Cooper’s Mews

Wood, steel, steam generators, sound, electro-mechanical.

Vancouver. 1999

Set in a residential development on the site of former heavy Industrial lands and the Yale Town railway yards, this work encompasses the site’s historical values and heritage. It is on the exact site of the Sweeney Cooperage barrel factory that was closed and torn down in 1984 after 75 years. The artwork runs an entire block long through the site. There are two elements to the work; an embedded pathway in the ground and an overhead rail system above. A section of the path is a spring loaded boardwalk which, when walked on, triggers jets of steam and sound into 5 overhead barrels. Each barrel contains a different level of water, thus each producing a different resonant frequency to resound in the neighbourhood’s ambient soundscape. The boardwalk/pathway diminishes into a single steel rail line buried in the grass at the far north end, as does the overhead track, diminishing into a single line. As such, disappearing into memory and history. Collaboration with the architects and landscape architects was essential in this project, along with historical research into the City of Vancouver’s photographic archives which informed much of the vernacular in the art work.