Rise up! Sights, sounds and spaces of protest at the Music, Art & Architecture (MAA) Library in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre focuses on the subject of protest and highlights materials from the MAA Library collection, along with select items from Rare Books & Special Collections and University Archives. Collectively, these items identify the myriad forms of creative expression that acts of protest can take. The exhibit will remain available to view until the end of summer term.
This exhibit was thoughtfully curated through a collaborative effort between Sara Ellis, Art & Visual Literacy Librarian, David Haskins, Music Librarian, and Paula Farrar, Architecture, Landscape & Planning Librarian and Head of MAA Library.
“Some of the selected materials highlight student sit-ins and occupation; anti-war, anti-nuclear, and anti-racism rallies; strike action for worker’s rights; and civic engagement in support of human rights, civil rights, and Indigenous rights. Other resources shed light on key principles of feminism, gender equality, and 2SLGBTQI+ rights; demonstrate disparities in access to health care, housing, and resources; and draw connections between land use and climate activism,” says Ellis.
In addition to selecting pieces for the exhibit based on their respective fields, they also organized works within the display cases by a common theme, regardless of the subject matter.
“The goal is to offer a new lens or perspective on the visual and material culture of protest and to encourage viewers to make new connections between topics or events that, previously, they may have only considered as isolated circumstances,” shares Ellis. “For example Art after Stonewall discusses the AIDS Memorial Quilt project, which connects to the music score The AIDS quilt songbook. The quilt as material object and activist analogy can be linked to the Quilt of hope : Vancouver artists for Black liberation, and the use of handicraft as a subversive tool in Crafting dissent. AIDS, social change, and theater aligns with The design of protest, through the intersections of performance, choreography, political demonstration, and public space.”
Highlights from Rise up!
“We chose materials on topics that were both timely and timeless, and relevant to the current moment. This exhibition combines the three lenses through which we have presented the topics of protest and resistance: the visual (arts), the auditory (music), and the spatial (architecture),” says Haskins. Below are a few favourite highlights from each librarian.
Selections by Sara Ellis (Arts)
The photobook Black Lives Matter is an essential and impactful record of the Black Lives Matter movement and protests from New York artist Christopher Cook. The image on display, titled “Streamed,” depicts a protester holding a sign that reads: “The revolution will be streamed.” It references the iconic civil rights poem, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, by jazz poet and spoken-word performer Gil Scott-Heron, underscoring the enduring nature of the message and the need for active participation to effect tangible societal change.
The exhibit also features images from the UBC Archives Photograph Collection that document UBC student protests over the years, including a tent city erected on Main Mall in 1966 to lobby for increased housing on campus; a “paint-in” by students at the School of Architecture in 1974; and a series of events from Trident Concern Week in 1975, to oppose construction of a nuclear submarine base on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
Selections by David Haskins (Music)
Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, which premiered at the Kennedy Center during the 1976 American Bicentennial, is an hour-long set of variations on a Chilean leftist protest song of the same name. Rzewski composed this piece as both a tribute to the people of Chile, and as a rebuke to American foreign policy at the time.
Rzewski has noted that an Italian revolutionary song and a German antifascist song are referenced in the work, and serve as “a reminder that parallels to present threats existed in the past and that it is important to learn from them…The extended length of the composition may be an allusion to the idea that the unification of people is a long story and that nothing worth winning is acquired without effort.”
Comparable to Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is both a 20th-century masterpiece and a call to action. Rzewski’s work is represented in this exhibition by the score and an award-winning recording by Professor Corey Hamm at UBC’s School of Music.
Selections by Paula Farrar (Architecture)
Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) is a collective that formed in 2021 and brings together architects, activists, and advocates to campaign for policy changes that address issues of housing injustice in what they call “c\a\n\a\d\a.”
The displayed materials relate to AAHA’s 2023 occupation of the Canada Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia with their project Not for Sale! Materials include an official AAHA pin, a list of the collective’s ten-point Demands (to consider along with the AAHA Manifesto), and the English Press Release from the Biennale. UBC’s School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture served as the lead organization for the project, partnering with the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.
Anyone interested in learning more about the collective and its work should check out the current exhibition Town + Country: Narratives of Property and Capital, on until April 13 at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, which includes AAHA among the participating artists.
