Saltwater City Lab
Saltwater City Lab explores the use of immersive media and extended reality as tools to foster belonging within multigenerational diasporic communities. Drawing from the lived experiences of Sunny Nestler and Janet Wang in diasporic Chinese-Canadian and Jewish-Canadian communities, we deploy two key ideas of thereness (Ahmed 121) and דאָיקייט [doikayt], meaning hereness in Yiddish, in the exploration of cultural belonging that is situated in practices of community rather than in geographic place.
Our research is focused in and with the community of Chinatown in Vancouver, BC, historically nicknamed Saltwater City by the early Chinese community, and the impact of urban development on this diasporic group, both historically and speculatively for the future. Within the Chinese diaspora in Canada, Chinatowns represent hereness as a nexus of cultural activation, resources and community care; however, Chinatowns are facing ‘cultural erasure’ from major urban centres (Mahieus, McCann, 2022). We work from an understanding that cultural belonging is located amongst the diaspora itself.
Saltwater City Lab creates pathways for new media research-creation, investigating multigenerational diasporic identity and placekeeping strategies. Our research project lab brings together an interdisciplinary and intergenerational team to prototype our research layering immersive iterations of the past and a future Chinatown, as the cultural erasure of Chinatowns in Canada and their embedded diasporic histories is a critical and immediate issue.
Saltwater City
[middle]
waxed cast concrete, Chinatown scents
Janet Wang & Gabe Wong with fabrication assistance from Michelle Qu and sound design by Jonathan Tsang
Apothecary
[right]
Janet Wang with animation and fabrication assistance by Sonam Sandhu and Audrey Wang
Pepper’s Ghost holograms in glass jars.
The three animated holograms are of Solomon’s Seal 玉竹, astralagus 黃芪 and cordyceps 冬蟲夏草
Saltwater City was first launched as a prototype exhibit with work created by Janet Wang and Gabe Wong, exploring the use of multi-sensorial media to create an immersive experience of Vancouver’s Chinatown. The Chinatown in Vancouver, BC, historically nicknamed Saltwater City by the Chinese community, is facing cultural erasure under the threat of gentrifying development. Our aim is to capture the rich, cultural sensorium of this community.
For this prototype exhibition, we employ layers of field recordings and extractions of Chinese herbs, medicines and dried goods to evoke the atmosphere of a Chinese herbalist. These extracted scents are diffused from within waxed concrete casts of cardboard boxes, evocative of the rows of boxes of dried goods displayed in Chinatown stores.
Alongside the audio and scents, neon waxed papers are a digital visualization of the remaining traditional merchants in Chinatown. A shelf of apothecary jars represent the next phase of this research project, animating and activating drawings to capture the lingering ghosts and possible futures of Saltwater City.
With thanks to Sonam Sandhu, Michelle Qu, Jonathan Tsang and Audrey Wang for their invaluable research assistance.
Created with the generous support of the British Columbia Arts Council and with a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Institutional Grant through Emily Carr University of Art & Design.
Apothecary
with animation by Sonam Sandhu
and fabrication by Audrey Wang
Installation at CICA Vancouver
Photography by Dennis Ha
i
Chinatown scents, including:
dried shrimp
Chinese herbalist
preserved orange
White Flower
Chinese bakery