TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword, Kathleen S. Bartels, Director, Vancouver Art Gallery

Everywhere is Anywhere is Anything is Everything/RFDWLQJ'RXJODV&RXSODQGV

Visual Art Practice, Daina Augaitis

Douglas Coupland in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Hans Ulrich Obrist

Secret Handshake:
- The Truth North Strong and Coupland, Michael Prokopow
- 7KH %RPE WKH *URXS RI 6HYHQ DQG 'RXJODV &RXSODQGV * 6HULHV John
2%ULan

Growing Up Utopian:
- Growing Up Utopian, Douglas Coupland
- Art Atom, Bjarke Ingels

Words into Objects

- The Present-as-Future Tense: On the objecthood of art and language in the
work of Douglas Coupland, Mark Prince
- When Words become Art, Art Words, Pico Iyer

Pop Explosion
- 7LPH&DQQLEDO'RXJODV&RXSODQGV'LJLWDO3RS, Sara Doris
- Atemporalities, William Gibson
- 'RXJODV&RXSODQGV*XPKHDGDQG2WKHU2EOLWHUDWHG)LJXUHV, Emmy Lee Wall
- Art and Life, Chuck Klosterman

The 21st Century Condition

- Thoughts on the 21st Century Continues, Michael Stipe
- A Millennial Moment, Sophia Al Maria

The Brain
- The Brain, Bruce Grenville
- /RRNLQJIRU&RXSODQGV%UDLQ, James Gleick

A Select Chronology, Emmy Lee Wall

List of Works

:ULWHUV%LRJUDSKLHV

Acknowledgements
Everywhere is Anywhere is Anything is Everything:
/RFDWLQJ'RXJODV&RXSODQGV9LVXDO$UW3UDFWLFH

By Daina Augaitis

7KHWLWOHIRU'RXJODV&RXSODQGVILUVWPDMRUVXUYH\H[KLELWLRQFRPHVIURPKLVXQSXEOLVKHG
text, The Age of Earthquakes: A Guidebook to the Extreme Present. In this essay, written
mostly in message-OHQJWKWH[WVWKDWHFKRWRGD\VTXLFNHQLQJPRGHVRIFRPPXQLFDWLRQ
Coupland considers the shortening of time in the digital era. He poses an idea: what if
ambient noise recorders located throughout the world documented every possible sound that
ZDVPDGHDQGWKHVHUHFRUGLQJVZHUHVWRUHGLQGHHSVSDFHIRUHYHUOHDYLQJDOORIRXU
FXOWXUDOH[SHULHQFHSHUPDQHQWO\RQILOHi While such an effort might indeed constitute a
massive anthropological tool, the blurred cacophony of such a compounded audio recording
would also exemplify the chaotic nature of Everything becoming Anything being
simultaneously Anywhere and Everywhere which really equates to nowherea scary prophesy
of complete obfuscation of differenceVZKHQHYHU\WKLQJDQGHYHU\SODFHILQDOO\FROOLGH
LQWRDPDVVLYHLQGLVWLQJXLVKDEOHRQHQHVV7KHDXWKRUFRQWLQXHV2XURQO\KRSHLVWRLQYHQW
VRPHWKLQJVPDUWHUWKDQRXUVHOYHVii While such a dystopic view of life on this planet as it
hurtles toward a XELTXLWRXVIXWXUHLVRQHXQGHUVWDQGLQJRIWKHH[KLELWLRQVWLWOHLWDOVRFDUULHV
with it a more uplifting interpretation that is mirrored in the first artwork encountered in this
show. The Brick Wall (2005/2014) is a massive wall work comprised of narrow shelves
randomly filled with hundreds of building set parts; it is where simply shaped and brightly
coloured cubes, poles, spheres and other types of blocks lie waiting, poised for action in the
work of constructing a new world. It seems that the process of inventing something new and
unknown, something hopeful and smart, has already begun. The interconnections between
these toy building blocks are symbolic of the growing and essential links not only between
different units in the world, but more significantly between people and ideas who are in
different points in space and time. Identifying the possibilities inherent in potential
connections between objects/images and the histories/positions they occupy is what
Coupland fundamentally enacts in his visual art practice. Ultimately, it adds up to a running
FRPPHQWDU\RQWKHFLUFXPVWDQFHVRIRXUSUHVHQWZRUOGRUDVWKHDUWLVWKDVGHVFULEHGLWWKH
21st FHQWXU\FRQGLWLRQ

1
Everything West Coast
The notion of place is also particularly suggestive in the exhibLWLRQVWLWOHbut where is the
ZKHUHLQ$Q\ZKHUHDQG(YHU\ZKHUH",QWKHFDVHRI&RXSODQGVYLVXDODUWLWVORFXVLV
GHFLGHGO\RQ&DQDGDV:HVW&RDVW9DQFRXYHUKDVEHHQ&RXSODQGVKRPHVLQFHKHZDVIRXU
years old and is a place that historically has emanated utopian visions. In British Columbia,
such aspirations were ignited by post-World War II optimism and fuelled by the idealism of
the hippy era in the 1960s. Such notions of a better future were also at the core of the
&RXSODQGIDPLO\VEHOLHIV\Vtem as he grew up. To this day Coupland remains committed to a
path of social betterment, enacting the DUWLVWVrole of calling attention to the sometimes
invisible conditions under which we exist in the ultimate goal of affecting change by
transforming viewers, even to a small degree.

Coupland recalls that growing up in Vancouver during the 1960s and 70s had elements of
living in an experiment. He was aware of some of the architectural and environmental
innovationsfrom Arthur Erickson to Greenpeaceand even attended the 1976 global
gathering on human housing, Habitat, arriving in a school bus, perhaps too young to take in
its full impact but nevertheless conscious of the importance of being socially minded and
appreciative of an explicit push to be innovative.iii &RXSODQGV345 Modern House (2014) is a
literal example of his reflections on some of those utopian innovations, specifically in the
sphere of 1960s urban planning that decreed rows of identical houses in expansive
subdivisions as the way forward. Modelled after the only Lego kit he purchased as a child (he
took the activity up again as an adult), as well as bearing a likeness to the West Coast
modernist house he currently inhabits, this work mimics the uniformity of post-war
architecture and questions whHWKHUWKHHQVXLQJVXEXUEDQVSUDZOZDVQWWRRPXFKRIDJRRG
thing. If this work marks one distinct and early node in the loss of identity and individuality in
North American society, Coupland offers its antipode in a crowd-sourced work titled Towers
(2014). Anything but precisely organized and monotonous, this free-formed, wildly designed
grouping of tall Lego towerswhose sections were made by kids and adults during organized
building eventscreates a futuristic cityscape devoid of preordained restrictions; this fulsome
remedy to the example of post-war idealism that collapsed under its own weight proposes
instead its opposite, a state of blissful architectural chaos.

In the development of his own visual art practice in the 1980s, while still in art school,
Coupland was already creating sculpture and installations that seemed like fusions of

2
Surrealism and Futurismthe type espoused by the likes of West-Coast science-fiction writer
William Gibson, whose radical 1984 novel Neuromancer inspired the young Coupland to
consider the seemingly fictional space of cyberpunks and high technology. In his last year of
LQWHUGLVFLSOLQDU\VWXGLHVDW(PLO\&DUU&ROOHJHRI$UWDQG'HVLJQ&RXSODQGVVHOI-assured
investigations were noticed by then Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Willard Holmes,
who commissioned him to create a site-VSHFLILFLQVWDOODWLRQIRUWKH&KLOGUHQV*DOOHU\,Q
many ways, The Floating World WKDWUHVXOWHGHVWDEOLVKHGDQXPEHURIWKHDUWLVWV
characteristic methodologies. For example, never shy of ambition from the onset, Coupland
created this large-scale work by commandeering found materials as he does now,
referencing more the commercial exploits of Andy Warhol than the readymades of Marcel
Duchamp. He created a non-linear, Surrealism-inspired installation where reduced forms and
suggestive shapes were connected by a powerful but unpredictable visual composition that
spokeas an amorphous entityto an idea of the present as future. His trajectory as an artist
has been a steady one and this description of the fundamental character of his first artwork
is equally apt for the latest large-scale installations he has created twenty-seven years later.

7KHGH[WHULW\RI&RXSODQGVYLVXDOFRPSRVLWLRQDQGKLVFKRLFHRIVXEMHFWPDWWHUZHUHIXUWKHU
enhanced by his stays in Japan in 1983 and 1986, first as an exchange student in Hokkaido
and then as a researcher/designer for Magazine House in Tokyo. Such a decision to go to
Asia to study a completely unknown culture would have been less likely had Coupland not
been from the West Coast, where he followed in the footsteps of a handful of modern artists
such as B.C. Binning, Arthur Erickson, Gordon Smith and others who were curious about
Japanese culture in the post-war period, adapting some of its stylistic inflections as well as
philosophical foundations in their painting and architecture; all of which, by the early 1960s,
contributed to the development of a uniquely West Coast modernist style that was lyrical in
QDWXUH%\WKHVWKHWLPHRI&RXSODQGV stays in Japan, the intervening decades had
already produced several waves of immigration to Vancouver from Japan, China, Hong Kong
DQG,QGLDDQGWKHFLW\ZDVRQWKHFXVSRIEHLQJFRQVLGHUHG&DQDGDVJDWHZD\WRWKH$VLD
Pacific. Not only did Coupland master the Japanese language and became a Japanophile, he
began noting the dramatic differences in Japanese society in a mental inventory that
catalogued such phenomenon as the emergence of new technologies (long before they
arrived in Vancouver) or how JapanVPDVVVRFLHW\ZDVVSOLQWHULQJLQWRDODUJHFRVPRORJ\RI
VW\OHWULEHViv %XWHYHQPRUHVLJQLILFDQWWKDQ&RXSODQGVLQWXLWLYHDELOLW\WRLGHQWLI\ZKDWLV
different about the present, which was sharpened by his stay in Japan (where there is a keen

3
adaptation of all things new), was the profound effect of how everything in Japan is deeply
considered on aesthetic terms. For Coupland this mindset was enhanced by studying
calligraphy, as well as stone and flower arranging, all of which he took up and enjoyed
immensely. In recounting his experiences of that time, Coupland admits that a powerful
influence in how he orders things to this day came to him through the exercises of ikebana
that were for him both humbling and mind expanding;v this articulation of formal rules in the
search for perfection in the relationships between flowersas seen from above, the front,
both sides as well as where they come together at the basemust have set certain neural
SDWKZD\VLQ&RXSODQGVRZQEUDLQZKHQLWFRPHVWRDUUDQJLQJREMHcts and understanding
KRZWKLQJVPXVWH[LVWDQGVLPSO\EHLQVSDFH

Anything Canadian
Growing up in quasi-UXUDO:HVW9DQFRXYHUZKHUH&RXSODQGVEDFN\DUGZDVDWWKHOLWHUDO
edge of mountains and rugged wilderness, was a penultimate Canadian experience that gave
the artist direct exposure to the expansiveness and power of nature. The unforgiving
ODQGVFDSHLVDOVRVXJJHVWLYHRI&DQDGDVQDWLRQDOLGHQWLW\DVLWDSSHDUVIRUH[DPSOHLQWKH
paintings of Emily Carr and members of the Group of Seven, where the rough and empty land
EHFDPHV\QRQ\PRXVZLWKWKHKDUG\FKDUDFWHURI&DQDGLDQV,WLVLQ&RXSODQGVUHZRUNLQJRI
WKHVHLFRQLFLPDJHVKLVXSGDWLQJRIWKHPDVLIWKH\PLJKWKDYHEHHQSDLQWHGIURPWRGD\V
perspective using contemporary tools, that the artistVORFDWHGQHVVH[SDQGVIURPWKH:HVW
Coast to incorporate all of Canada. His G7 series of prints and paintings may emit a whiff of
nostalgia for a past where the state was indeed a vital force; however, more fundamentally,
his abstracted versions of the orLJLQDOSDLQWLQJVHOLFLWTXHVWLRQVDERXW&DQDGDVUHOHQWOHVV
representation of itself through its landscape, especially whether it is time to consider the
KXPDQFRQWHQWQRWMXVWWKHSK\VLFDOIUDPHRIWKLVYDVWFRXQWU\&RXSODQGVREVHUYDWLRQVRI
what it means to be Canadian have in fact been extensive, beginning with his 2002 book
Souvenir of Canada (with a sequel in 2004), followed by a suite of large-scale photographs
Canada Pictures (2002), as well as public artworks such as Canoe Landing Park (2009) in
Toronto and Group of Seveninspired paintings that premiered in an exhibition titled with the
acronym G7Y2K10 (2010). The most ambitious of these has been his three renditions of
Canada House (2003/2004), initiated when he transformed a 1960s-style Vancouver house
slated for demolition into a domesticated display of constructed artworks and innumerable
found objectsIURPRRNSLFVWRPDFUDPpKDQJLQJVIURPILVKLQJEXR\VWRPRGHOVRI7RURQWRV
CN Towerall those things that contribute to a sense of who Canadians are as a people. For

4
the current exhibition Coupland has combined remnants of Canada House with new
sculptures created from domestic furniture, such as dressers and hutches that are literally
covered in surfaces that conjure various Canadian attributes and refer to distinct histories
across the country. All of these elements are brought together in a room outfitted with walls
PDGHIURPRQHRIWKHFRXQWU\VSULQFLSOHDQGHQGXULQJPDQXIDFWXUHGSURGXFWVORZO\
plywood. As a totality, the installation underscores the complexities and challenges of many
cultures living together under this unruly, social construct called Canada.

One of the ways to unite and bring order to the people of an expansive nation such as
Canada was through the establishment of transportation and communication systems: the
original cross-country passage using rivers, lakes, animal migration routes and mountain
passes was eventually replaced by the time of confederation by a transcontinental railway,
followed by a network of highways and hydro-electric lines in the early twentieth century.
Coupland pays tribute to this complex network of wires and towers in a new work Towers
(2014), which depicts a massive transmission tower that crumbled under the weight of ice
during the harsh winter storms of 1998 in Eastern Canada, suggesting the frailty of those
systems that keep Canada functioning as a society. It is also not surprising that the
telephone was invented by Canadian innovator Alexander Graham Bell in 1875 out of a
necessity to communicate, and that one of the greatest theorists on mass media and
communications, Marshall McLuhan, was indeed a Canadian. His famous 1960s
SURFODPDWLRQVWKDWWKHPHGLXPLVWKHPHVVDJHDQGWKDWDJOREDOYLOODJHDULVHVWKURXJK
electronic independence, as well as his prediction of an interconnected worldwide network
emerged from a country that was getting hardwired for digital capacity very early on.
Coupland took a deep interest in the life and work of Marshall McLuhan, penning his
biography and also absorbing KLVSKLORVRSKLFDOEHOLHIVDERXWWHFKQRORJ\VJURZLQJ
RPQLSUHVHQFHDQGSRZHULQDQDJHRI [growing] DQ[LHW\&RXSODQGVRZQSUHGLOHFWLRQWREH
among the first users of technological innovations, whether it was writing blogs or tweeting,
is echoed in some of his multi-layered canvases that look a certain way to the naked eye but
require, alternately, either the aid of a QR code reader or a smartphone camera in order to
decipher their deeper content.

Anywhere Else
%HFDXVHRI9DQFRXYHUVUHODWLYHLVRODWLRn, separated from other metropolitan areas by
PRXQWDLQVRFHDQDQGDQDWLRQDOERUGHUDQLQTXLVLWLYHQHVVDERXWHOVHZKHUHKDVDOZD\V

5
been a necessary part of survival. At an early age Coupland was distinctly aware that
Vancouver was not a centre of anything and that he was living on a periphery rather than
where the action was.vi This developed his insatiable curiosity about other parts of the world
and different art formsmost notably pop art, which led to a fascination with Andy Warhol
then Roy LichtensteLQERWKRIZKRPLQIOXHQFHG&RXSODQGVWKLQNLQJDERXWWKHHYHU\GD\
Warhol unleashed the possibility that everything could be used for art and that, in fact,
anything could be art; Coupland continues to test the limits of this maxim through his
enlargements of the most banal objects, such as Post-it notes or cleaning-product
containers, as well as in installations such as The World (201314), where the arrangement
of hundreds of models of industrial buildings and urban structures ultimately swirls into a
poSXODWHGYRUWH[RIHQWURS\UHPLQLVFHQWRI5REHUW6PLWKVRQVSpiral Jetty. The
/LFKWHQVWHLQLDQLQIOXHQFHLVHYLGHQWLQ&RXSODQGVXVHRIOLNHZLVHXELTXLWRXVV\PEROVRIWKH
day, largely multinational corporate logos such as IBM, Starbucks and Apple, but his
replications and juxtapositions of such logos are in a manner that takes over entire walls, or
HYHQURRPVSDUDOOHOLQJWKHJUDQGVFDOHRIWRGD\VFRUSRUDWHSRZHUVWUXFWXUHVDQGWKHLU
advertising cohorts.

The intrepid nature of pop artists to freely choose whatever forms are best suited for the
execution of their ideas has also rubbed off on Coupland. While his work is sometimes
portraiture (typically images of teens whose identities have been obscured) and occasionally
landscape (illustrative of his search for ways to update its representations), it is most often a
form of invigorated still life (,QIDFWWKLVPD\KDYHHPHUJHGIURPWKHDUWLVWVIDVFLQDWLRQZLWK
mid-century English surrealists Edward Wadsworth and Tristram Hillier,vii whose work was
surely an LQVSLUDWLRQIRU&RXSODQGVHDUO\LQVWDOODWLRQThe Floating World, which seems like a
WUDQVODWLRQRIWKHSDLUs fantastical coastal paintings). 7UXHWR6XUUHDOLVPVLQQRYDWLRQV
Coupland too turned still lifes into environments to be experienced and not just artworks to
be looked at. Many of his installations that implicate this still life genre elevate common
objects to a level of importance, but the religious and allegorical symbolism of the sixteenth-
FHQWXU\)OHPLVKYHUVLRQVLVUHSODFHGE\WKHDUWLVWVUHIHUHQFHVWRWRGD\VVRFLDODQGSROLWLFDO
urgencies.

While shifting his locatedness to an even broader, global perspective has been an intuitive
RQHSURPSWHGE\KLVHQGOHVVFXULRVLW\LWKDVDOVREHHQVSXUUHGE\WRGD\VWHFKQRORJLFDO
interconnectedness predicted by visionaries such as McLuhan. But with a global outlook

6
comes the awakening that we are all in it together, that your actions and politics do affect
mine&RXSODQGVORQJ-standing fascination with politics, even battle and the military, may
have been seeded when he was born on a Canadian Air Force base in Germany to a father
who was a medical officer, but they are made evident in sculptures he has created over the
years; for example, the oversized soldier Gorgon (2000) and public artworks like ToroQWRV
Monument to War of 1812 ZKLFKUHDFWLYDWHDQGYDORUL]HWKHIDOOHQ-XVWDVLQWRGD\V
ZRUOGZKHUHWKHWHQRURIYLROHQFHLVQRWFKHGXSDQGQRWLRQVRIWHUURUIORXULVKLQ&RXSODQGV
ZRUNWKHUHLVDSUHSRQGHUDQFHRILPDJHVRIFULVLV&DQDGDV4Xebec Liberation Front, bank
robberies, the face of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, jumpers evacuating the World
Trade Center towers and drone attacks. As a body of related paintings and photographs,
these works illuminate the growing culture of animosity and fear around the world as well as
our increased immunity to images of violence in the mass media, summoning the instability
RIWRGD\VJOREDOFRQILJXUDWLRQV

Everywhere at Once
:KLOHWKHZRUNLQWKLVH[KLELWLRQWUDQVSRUWVXVIURPWKHDUWLVWVKRPHRQWhe West Coast,
across the vast country of Canada and into a large and unstable international sphere, the
place where we finally locate Douglas Coupland at the end of the show is in his own body and
mind. The artist has theorized about how our brains are changing in the internet era,
adapting to the rapid speed with which we are able to obtain information by synthesizing it
ever more rapidlya response that accelerates with each successive generation. In the final
work of the exhibition, The Brain (201014), we experience both the rational and irrational
LQQHUZRUNLQJVRI&RXSODQGVPLQG$VZHVHDUFKIRUWKHVHQVLEOHORJLFRIKLVJURXSLQJVLQ
this massive cabinet of curiosities, our thoughts also go to the joys and excesses that
underpin the passionate endeavour of collecting. Beyond the endless psychological
dimensions this work evokes, it also moves us to consider the networked possibilities of all
objects and ideas, as well as the prospects of fluid exchanges in a post-networked context.
As the artist ponders:

I look back at myself two decades ago, and I think of how different me and my brain
were back thenand how differently I looked at the world and communicated with
others. The essential PH LVVWLOOKHUHLWMXVWUHODWHVWRWKHXQLYHUVHPXFKPRUH
differently. And what will the world look like when a doodad the size of
a grape contains every piece of information humanity has ever createdand

7
 essentially costs nothing to make? What will the world look
like when anywhere becomes everywhere becomes everything becomes anything?
:HUHDOPRVWWKHUHviii

Endnotes

i
Douglas Coupland, The Age of Earthquakes; A Guidebook to the Extreme Present (unpublished
manuscript), 92.
ii
Ibid.
iii
Douglas Coupland, in discussion with the author, January 28, 2014.
iv
Ibid.
v
Ibid.
vi
Ibid.
vii
Ibid.
viii
Douglas Coupland, Kitten Clone (London: Visual Editions, forthcoming), 71.

8
Douglas Coupland: A Select Chronology
By Emmy Lee Wall

Canadian artist and author Douglas Coupland was born in 1961 on the Royal Canadian Air
Force Base in Baden-Baden, West Germany. His earliest novel, Generation X, was the first of
many internationally bestselling books that he has written. Coupland has published fourteen
novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books and a dramatic work for
(QJODQGV5R\DO6KDNHVSHDUH7KHDWUH&RPSDQ\DVZHOODVVFUHHQSOD\VIRUILOPDQG
television. Since 2000 he has reinvigorated a visual art practice that was largely dormant
from the late 1980s, producing a diverse range of media including painting, prints,
photography, sculpture and installation. He has exhibited his artwork in Canada and
internationally.



