Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 254: The World Accordion to Hank — with Hank Bull
Speakers: Samantha Walters, Hank Bull, Am Johal
[theme music]
Samantha Walters 0:04
Hello listeners! I’m Sam with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Hank Bull, an artist and curator whose administration and advocacy work has greatly contributed to artist-run culture in Canada. Am and Hank discuss his work with the Western Front and Centre A, and Hank also brought along some props to give us a taste of what his past radio art sounded like! Enjoy the episode!
[theme music fades]
Hank Bull 0:46
Uh uh, don't touch that dial. (Accordion playing). Whether it's raining in the east or snowing in the west, it's time now for fields of gloom to be ploughed under as we tune in once again, to the HP dinner show. Scientifically designed to help you prepare, eat, and digest your dinner. And now here they are, live at the mics. HP! (Accordion playing ends). Yes, that's right. Welcome to the airwaves. Am, it's a pleasure to be here.
Am Johal 1:33
Great to be here.
Hank Bull 1:36
So that was how we used to start the HP radio show back in 1976 on Co-op radio, overlooking Pigeon Park. Vancouver's cooperative, listener supported, listener programmed radio, still going strong today. And we had a ball doing our HP radio show back in the day. H, I'm H and P was Patrick Ready, who is no longer with us. So tonight Am, I'm honoured to welcome you as the honorary P for a day.
Am Johal 2:12
It's wonderful to be here.
Hank Bull 2:16
That's good. So we had a ball doing this show. It was really interesting, the HP radio show, because it was, you know, we were young artists, but there was no such thing as performance art in those days. That term didn't exist. We were just, we were just outside the box, somewhere in the dark, which is an appropriate way to be on the radio, because you basically are in the dark on the radio. We were kind of also outside of the art world box as well. We were on the radio. I mean, some German scholar said this was possibly the first regular program of radio art to ever take place. Dangerous thing to say. But it was early in the history of all that noise, sound, radio, alternative radio, underground media and so on. And so we had the carte blanche. We could do whatever we wanted. We ran 90 minutes a week live. And we do these skits like that one we had, we had a guy from outer space every week who would come in. (Accordion starts playing). (In an alien voice:) Greetings my fellow earth beings. My name is Cla-la. I am speaking to you from approximately 15 of your earth miles above the surface of your planet. (Accordion playing ends).
And that would lead on to— There was this regular every week. These two idiots, Captain Bonner and Captain Lafarge, two spacemen who are lost off course beyond the universe, waiting for their orders, which never come in. And they're just killing time, you know, doing whatever they do in their space cap. So this Captain Bonner, Captain Lafarge in space was every week ,regular series. We developed quite a faithful listeners for that. And lots of other stuff, we had homemade music. We used a telephone. Everyone's a musician, everyone's an artist. Grab your pots and pans and sing. And people would phone up. We had two lines so we could get little improv band happening on the spot. Of course, if people come in, we would interview just like you do, any interesting people would come by, they'd immediately have a mic thrust in their face.
Am Johal 4:32
Where was Co-op radio at that time?
Hank Bull 4:34
Co-op radio was right at the corner of Carrall and Hastings.
Am Johal 4:37
Okay, the old yeah...
Hank Bull 4:38
And right over what is now Pigeon Park, where the totem pole is, there. And yeah, they had the top two floors of that building, and it was started by Rick and Liora Salter, who were legendary activists, who really believed that, you know, that there could be a people's radio. And they went through the whole business of the CRTC and got a licence. And it was one of the first of those kind of community radio stations, I think, in the world. They gave it a really strong foundation so that it still goes today.
Am Johal 5:12
And in terms of, I mean, there would have been a lot of independent music happening, a lot of shows focused on activism. Red Eye, the current affairs show that's been on for forever there.
Hank Bull 5:21
That's right.
Am Johal 5:22
How did radio art fit into the schedule? How did you...?
Hank Bull 5:26
Yeah, we were a little even outside of that agenda. And so it was funny, but, you know, we were involved, I would say, in the actual praxis, we were just kind of liberating the airwaves. I was gonna say, art waves. You know, it was motivated by the idea of creation, of bringing art and life together, of having fun and having it be funny. It wasn't, you know, engaging the listener. We shied away from too much abstruse, experimental noise art because we wanted ordinary people, truck drivers and whatnot, to stay tuned in to what we were doing. So it was important to engage people. And we didn't really see ourselves as artists so much as scientists. We were experimenting. And so one of the things we did a lot was time travel. We had a thing called a time dilation machine, which we actually made out of old junk and stuff. But it would work, knobs, and you could travel in space. And one of the things that we would do is we'd, we'd go back in time, or we'd go forward in time. So this, I'll give you one more little taste. This one is called, well, you don't need to know what it's called. Here we go
(Accordion playing). Back, back, back, to those primordial days before the birth of language. When two humans, if we may be so bold, as to call those lowly creatures by that lofty name, struggle with the exigencies of crafting a culture out of rocks and bones. Let's look in on them now, shall we? As we bear witness to the discovery of fire! (Monkey sounds). Oh no! Oh! (Sounds of a thunderstorm). Ah! (Sounds of fire crackling). Ooooh. Aaaah! And that's all the time we have this week, ladies and gentlemen, do tune in again next week for the discovery of cooked meat.
