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BLACKOUT AT THE CANDAHAR

If you were in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, you may have checked out the cool project called the Candahar Bar. A project of Presentation House Gallery.

Northern Ireland based artist Theo Sims' Candahar Bar was a detailed recreation of an Irish public house, named for a street in Belfast and based on that city's now defunct Blackthorn Bar. Part sculpture, part theatrical stage, The Candahar was an artwork that was also a functioning bar, open to the public and staffed in collaboration with two Belfast bartenders who acted as unscripted performers. The project fused the authentic with fantasy, spectacle with stage, and at its heart acted as a catalyst for conversation, debate and dialogue — and a pint here or there.

During the sixteen days of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Presentation House Gallery staged The Candahar as a locus for social interaction and the host site for an ambitious series of nightly events — musical programs, theatrical presentations, performances and dialogues, both scripted and unscripted. Programmed by author Michael Turner, as well as by invited guests, including Winnipeg artist Paul Butler, the Candahar featured an extensive and diverse series of events by local and international visual artists, musicians, writers and more.

Local poet Elizabeth Bachinsky worked with Vancouver writer Alex Leslie on a public art project called BLACKOUT AT THE CANDAHAR. In response to the censorship that was part of the 2010 Olympic PR machine, Leslie and Bachinsky collected months worth of Olympic coverage from local and national newspapers as source material and encouraged visitors to the Candahar to create their own "poems of erasure" (blackout poems).

Armed with an avalanche of Olympic coverage, black markers, Olympic-coloured electrical tape, scissors, and a very nice pint of lager, the "collagist poets" blacked out words, phrases, and entire sections of text to reveal their own poetic Olympic messages.

BLACKOUT AT THE CANDAHAR is supported by Presentation House Gallery, subTerrain magazine, the City of Vancouver, and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. The best of the blackouts will appear in subTerrain's Summer issue.