1961 Born on December 30 in Baden-Baden, West Germany, at the Royal Canadian Air
Force Base 4-Wing, to Dr. Douglas Charles Thomas Coupland, a medical officer in the
RCAF, and his wife, Janet Coupland, a homemaker with a degree in comparative religion from
McGill University. He is the second of four sons born to the couple.

1964 Moves with his family to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1965 Moves with his family to West Vancouver, British Columbia. Upon the completion of
his military tour his father opens a private medical practice across the Capilano River in
North Vancouver.

1971 Discovers Pop art while in third grade. The artist has said,UHPHPEHUEHLQJLQ
Grade 3 and looking at Pop Art in the World Book. 7KDWZDVLWOLNHP\ILUVWKLWRIFUDFN,YH
EHHQSRSHYHUVLQFHi

1979 Graduates from Sentinel Senior Secondary School in West Vancouver.

1979 Attends McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, with the intention of studying
sciences.

1980 Returns to Vancouver and enrolls in Emily Carr College of Art and Design (now
University) where he focuses on sculpture, typography, graphic design and interdisciplinary
studies. Fellow classmates include artists Attila Richard Lukacs, Graham Gillmore, Angela
Grossmann and Derek Root. About his time at the College, he stated: ,KDGWKHEHVWIRXU
years of my life. It's the one place I've felt truly, totally at home. It was a magic era between
the hippies and the PC goon squads. Everyone talked to everyone and you could ask anybody
DQ\WKLQJ

1983 Enrolls as an exchange student at the Hokkaido College of Art and Design in Sapporo,
Japan.

1984 Graduates from Emily Carr College of Art and Design with a diploma in sculpture.

1984 Spends one semester on scholarship at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan, Italy.
His time there is cut short by clinical depression, a condition that recurs through the rest of
his life.
19851986 Graduates with an honours degree in Japanese Business Science from the
Japan-America Institute of Management Science (Nichi-Bei Kaiei Kagaku Denkyu-Cho) in
Honolulu and Sofia University in Tokyo, Japan.

1986 Works as a researcher/designer for Magazine House in Japan. About this time, he
said: ,WZDVMXVWEHfore the Japanese [economic] bXEEOHEXUVW:HGJRRXWIRU
lunches. It was obviously unsustainable, and everyone knew it, but it stopped nothing. It was
DGHDWKVSLUDO

1986 Moves back to Vancouver after another serious bout of depression.

1987 The solo exhibition titled The Floating World: Doug Coupland, consisting of a large
room-sized sculptural installation, is presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery (in the no-longer
existent &KLOGUHQV*DOOHU\. Ian Verchre, in his review for Planet of the Arts, ZURWHThe
)ORDWLQJ:RUOGVSDQVWKHSLYRWDOPRYHPHQWVRIHDUO\th century modernism. It is composed
of a still life, but effectively denies any perspective or cognition of scale. Here we see a
surrealist approach to the synthetic in the landscapH&RXSODQGIXUWKHUGLVUXSWVRXUUHODWLYH
VHQVHWKURXJKWKHMX[WDSRVLWLRQDQGUHFRQWH[WXDOL]DWLRQRIQDWXUDODQGDUWLILFLDOREMHFWVii

1987 Vancouver Magazine editor Malcolm Parry reads a postcard Coupland has written
IURP-DSDQWRDPXWXDOIULHQGVZLIHDQd hires him to write feature articles for the magazine.

1987 Works as an editor and writes for the regional lifestyle magazine Western Living.
Writes an article for the magazine in which he discusses the lack of self-realization amongst
people of his own generation. The article is titled Generation X and marks the first
emergence of the term in the English language, which refers to the generation after the baby
boomers that was born between the early 1960s and late 1970s.

1988 Moves to Toronto, Ontario, to become a junior editor at Vista magazine, a short-lived
business/science publication started by auto-parts magnate Frank Stronach.

1988 In the spring he UHFHLYHVDDGYDQFHIURP1HZ<RUNV6W0DUWLQV3UHVVWR

write a non-fiction handbook on the Gen X birth cohort. Over the next nine months he
moves to the Mojave Desert to write Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. This
book is rejected by his Canadian publisher.