Am Johal 8:27
Oh, that's amazing, Hank. And welcome to all of you to Below the Radar. That's a little bit of a different setup that we do, but we have our special guest with us today, Hank Bull. Welcome, Hank!
Hank Bull 8:42
Thank you, Am, it's a real pleasure to be here. I love being on the radio.
Am Johal 8:46
Yeah. Why don't we start with you introducing yourself a little bit. I want to jump into the origins of this show and kind of how it ran, and all those things. But first introduce yourself, please.
Hank Bull 8:57
Well, you know, I was born in Calgary. I was born at a great place called Moh’kins’tsis, which means where the Elbow river meets the Bow River. It's a nice place to be born. It's Blackfoot Siksika territory. And then I grew up all across Canada, Southern Ontario and Nova Scotia. I worked up north, Baffin Island and northern Manitoba. I worked, I travelled all over the country, and at about the age of 24, I ended up here on the west coast. But I'd always known that I wanted to be an artist, just when I was a little kid, I took a paintbrush and that was it so. But at the time that I got here, which was early 70s, Vancouver was exploding with all kinds of crazy experiments in film and dance and performance of all kinds and collaborations. And it was a very exciting moment to be here. And I fell in with a group of people starting a centre, which was called the Western Front. And like Co-op radio, the Western Front, still going today. So this was a really interesting idea on a number of levels. One was that here was a group of people that hadn't really been included in the official structures of the day, whether it was museums or commercial galleries or whatever was, you know, supposed to be art at that time. They were doing something else. They were doing other stuff. So they really, you know, you had no choice except to group together. Build your own situation. Drop out, start something parallel, start an alternative reality. And that became the Western Front, and then, by extension, it became many other, so called artist run centres, which grew up across the country, and now there are hundreds in Canada. And it's a big part of the cultural landscape of Canada. Artist run centres. So that, this thing was important, and the fact that you had your own space and controlled it was, you know, what Marx would have called the owning the means of production. The workers own the means of production, and that's what you want to achieve. Now, we hadn't read Marx, unfortunately, we didn't know about that, but we were just doing it.
Am Johal 11:24
You were pre Marxist.
Hank Bull 11:25
A little bit, or whatever, pre Marxist, that's right, yeah. And so. And it was the same with the radio. I mean, the founders of Co-op radio, they were Marxist. They knew exactly what they were doing, but we were kind of idiot savant types that were out there just doing this. That something, something different. But it was, it was really interesting to open up these new horizons of sound and human relationships, of like using the telephone to create another kind of reality. It was art, but there was no art object. It was ephemeral. It was just relationships between people. It was a kind of form of behaviour. It was art as a way of living your life.
Am Johal 12:09
Now, you know, it's interesting how in a heavily gentrifying city, there's all these groups now getting together, and co-location, and co-working, and all of these kinds of things. And in some sense, you guys just went and did it when those names didn't even exist, and nor were you legible to the funders in terms of just took this interest of people getting together and deciding that this— and you were sort of making it up as you go along in some ways.
Hank Bull 12:34
That's so true, yeah. But, you know, and it's still true today. I mean, I don't like the idea of that there was some golden period of wonderful things that happened in the 60s. It's still going on today. And if you look at the artist run centres here, at first, there were four or five, and then, you know, came along, Mulroney, Reagan, Thatcher, and it was like, no, that's all over. We're going back to the art market, and everything's gonna be different now. You're finished. You know, the 70s was fun, but it's over. Oh, okay, what? You know, it didn't happen. If you looked at the map in 1985, there were twice as many galleries. And then there were, you know, other stresses. But by the mid 90s, it had doubled again. And then by the 2010s it was, it was, there was 100 there was, and it's still growing and growing and growing. And now it's the internet. Look at all the youtubers and tiktok-ers and people doing independent arts and culture. So this is just an actual part of history. We hear a lot of bad news about the internet, but there's also a lot of independent voices out there that are making something else happen. And who cares whether it's art or politics, it's not. It doesn't— it's just new forms of human relationship that are emerging.
