 http://arcadenw.org/
FROM
CONSUMPTION TO CONSUMPTION:
CONSTRUCTING TERRITORY IN VANCOUVER
Mari Fujita
& Oliver Neumann
In 1958,
the Bowmac car dealership on West Broadway erected a 29-meter-high
orange sign, replete with red neon, over 1,200 incandescent light
bulbs, and a kinetic Las Vegas-style marquee base. The decision
was a response to heavy competition on what was then Vancouver’s
Auto Row. Car dealerships battled for attention with signs expressing
capitalist prowess through size and complexity. The Bowmac sign
was, at its time, the largest freestanding sign in North America.
It could be seen 18 miles away, and was a culmination for Vancouver’s
thriving neon light industry, a brilliant display of technology,
artisanship and commercial spirit.
“Vancouver is
a city of perpetual fete... Vancouver has no rival and her signs
will continue to illuminate her business section with a brilliance
and variety that is a source of pride to her residents and a surprise
to her guests.” (Vancouver Sun, 1934.)
Much has happened since
Vancouver’s neon heyday. While the majority of the neon
signs have been taken down, the Bowmac sign has transitioned from
disrepair, to disuse, to what, in 1997, the City of Vancouver
Heritage Commission called “adaptive re-use” (City
of Vancouver Heritage Revitalization Agreement-Bowmac Sign, May
21, 1997). In its present form, the original sign has a significantly
reduced level of illumination and is partially shrouded by a 3/4”
metal screen bearing the Toys “R” Us logo.
The Bowmac sign is
just one instance in a larger history of neon signage in Vancouver.
Bids for attention and street presence similar to the one on Auto
Row took place in other parts of the city making Vancouver the
neon sign capital of Canada. The city was so aglow with neon that
airplane pilots found Vancouver an easy place to land aircraft,
and it was possibly the only place in the world that could boast
a 1-18 ratio of neon signs to residents (Atkin, John, “Vancouver
Neon!,” in The Greater Vancouver Book, 1997). From the late
1920s through the 1960s, the extensive display of sophisticated
neon in Vancouver was the source of its urban identity. Neon signs
helped construct artificially illuminated urban areas, demarcating
a clear boundary between the civic and the natural, the civilized
in the uncivilized.
“Bright, colorful
neon contributed to the perceived urbanity of the city. Even Vancouver,
a relatively quiet West Coast town aspired to metropolitan attributes.
Attractive, well-lit, lively streets conveyed the message that
Vancouver possessed an essential ingredient of urbanity.”
(Joan Seidl, Vancouver Museum, 1997.)
But by the 1960s, the
neon carnival was described in the local press as a neon nightmare,
a billboard jungle, signaling a major shift in the general perception
of the space of the city. The signs were seen to override the
architecture and clutter the streets. Calls were made for a stricter
Sign By-law, “one that clears away the present mess of barn-sized
idiot-boards and strictly controls all new erections…Why
should we suffer huge, obnoxious, view-blocking signs? (Tom Ardies,
The Vancouver Sun, 1966.) Through the ‘60s, neon signage
and the urban commercial culture it represented were increasingly
at odds with the new desire to integrate the city with its natural
setting. Fueled largely by a campaign initiated by the Vancouver
Community Arts Council and a new wave of foreign politicians and
planners in the city, the eradication of neon signage in the city
was a manifestation of new values. The belief that Vancouver should
construct its identity not through inward-looking vibrant street
signage but by establishing connections to the natural setting
and horizon beyond constitutes a fundamental shift in the conception
of the territory of the city.
“The statements
that Vancouver is beautiful and Vancouver is ugly do not really
contradict each other at all. The setting is lovely with a character
of its own which can give Vancouver a permanent personality- and
which can give its citizens a personality, too. But within that
setting some of the works of man can be quite hideous. They can
be...and they are.” (Warnett Kennedy, City Alderman, 1959.)
The change in attitude
was followed by alterations to the city’s Sign By-law in
1967 and 1974. These regulations brought about the evaporation
of the entire neon sign industry and, by extension, the glowing
urban core. More recently, measures such as the City of Vancouver’s
View Protection Guidelines [1989], which define and protect views
through the city to nature beyond, and the Vancouver Skyline Study
[initiated 1996], which regulates the shape of the Downtown Skyline
within the context of the nature beyond, have become accepted
practice. A visit to any new condominium’s display center
illustrates that view is also capital: new developments are described
in terms of their uniqueness within the city’s skyline,
and are valued according to the quality of their views out to
the mountains and ocean.
“Along with construction
techniques, there’s always the construction of technique,
that collection of spatial and temporal mutations that is constantly
reorganizing both the world of everyday experience and the esthetic
representations of contemporary life.” (Paul Virilio, The
Lost Dimension, 1991.)
In both the ‘50s
and today the celebration of the visual wonder, the abundant scenery,
and the spectacular spectacle of Vancouver have been the defining
feature of the urban experience and the subject of its postcards.
While the versions of visual wonder then and now are diametrically
opposed, both successfully define territory through a consumptive
gaze. Theories of modern vision and subjectivity describe a development
from a static, singular subject perceiving his/her world in perspectival
space, to a disembodied subject that must actively negotiate a
fragmented and dynamic space governed by multiple scales of time,
and various forms of media.
It is interesting to
observe, then, that in Vancouver a dynamic urban environment with
street-walls of animated neon signs has been replaced by clear
and clean views to a static background. This shift in the object
of the gaze radically alters our conception of the territory of
the city itself. The days of Vancouver street photographer Foncie
Pulice rolling his “Electric Photos” camera through
the downtown core with the intent of capturing street life have
given way to long-shot postcards capturing composed images that
promote a sensible balance of nature and city.
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