1991 After much in-KRXVHFRQIOLFWDW6W0DUWLQV3UHVVGeneration X: Tales for an

Accelerated Culture is published in the US with an initial print run of 3,000 copies. The novel
SRSXODUL]HVWKHWHUP*HQHUDWLRQ;.,QLWLDOVDOHVDUHVORZ, but the book eventually becomes
DQLQWHUQDWLRQDOEHVWVHOOHU,WLVFDOOHGDJURXQG-EUHDNLQJQRYHOE\The Los Angeles Times.

1992 Shampoo Planet is published. It is considered a follow-up to Generation X. Its main

character is Tyler Johnson, a Global Teen that is part of the birth cohort that followed
Generation X, which Coupland dubbHG*HQHUDWLRQ<another term that became a media
phenomenon but did not appear until roughly 2003.

1992 The cover of Business Week magazine published on December 4, 1992, references
Generation X.

1993 Life after God is published. It is a collection of short stories exploring the theme of a
generation raised without religion. The jacket cover for the original hardcover version bears
the text: <RXDUHWKHILUVWJHQHUDWLRQWREHUDLVHGZLWKRXWUHOLJLRQ7KHVWRULHVDUHLOOXVWUDWHG
by Coupland.
1993 Frequently contributes articles to The New York Times and The New Republic.

1994 The cover of Rolling Stone magazine published November 17, 1994, references
*HQHUDWLRQ1H[W

1994 Spends six months in California and Washington state, home of Microsoft, to
research his next novel, Microserfs. During this time Coupland works a three-month stint at
Wired PDJD]LQHV6DQ)UDQFLVFRRIILFHV.

1995 Microserfs is published. It is an epistolary novel in the form of a series of journal

HQWULHVE\'DQLHOWKHQRYHOVSUotagonist. Partially set at Microsoft, Microserfs first appeared
as a short story in the January 1994 issue of Wired magazine and was later expanded into a
novel.

1995 Serves as Creative Editor of a special edition of Wired PDJD]LQHRQ7KH)XWXUHRIWKH

)XWXUH

1995 Begins a decade-ORQJSURMHFWRIRQOLQH7RXU'LDULHVLong before blogs, Coupland

would FedEx a daily collage of the day to Vancouver, where it would be scanned and then
posted three days later as a diary entry. The multi-year process is extensively archived on
Prelinger.org.

1995 &RQWULEXWHV$:DONRQWKH:LUHG6LGHWRArtforum magazine, an article in which he

pretends he is a citizen of 1975 who visits the year 1995. He asks the reader, a member of
the present: 'R\RXVWLOOEHOLHYHin progress? Are we inventing too many new machines? Are
you obsolete? Am I obsolete? Did you buy Windows 95? Do you know Quark? Has anyone you
NQRZGLHGRI$,'6"

1996 Polaroids from the Dead is published. It is a collection of short stories and essays
inspired by a group of Polaroid photographs Coupland found in a drawer. Coupland describes
the book asan examination of people and places I found fascinating (for whatever reasons
ZHGHYHORSIDVFLQDWLRQVGXULQJWKHSHULRGIURPWR,WVWRSLFVLnclude Kurt
Cobain and the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Coupland interspersed the text with Polaroids and
other types of texts, such as menus and postings from bulletin boards.

1996 Regularly contributes feature articles to Wallpaper* magazine.

1997 The cover of Time magazine published on June 9, 1997, references Generation X.

1997 Guest edits Vancouver MagazineV2FWREHULVVXH, which is focused on the question of

whether the Lower Mainland could ever become a city-state unto itself.

1998 Girlfriend in a Coma is published. The novel follows the lives of a group of friends,
one of whom, Karen, falls into a coma for seventeen years. Fifteen years later the novel is
turned into a series for CBS television with producer Dick Wolf of Law & Order fame.

1999 Guest curates a section of a millennium exhibition on five decades of art making
titled Out of this Century at the Vancouver Art Gallery, focusing on artwork created during the
1960s.

2000 Miss Wyoming is published. The novel focuses on a former Miss Wyoming pageant
winner and a former action film director; Coupland makes heavy use of flashbacks without a
consistent temporal order in this novel, disturbing the sequence of the narrative.
2000 City of Glass is published. It is a collection of fifty short essays on Vancouver,
interspersed with photographs. It is described in the Globe and Mail DV6ubjective in tone
and sexy to look ata delightfully outlandish travel bookjust the sort of whacked-out guide
you wish was available for every great ciW\LQWKHZRUOGiii

2000 Designs a line of three simple coffee tables for Edmonton-based Pure Design
(disbanded in 2004). This is the first of many design projects over the ensuing decade.