Am Johal 13:49
And as the Western Front launched, you know, there's a number of organizations that are interdisciplinary in nature in the building today, but who are the kind of players around the table? And what were the different sorts of projects and organizations that were sort of part of it or joined soon after it was initiated?
Hank Bull 14:10
Well, it was always what they now call interdisciplinary. So the people who came together... There was, you know, there were a couple of writers, there was a musician, composer, there were some visual arts people. There's ceramic artists, there were dancers. And there was this sense that you could do something else that wasn't the traditional paintings on a wall or sculptures on a plinth, that art could actually investigate whole new terrains. And that was an idea that was abroad in the world, that wasn't invented by the Western Front, but that was expressed in Vancouver through various other groups. There had already been Intermedia, there had been a lot of people doing street performances and different kinds of electronic music experiments. People were spreading their wings and doing things that no one had done before, and that the institutions, the concert societies, weren't prepared to host electronic music. They didn't know what it was. And the independent choreographers, they couldn't fit into the world of ballet, and that's the only thing that the Canada Council would give a grant to. So a lot of the young dancers turned into performance artists and started to do something quite different. And so it was a time of a great deal of possibility.
Am Johal 15:29
Yeah, I know, you know, just travelling to other places, it's remarkable to me how many times the name The Western Front comes up. You're travelling through Germany or Italy, and people like, oh, I went there. I know of this place, the Western Front and so the reputation really is global, given the longevity, the durability, but also the interesting experimental programming that was going on. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to you know, what were some of the programming or things that you remember in the 70s, shortly after, initially— I know Kathy Acker came through.
Hank Bull 16:01
Yeah!
Am Johal 16:02
There was like, lots of great archiving work that's been done of that period as well.
Hank Bull 16:06
Yeah. Well, one of the things that was in the air at the time that the Western Front was started was mail art, correspondence art. And in those days, you know, you could send a letter for five cents. It wasn't that expensive to use the postal system. And there was a new invention on the block, called the photocopy machine. So you could make a collage or picture, and you could make 100 copies, and you could send it to 100 people in different cities around the world. And there grew up a network of people exchanging images. And people would collect certain things. You know, we had Anna Banana in Vancouver, who was the go to banana person. So if you had a picture of a banana or anything banana related, you send it to her. And so she would build this huge image bank of banana images. And there were image bankers all over the place. So this idea of a decentralised network where no one's in charge, no one is running the show, everyone actually has a front row seat, and it doesn't have a centre, it doesn't have a hierarchy. It's this kind of diasporic, rhizomatic, collaborative, horizontal model of how society could be in a kind of we're all on planet Earth, we have a global thing. Let's do it like that. So this was the idea that was a kind of a vision of democracy, but as being presented through the model of art. So that was something that happened that put the Western Front in touch with people in other cities and other countries, and as soon as the doors opened, guess what? They appeared. So the first artist in residence was Keigo Yamamoto. Came from Japan, stayed for two months. People came from New York. They came from Europe and so there was a sense that this was, the Western Fronts became a kind of a node on a network, because it was a big old lodge hall. It was a capacious building, former Knights of Pythias lodge hall. Had a big space, you can make a performance, had another big space with a beautiful wooden floor where you could do yoga, and it didn't have a gallery, but it had a kitchen, so, you know, stuff would go on, and then we'd all eat together. So it was, it was a bit like a hippie commune for experimental art beyond the silos.
Am Johal 18:32
And I know that you went on to do many, many other things, but how long did you stay involved programming and other things at The Front?
