ATSA & grunt gallery
May 20 – 21, 2011

In May 2011 ATSA and grunt gallery hosted an ALL-INCLUSIVE event entitled “The Pigeon’s Club.” This event took place at Pigeon Park on the corner of Hastings and Carrall in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, BC.

The event boasted a getaway complete with exterior swimming pool and deck chairs and additional tourist iconography in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area where social exclusion and human suffering are among the most intensely experienced in Canada, but where there is also the greatest concentration of mutual aid and frontline services.

The Pigeon’s Club was a satirical critique of the glossy, squeaky-clean view of the world championed by travel agency brochures, which extol happiness as an all-inclusive package deal. ATSA provided its own outrageous take on the whole aesthetic of the ALL-INCLUSIVE to better pull people’s strings and stir up debate.

gruntKitchen produced a video by ATSA titled “in this mean time” and a video documentary of the project by Elisha Burrows. Funding for this program was provided by the City of Vancouver 125th Grants, The British Columbia Arts Council through the Arts Based Community Development Program and The Quebec Arts Council. We also thank The Carnegie Centre, Gallery Gachet and W2 for support of this project.

Take a look at The Pigeon’s Club: