To Salvage an Archive

Artifacts of Black Vancouver define much of “A Harlem Nocturne,” Deanna Bowen’s new exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG). A black-and-white poster for “Harlem Dogpatch,” a cabaret show at the Harlem Nocturne, a Black-owned Vancouver bar, hangs on a gallery wall near a projection of a 1978 report on racism against Black Vancouver residents. A once-classified document, framed and time-stamped, details the 1948 Vancouver travels of Katherine Dunham, the leading 20th-century African-American choreographer. Projected on a white wall is black-and-white film footage of Black dancers performing on Vancouver’s 20th-century stages. These artifacts and archives might surprise some, because, as artist Deanna Bowen told me, “the city insisted” there were “no Black people.” In this exhibition, which includes new and older works, Bowen confronts that false narrative.

Jasmine Mahmoud: Tell me about the title. The word “nocturne” brings to mind a composition, or a nighttime scene. It is also in the title of the 1939 song “Harlem Nocturne,” written by Earle Hagen and Dick Rogers, which became a famous jazz standard. What were you aiming to address by calling this show “A Harlem Nocturne”?

Deanna Bowen: It’s a reference to the bar. The Harlem Nocturne was a Black-owned, family-run nightclub in the city. The owner, Ernie King, was married to my grandmother’s niece, who was a “shake dancer” at the club. My mom worked there, my grandmother worked there, my grandfather drank there, Leonard (Lennie) Gibson performed there [and] I suspect my great-uncle Herman Risby did too. It’s a central part of the family narrative.

JM: From the artifact with Katherine Dunham’s name, to the video of choreography, to the score, to the maps, to—very differently—the video ON TRIAL The Long Doorway, this exhibition traces the past presence of Black entertainment workers, especially those in Vancouver. How were you thinking about what those archives look like and mean for those entertainers?

DB: [I consider] the way that Vancouver speaks to this absence of blackness, this very present absence of blackness. I’m thinking about how rich these communities of entertainers were. It wasn’t only entertainers. These communities were quite strong: they created spaces for themselves and the Harlem Nocturne—a Black-owned bar—was an example of that.

But also, [I considered] the tendency for Black and Asian entertainers to perform together in Hogan’s Alley, also known as Black Strathcona or, at one time, Nigger Heaven. There was this really rich, flowing engagement between Black and Asian performers that is a part of the broader foundation of the history that surrounds the viaduct. For example, Lennie Gibson and Denise Quan danced together in numerous CBC productions in the 1950s. As far as aesthetics go, their pairing on broadcast television sparks other conversations about permissible interracial pairings.

JM: I appreciated how the four screens showing ON TRIAL The Long Doorway turned on and off in a way that directed my viewership and awareness of what I could and could not see. What was your intent with using the four screens to animate the video and the script?

DB: Some of it’s a reference to the original live performance. The footage comes from a show the CAG had supported at Mercer Union in Toronto, also called “ON TRIAL The Long Doorway.” The show was based on a CBC Toronto live-to-broadcast teledrama, and we had a three-camera setup that recorded it all over a series of weekends. Audience members and gallery-goers were allowed to come and watch, but only if they sat within the set. We didn’t give them seats to passively watch—the notion was that these audience members were implicated in the performance of the re-staging. A lot of that is coming out of an understanding that Mercer Union, like the CAG and many other Canadian galleries, has a predominately white audience. I didn’t want to create work that made for a passive viewing experience for a white audience, who would go away and say, “Wow. I’ve been educated.” I definitely didn’t want to do that. And because we re-staged the footage at the CAG without the set, I wanted to at least maintain some of that wide-focus viewership, where a predominately white audience is witnessed as they view a conversation or a performance that speaks to blackness. This circle is set up so that as an audience, you’re obliged to walk into the centre of the four inward-facing monitors, and in doing so, anybody else who comes into the space watches you watch it as well.

I was also thinking about the original three-camera shoot and how that provides three different perspectives on every aspect of the performance. I cut the raw footage into four channels and gave it a visual rhythm. It’s a three-hour-long piece, so I knew I needed to figure out a way to keep people in the work. It’s already difficult, race-based material, so I needed to give some visual cues—which is something I do a lot. Given my mostly white audience, I know that there has to be some sort of device or cultural connection to keep them in the story, keep them hooked. Sometimes it’s about giving the viewer some space, some breathing room to negotiate the story. That’s where the roving black channel of the piece comes in as a space of visual and narrative rest. A place outside of the story. So yeah, I’m thinking very much about the different perspectives, and then how that flows into a discussion about different ways of understanding blackness, Black Canadian identity and all of the related things that come into that equation.

JM: The show arranges archives from Canada and the United States, archives of Black people who have been moved by racism, and who have nevertheless shown resilience. What does this show mean, geographically and racially, for Vancouver, Canada, the United States and North America?

DB: As it relates to Vancouver, it’s important to have established that there is a Black history that has long been here. My family actually migrated from the [US] South through Vancouver in the 1910s. We’re talking more than 100 years of Black presence. So there’s that. But, there’s also this part about Vancouver being a stopping point for the Risby family—at least on my grandfather’s side of the family. This is the mapping of a migration from Kentucky to Yellowknife: a migration from Kentucky to Kansas, Kansas to British Columbia, and then ultimately to Yellowknife—and all of it spurred by white supremacist violence.

In an American context, this community of Black people answers a lot of questions about what happens to the descendants of all-Black towns in Oklahoma and Kansas. My grandfather’s side comes from Nicodemus, which still exists, and my grandmother’s is from Clearview, in Oklahoma. This is an extension of that American historical query about what happens next. Because this is the answer. We came here.

Within a Canadian narrative, all of my work has been about tracing my way back home. I left here in ’94. I ran from here. It was just too much to handle this family history. So I went to Toronto, and all of my work has been a means to backtrack and understand this community. And so in many ways, by doing that over 20 years, I’m doing the work of mapping out blackness across the country.

Again, we have been here for a long time. My family’s narrative is speaking to more than 100 years of Black presence that has everything to do with a migration to and from the United States and Canada. It’s a step in the direction to making connections between Halifax and Africville, [North] Buxton, Dresden and all of these other Black places across the nation that are read as exceptional defunct communities, but could all actually be part of a bigger discussion about Black migration and historical erasure. Because I’ve gotten so much insight with the community, as old as it is, I feel I have a responsibility to do the work. This work is about writing history through artmaking.

JM: Do you have any other closing thoughts?

DB: Oh. I just hope I’ve left enough clues for the next generation of researchers. I hope I’ve placed and re-placed this Black community, given it some glory and put it back on the map.