Hank Bull 18:41
Well, you know, I was, yeah, I was pretty young when I got there. I mean, I'd hitchhiked across the country. I was playing my accordion on the street, but I knew about these people, and so my first six or seven years was hanging out, volunteering. I would say it was my education. I didn't go to university. This was where I learned. And these artists, amazing, amazing artists would come and you'd get to help them do their thing and collaborate with them and cook and eat together. And it was just incredible education. And then in 1980 with my partner, Kate Craig, who was one of the founders of the Front. We were super fortunate. We got Canada Council grants, and we went around the world to spend a year. But we didn't go to Europe. We went to Asia. We went and our idea was to meet our peers in Asia and try and find out what they're up to. And because we had been doing kind of multimedia performances with shadow puppets, we thought, well, we'll do shadow theatre. We had discovered over there. Let's go and study. So we ended up in Bali, and we studied with the great I Wayan Wija, who was a young guy like me. He was in the early 20s, but he was a genius, and he still is a master of shadow theatre in Bali. He's a dalang. So we spent two months with that family, and we travelled with them. We learned how to make the puppets, and we really did deep dive into that. And we found similar in South India, Muthuchandra Rao, who was few years ago, was crowned with a lifetime achievement, but at that time, he and his family were in an ox cart moving around from village to village in Tamil Nadu, and they'd make a little theatre out of blankets, and people would be charged two paisa, and the kids would go in there and look at this screen that was made of silk, and behind it, the Ramayana would play. It was just amazing. So we, you know, those were formative experiences. And we did, you know, there were contemporary artists at that time in those countries, but we didn't know how to connect. We didn't, there was no internet. It was hard. You couldn't Google people. You just, you know, it was really hard. But we did make some connections. We went to Africa, and we hung out a lot with musicians there, Cameroon, we went to Eastern Europe. So these were great experiences and led to further collaborations. So I Wayan Wija, he came to Vancouver afterwards and he came here twice and performed. Artists from Eastern Europe, particularly behind the Iron Curtain. We had quite a few projects of bringing them here to be artists in residence at the Western Front, maybe make a videotape or hang out for a month and do some projects. And so this idea of a global network of artists helping each other to produce their work and communicate and exchange was really a powerful driver for the Western Front
Am Johal 21:31
I wanted to speak as well, Hank, you know, in relation to the neighbourhood. You were at Centre A for over a decade, almost 15 years, maybe just under 15, but at the corner of Hastings and Carrall at the BC electric building. Wonderful years, I went to so many exhibitions there, but wondering if you can sort of share how you got involved in that project, how you were brought in and some stories from that period. I remember going to Germaine Koh's show there. We were talking earlier about Kristina Lee Podesva's Showroom and many, many others.
Hank Bull 22:07
Well, you know, the trip to Asia and just living in Vancouver. You know, it doesn't take long for you to realise that Vancouver really is an Asian city. But in the 70s and 80s, even 90s, even beyond, that wasn't really reflected on CBC. It wasn't really reflected in the programs of the Vancouver art gallery. It was still the same old Eurocentric colonial discourse that was going on for the most part. And there was, you know, there was a need to bust that open and so— And that includes, you know, Indigenous artists and we were, you know, building these relationships slowly during those years and making projects. But at a certain point it became obvious the need for a centre for contemporary Asian art in this city. Not just a program of some other centre, but some place that would make it its business. And really, I mean, I believe that at the time people were starting to talk about this thing called cultural diversity, and it would get tacked on the agenda of the board meeting. What do we do about this? No, that's not it. Cultural diversity is who we are. This is what we do. This is our main thing. We need to make this the centrepiece of our activities. So Centre A: the Vancouver International Center for Contemporary Asian Art, was a place where that could happen and where it could happen in a pluralistic sense. So it wasn't a centre for Chinese art. Wasn't a centre for Japanese art. It was whatever you want Asia to be. And so Asia is this imaginary construct, of course. And so what that could be and complicating that idea, and what's the difference between Asia or Asian Canadian on all these things? We just wanted to make a space where you could talk about that and where you could disagree about it.
Am Johal 24:00
I've been on an advisory around the South Asian History Museum. And of course, it gets into where's South Asia? Where do we draw the lines? Is Afghanistan in South Asia, is it not? And it's all the pernicious questions of identity come up, where the lines are drawn. I believe in a borderless world.
Hank Bull 24:17
Exactly. I believe in the borderless world too. But we all have funny ideas about what is home and, you know, so it has a high emotional value. I'm reading an amazing book right now by Thomas McEvilley, who is a classicist. So he was completely fluent in Sanskrit and Greek and ancient Persian and he was also a very famous art critic of contemporary art. But his main deal was this study, and he— His magnum opus is called The Shape of Ancient Thought, and it's about the relationship between Greek philosophy and Indian philosophy. Which normally we think of as being two separate planets that never get close together. No, not the case. They are so tightly woven. There were so many exchanges. They all knew each other. This huge influence of Asian philosophy on Plato and the pre Socratic philosophers, and huge impact of the Greeks on Mahayana Buddhism and the development of Indian culture in the Mauryan period. And on and on. It's just a completely engrossing, fascinating book which shows you that, you know, it's always been the case, and culture has always been on the move.
Am Johal 25:34
Now, being at the corner of Hastings and Carrall, as we were chatting earlier, you were saying, like you didn't actually pay rent.
Hank Bull 25:42
No.
Am Johal 25:42
At that building. That's amazing. We want to know how.
