vancouver art through the geographical positioning of arts and culture. I consider how the city-centric positioning of Vancouver art has antecedents in Vancouver art history but has lately acquired an increasingly promotional significance as major cities are looking to the work of urban-planning theorists such as Richard Florida whose work champions economic instrumentalization of culture and the branding of cities globally through the arts. In each of the case studies the curatorial positioning stressed the local or regional engagement of the work and simultaneously championed its global relevance. Not only a curatorial endeavor, the surrounding catalogue, critical and journalistic writing on Vancouver art presents the city and its art production in the same manner. While the artistic practices and works represented in the exhibitions may critique and comment on Vancouver’s global condition, much of the writing and curatorial theses remain optimistic in tone in the pursuit of global visibility