Hank Bull 25:45
Well, you know, we had an idea. I mean, we were so naive. When we started Centre A, we thought we were going to be making a big museum out of white marble and, you know, brass and whatnot. And now we realised quickly that it's going to be a long haul. But we had this idea, somehow or other caught the attention of a businessman. He was in the pulp and paper business, and he owned a building on Homer Street, big tower, and he had his office there. And he called up and said, oh, I like what you're doing. I like your idea. You want to do an Asian gallery. I think that's nice and I have an empty storefront, that's travel agents, they moved out, and if you want it, you can have it for a while to get yourself going. No rent. So we spent five years in there. It was incredible. And then he sold, he retired, and a new guy came in, and we got 30 days. So we were out, and we camped around. We went into what is now Tinseltown. It had just opened up. And that—
Am Johal 26:40
Which has become a very interesting mall.
Hank Bull 26:42
Yeah, but at the time, it was basically empty. They built it. Nobody would go there. And so we had this huge space that's now the Rexall drug store. But this huge space, we did a couple of shows in there. We did a show on Okinawa, art from Okinawa. The first time ever that there'd been a show of Okinawa contemporary art in North America. And suddenly the Okinawan community came out. Who knew? It's huge. And there was some song and dance. They had a food fest, and it was really amazing. We were there for a while, and then we found this place. Same thing, big space at the corner of Hastings and Carrall, used to be a train station. Used to be where you got onto the inter urban train. Was the train hall. So a great, great big space. There were these developers who wanted to build a tower, and we went to them and said, Well, why don't you, you know, you give us a space on the ground floor, and then they'll give you a bonus on your tower. You can go high and we'll be the so-called cultural amenity. They said, yeah, sounds good. Let's do it. So we went in there, rent free, we paid the expenses, but we were good in there for another six years in that space. And I think that's how you do it. If you want things to happen in this town, you have to go to the people that own the buildings or that have what it is, and just ask them. Why not? And they could say no, but they might say yes, and if they don't say no, then they say, well, why don't you talk to this guy. They'll pass the buck. Well at a certain point the buck will stop, and you'll find something.
Am Johal 28:15
Hank, you've also been on the board of the Vancouver Art Gallery for a number of years. Of course, they're still in the process of, about to break ground on a new building, and you've seen, you know, the growth of the artist-run centres coming from the community that way. Wondering if you can speak to, you know, the importance of a new gallery and how it fits into the ecology of the art community. Artist-run centres and all the other kinds of things that we have here, you know, with three great schools and Emily Carr, UBC and SFU that have great art programs as well.
Hank Bull 28:47
Well, you use an interesting word, ecology. So when the Western Front started, they crafted a mission statement, which says that the Western Front, the purpose of the Western Front, is to encourage and promote the role of the artist in determining the cultural ecology. And in 1973 that was kind of a new idea, that ecology wasn't just trees, that it might be something else. And I think it's been a very durable mission, and I think it's really true. And I think that just as artists, individual artists, and they don't have to be famous, determine the way the culture is going to go in the future. I mean, you look at hip hop music, it comes from the street. So artists are very important in determining the way that culture is going to develop. And the cultural ecology is a very, very complicated thing, which includes big trees as well as little teeny shoots. So obviously, a place like the Vancouver Art Gallery is very important to that ecology. It's kind of the mothership. It's hugely important to the history and to the identity of this place that we live in. You know, Vancouver artists are now celebrated around the world. We have super famous artists who show everywhere from Paris to Pakistan. That it's like, it's happening. We're a happening town. Vancouver is a factory for amazing art. A lot of people don't know that We box way above our weight. We can outdo Chicago, San Francisco, many other cities. We are a happening city for art. And a lot of these famous artists who are collected, you know, in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and they're all over the place, but you can't see their work here. We have nowhere to go to see their work here. We have our Vancouver Art Gallery, but it's too small. You can do temporary shows there, smaller shows, but it doesn't really have the size that it takes to show that work. Also, it doesn't have the size to accept the school kids that come in. When they advertise their school programs for a new show, they sell out in about 30 minutes. It's like Prince tickets. So they do over 20,000 school kids a year. A new building would allow them to do 60,000 kids a year. So it becomes really an important driver for the culture, and particularly at a time when our culture is so divided and all these forces of division are coming in, whether they're ideological divisions, class divisions, all these forces that want to separate us. This is a place that can bring us together. This is a place, it's not a showcase for glitzy objects in glass cases. It's a meeting place for people to do things and make things and talk about stuff together. So there's a show this summer that's all about zine culture and the history of zines and all these underground papers that go back to photocopy machines or whatever, that have been a huge cultural phenomenon. They're going to have a big show about that, but they're also going to have a laboratory where you can make your own zine, where kids can come in and collage stuff together and get involved in the creative process. And the creative process is really what creates us, not only as people individually, but as people as a society.
Am Johal 32:02
You can see what the Remai has done for downtown Saskatoon, really astounding. It really fits into the city, has a real orientation to the future in terms of the way that the city is going to grow. In terms of the Vancouver visual art scene, community, the institutions that have built up. You know, Toronto has always been the financial capital of the city, so there was always a commercial market there. And in Montreal, with Quebecois culture, all of that, the investment in the arts there took a particular orientation. Vancouver was kind of a Western outpost, in a way, but because it was far away from those kinds of funding conversations to some extent, it kind of developed its own kind of mode, the market— the commercial market that exists here, came after. And so to some sense, there is something different that developed here in the time that you've been involved here.
Hank Bull 32:51
Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, people always wonder why, you know, why Vancouver? Why has Vancouver become such a hotbed for art? But you know, to go to your point about Toronto, Montreal, even Saskatoon. Now it's our turn. Now it's Vancouver's turn, and Vancouver is a city that is now really coming of age, and a new art gallery is going to express that, and it's really our project to build as well. You know, they're breaking ground within weeks. When this airs, there'll probably be, you know, cranes in the air. But we still, we need to build it, and we need to make it happen. And I— we shouldn't expect that someone's going to arrive from Montreal or Ottawa and make that happen for us. For us, we have to do that as a city. This is us. We got to crowdsource this big and small. This is our chance to really show the world what we're made of. And that's the challenge.
Am Johal 33:51
Now, of course, we— One of the challenges to artists living in the city is the affordability, housing comes up. And you've probably, you've seen many versions of gentrification over the years, from the 70s to the 80s to the pre olympic period to the present time. And we see some people clearly, you know, moving to other cities, like Montreal, Berlin, other places. And I'm wondering, you know, in as much as we get a new Vancouver Art Gallery, how is it that we can look to places, the models, examples of artist housing and other formats of residencies that can actually create the rest of the infrastructure that's needed, particularly for emerging artists. And thinking about people graduating from an art program and then choosing whether to stay in Vancouver or not, a lot of people are choosing to leave because they don't have that kind of security to be able to stay, or the income to be able to stay.
Hank Bull 34:42
Yeah, well, you're absolutely right. Artists are to be included in the working poor. If you look at artists as an employment class, artists have no access to employment insurance benefits. They have no pension plans. They have no dental plans. They have none of the other benefits that most other workers in society take for granted, and artists are also— live amongst the poor. Because if you look at this neighbourhood we're sitting in right now, the Downtown East-Side, probably has a higher percentage of artists per capita than any other neighbourhood in the country. It's a huge number of artists who live here, huge number of galleries. Even if you look at Chinatown, the traditional businesses in Chinatown, most of them are cultural businesses. There's more art galleries per square foot on Pender street than anywhere else in the city. So art and culture are completely involved in the life of this community. I remember Michael Clague, who ran the Carnegie Center when we opened up at Carrall and Hastings at Centre A. He was one of the first people, came in the door and introduced himself. And I said, but you're a social worker, why come here? What's your interest in coming to an art gallery? And he said, you know, when you have nothing, what you do is you make art. And just look out the window at the people walking down the street with guitars and funny hats and inventing strange sculptures over here or putting graffiti on the walls. And you know, it's out of that energy that we have the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival comes out. That art and creativity are a huge part of what happens on this street. There really is a continuity, I think, between the ordinary, I hesitate to use the word vernacular, but everyday art, creativity that people do that are out here, living under a tarp, and the artists who are in the loft or collectively renting a storefront or whatever. Yeah, it's a challenge. It's a challenge for everybody, and there's very little support. There isn't the kind of support that there should be. Canada's blessed that we have the funding structures from cities, province, the federal government, that we have. That all got destroyed many years ago in the United States, and it's been really rough down there for artists. Here, we're very fortunate. We have to be grateful for what we have, but it's still... There needs to be more recognition of the power of art as an economic, social, health, education driver.
Am Johal 37:09
Yeah, it's a really great point, Hank. I remember when we were with my friend Allison Dunnet, starting Humanities 101, through UBC back in 1998. Which is a shockingly long time ago.
Hank Bull 37:22
Same here with Centre A.
Am Johal 37:23
To be able to, you know, walk when we went with students from the neighbourhood to the Vancouver Art Gallery. We even got tickets to go to the opera, and we had, you know, people from the opera come in and give the background on the opera. And it was just amazing that people, the value they got out of going to all the kinds of cultural openings and shows and the artist-run centres. We ran a program out of SFU for a number of years, up to the pandemic, Andrea Creamer, who worked with me, we did a thing called Super Cool Tuesdays with the Portland Hotel Society. We had artists come and give artists talks. And the artists loved coming because they were getting a different interpretation of their work. And residents, you know, they wanted to go to art talks, and it was accessible. It was in the neighbourhood. There was some coffee and food and so just that, when you flip the exchange of that and also create these different ways that people can participate, it really is mutually beneficial. It's not just like a one way thing, and that's been really fascinating to be able to see, in terms of, like, the value it has for people.
Hank Bull 38:22
No, it's great.
Am Johal 38:24
I was going to ask you about I know you've been involved for a number of decades with the community out in Storm Bay.
Hank Bull 38:31
Oh, yeah.
Am Johal 38:31
Yeah. And I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that, because a number of our listeners might not be aware of it, but it's interesting how, you know, one of the through lines in our conversations is that you've had all of these involvements in these alternative communities, from radio to the Western Front to starting off new projects, but this is another one that you've been involved with for a long time.
Hank Bull 38:52
Yeah, it goes back before my time. But you know, the Storm Bay community was really started as a hippie commune, classic hippie commune in the late 1960s. And you know, Vancouver was alive at that time with a lot of that energy. So a group of people discovered that there was this old homestead that was for sale, was way off road but it was affordable for that reason. So they bought it, and they had all the intentions of living there and having a communal garden and doing things together and they did manage that for a little bit, but they were crazies as well. You know, it was the 60s, after all. So it didn't take long for that to explode and for people to mature, and people went off to careers in the trade union movement or in teaching in schools, or one guy worked in native housing. And there were a number of artists who became involved in dance, visual arts, film and so on. But they still kept together as a group, and they're still together as a group now, mainly it's a summer thing. But it has now reconstituted itself as the Storm Bay Art and Conservation Society, and has given itself the mandate to protect the ecology and natural environment of this very precious bay, which has a tidal mud flats, and it's kind of like a bird sanctuary, and there's a lot of nature there. And the sechelt inlet, where Storm Bay is, it's up the Sunshine Coast, but this is really a series of inlets which is protected from the larger ocean beyond Howe Sound by a very, very narrow gate called the Skookumchuck Narrows. And that is— the tide has to go in and go out through this little narrow gap, which creates a huge tidal bar. It's the biggest white water west of Niagara Falls. It's the biggest rapids in Canada. So this thing, which it's calm. It's slack tide, but most of the time it isn't common. You don't want to go in there. Has protected the sechelt inlet system from the outside world, and has meant that it's relatively preserved from roads, from development, from industry, from recreational boating, that sort of thing. It's very quiet in there, and it's great for kayakers, and it's relatively good for bears. You know, the natural environment has a chance in there. And that's now being recognized on the coast, and now that Canada has this 30 by 30, 30% of the land mass to be protected for cultural biodiversity, I mean, by 2030 This is an initiative that Canada has signed on to. So this back area is really ideal for this. And the most important thing to know about it is that it has been recognized for all time and now very officially as shíshálh territory, the territory of the sechelt nation. They have always held sovereignty over that area, and now they've signed agreements with the province. They give them authority over, you know, the natural resources, the cultural resources, what's above the water, what's underneath the ocean. The first thing they did was get rid of the fish farms, you know, so they're now the sechelt nation has a great deal of agency in imagining the future of this area. So it's not without a lot of difficulties. The pressures are there, but it's also hopeful.
Am Johal 42:34
Before I jump in and ask you about shows you have and things you're working on now. I remember years ago, you doing a trip with the Governor General, like a Canadian delegation artist. And I think that you went to Ukraine at the time, to Lviv and other places. I'm wondering if you could just share some stories in terms of being a kind of ambassador for Canadian art, or exchanging with other groups on that trip.
Hank Bull 42:58
Well, I would, I would have to start with a mega shout out to Michaëlle Jean. I think that she was extraordinary in what she recognized. A lot of the things that we've said this afternoon, she totally could have said herself. She really believed in youth arts. She thought that these kids that are making graffiti need to be listened to, need to be recognized, need to be supported, need to be heard. And she tried to set all kinds of things in motion to make that happen. And how we met was, got a call from one of her staffers, could they come and do a youth event at Carrall and Hastings? And they came, and they did, and they had all these youth that came in, and they had, you know, break dancing and, you know, slam poetry and a big crowd. But she also invited all these community leaders, because she's the Governor General, so she had these captains of industry and political leaders all there to get the message. And that was, we just, was really a great event. So then after that, I was invited to a couple other things, one of them being this state visit. So when she made it an official state visit, she put together a group of people, mostly artists, to go along. There was a documentary filmmaker, you know, a youth political activist. There were really interesting people who went on this tour. It was a lot of work. I never worked so hard in my life, and I picked tobacco. I know what hard work is. It was unbelievable. It's hardly any sleep. It was just so intense. But she met with, you know, single mothers groups in Kyiv, you know, and then off to a hospital home for kids who had physical disabilities that had been funded by Canada. And then we get in a bus and we're off to another similar place, you know, and we went to Chernobyl. We just had incredible meetings with people. And then we were expected to stand up and talk, in particular, about cultural diversity in Canada, which was not a comfortable subject in Ukraine. And even the other country we went to, in Norway, it was a thing where the— Many people in Norway felt challenged about how do we deal with the increasing diversity, and how do we maintain our healthy community? And we were in a position to say, well, Canada, you know, we've made a lot of mistakes, but we have been able to kind of do something in the way of trying to accommodate these differences into the fabric of the country. And discovered that people around the world look up to Canada because we have had this relationship, which includes Anglophone, Francophone, Indigenous and— what used to be called multicultural— elements working together to try and make a country. And we're not entirely unique, but we're in the vanguard of that globally. So now, when we try to think about what will a global community look like in the future, maybe a future without national boundaries. Maybe this idea, this pluralistic idea, can be the way to go forward. And personally, that's my bottom line. I may be unrealistic. I may be idealistic. I don't believe in a two state solution, that didn't work in India. It isn't going to work anywhere else. And I think that we need to learn how to live together with our differences and just chill and you do your thing. I do my thing, and then we're gonna hang out and have a good time.
Am Johal 46:29
Hank, you don't seem like the retirement type to me, but wondering if you can share a little bit about what you're up to now. Shows you have going, different projects, I know you've got lots of music and art and other projects going on.
Hank Bull 46:42
Well, one of my sayings is that you should not become a professional until you retire. So, you know, use your active years to get out there and work, and contribute, and make a difference if you can, and then, later on, get serious with your art. So I'm— If you're lucky enough to live that long, then you can have a go. So I'm having my go right now, and I've been having a ball. I've been making paintings and making photographs. You know, I was 70, I guess I was 70 years old when I had my first exhibition in a gallery, like an art gallery, where the work is for sale. So I'm just, I feel like I'm just beginning. I'm starting out my career. I'm in the early—
Am Johal 47:30
It's also the decade where you started doing one arm push ups in the morning and things like that.
Hank Bull 47:34
That's right, that's right. Little bit every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get the core going. Very important. You got to have that. And, yeah, and I play a lot of music. Try to play music every day. I make paintings. I've done that for a long time, but now I'm really doing a lot more of that. And then the history is there. You know, the Western Front has got a very robust archival program, and there's a lot of history that's been restored and is now available. There are a lot of scholars that are interested in talking about, for example, the 80s, what was happening in Vancouver around the time of Expo 86, in the years before. The huge battles that were fought with solidarity, and the Woodwards building closed, and you know, what were the artists doing at that time? That's all in the archives. So there's now a lot of people really interested in that history, so that's something else. There's lots going on.
Am Johal 48:34
Hank, is there anything you'd like to add?
Hank Bull 48:38
I don't know. I think we've covered a lot. I would just, I would just say that I've just read your book about friendship and what the nation might look like post nation, and it's fantastic. There's a lot of great material. I discovered some really interesting writers that you referred to in there. The idea about gentleness is so wonderful. And I knew about her already. What's her name—?
Am Johal 49:03
Anne Dufourmantelle.
Hank Bull 49:05
Anne Dufourmantelle.
Am Johal 49:06
Yeah, I studied with her for a bit at European Graduate School, and, of course, she sadly passed away, but she came here for a conference on love, yeah, that the Lacan Salon put on.
Hank Bull 49:15
Just really, really good. So these ideas of love and friendship, but also the South African Mbembe, incredible, such a powerful thinker, really inspiring. So that book I just recommend to your listeners, everybody should pick it up, because it's really a fantastic, fantastic read with a lot that you can just take away and then do your own research and do your own reading based on that. So yeah, thank you for that.
Am Johal 49:40
Yeah, I'm wondering, Hank, if you can sort of send us off with some music?
Hank Bull 49:55
(Playing accordion and singing). Times is tough. I got it rough. Pick up my welfare, but it just ain't enough. I got the Downtown Eastside Blues. I can't stand to read the news. Well, you know, the world is in a shamble. Yeah, seems like we ain't got nothing left to lose. Well... etc.
Am Johal 50:47
Thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar, Hank
Samantha Walters 50:52
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Hank Bull. Head to the show notes to learn more about Hank’s work. If you would like to support our podcast, you can donate at the link in the description below. Your generous donation will help support the podcast's activities and associated public events with SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.