2000 Acts as Guest Editor of Vancouver MagazineV-DQXDU\)HEUXDU\issue on the future.

2000 Receives an Honourary Doctor of Letters from Emily Carr University of Art and Design
in Vancouver.

2000 Spike, a solo exhibition at Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver, LV&RXSODQGV first art
exhibition since the 1980s. Michael Scott, in a review of the show in The Vancouver Sun,
described WKHLQVWDOODWLRQSpike consists of heroic-sized enlargements of plastic soldiers,
the kind we might have played with in the 1970s, and equally monumental renderings of the
plastic bottles in which household cleaners and shampoos and automotive products are
VROG+HSUDLVHVWKHH[KLELWLRQ, FDOOLQJLWVXSHUEO\FRQFHLYHGDQGIODZOHVVO\H[HFXWHGiv

2000 Participates in the group exhibition Between Passion and Logic: Contemporary and
Modern Art, presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

2001 Spike opens at the now long-defunct Totem Gallery on Spring Street in Soho, New
York City.

2001 On September 10 Coupland leaves New York City for Madison, the first stop on a
forty-two-city book tour.

2001 As a result of 9/11, Spike is shut down and largely sealed off for six months.

2001 All Families are Psychotic is published. The book focuses on the dysfunctional
Drummond family of Vancouver, who has gathered to ZDWFKWKHLUGDXJKWHUVVSDFHVKXWWOH
launch. In the initial print run the book was bound with half its pages turned upside down,
forcing the reader to flip the book halfway through in order to continue reading.

2001 Re-evaluates creative priorities after a forty-two city book tour. Decides to focus on
his visual art practice.

2001 God Hates Japan is published in Japanese language only.

2002 Souvenir of Canada, a non-ILFWLRQERRNLQWHJUDWLQJ&RXSODQGV artwork and text with

IRXQGLPDJHU\LVSXEOLVKHG&RXSODQGGHVFULEHVLWDVDYHU\SHUVRQDO;-UD\RI&DQDGD,WV
VRPHWKLQJ,ZDQWWRKDQGWRYLVLWRUVDQGVD\+HUH7KLVLVZKDWPDNHVXVXV

2002 The solo exhibition Canada Pictures is presented at Monte Clark Gallery in Toronto.
The press release for the show stated: 7KHVXLWHRIODUJH-scale, colour photographs, entitled
&DQDGD3LFWXUHV,SUHVHQWVGLVWLQFWO\&DQDGLDQPDWHULDO-tracks, Kraft Dinner and the Avro
Arrow to the October Crisis and ookpiks. Arranged as still-lifes and quasi-dioramas the
photographs depict a wealth of Canadian historical and pop culture references that are
central to our collective memory. Confounding to non-Canadians, endearing to us, the
photographs gently divide viewers, most notably along the 49th SDUDOOHO
2002 School Spirit, an artist book created LQFROODERUDWLRQZLWK)UDQFHV3LHUUH+X\JKH, is
published by ditions Au diable vauvert in Paris. The book is composed of images from high
school yearbooks and is interspersed with text by Coupland.

2002 Consults directly with Steven Spielberg on WKHGLUHFWRUVfilm Minority Report,

EUDLQVWRUPLQJKRZWKHIXWXUHZRXOGORRN+HEURXJKWLQKLVDUWFUHZDQGKLV'PRGHOlers,
so if you had an idea it was visualized instantly. It was like walking around and having an
endless document scrolling out of a laser printer showing what was in your head. If it was a
GUXJ,GWDNHLW

2002 Elected to the Board of Directors of the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver
(serving until 2007).

2003 Hey Nostradamus! is published. Inspired by the Columbine shootings, the novel
follows the victims in the aftermath of a fictional shooting in a North Vancouver high school.
It is told from the perspective of four first-person narrators.

2003 Installs Canada House in a 1950s house in Vancouver that is slated for demolition.
Coupland described this project in Souvenir of Canada 2: )RU\HDUV,YHEHHQFROOHFWLQJ
images, objects, scraps and ideas with the end purpose of using them to build a uniquely
&DQDGLDQHQYLURQPHQWWKHREMHFWV,PDGHIRUWKHLQVLGHZRUNDVERWKDUWDQGGHVLJQDQG
they come in two categories. The first is quilts and cabinets and the like, which are made
from scraps. The second is objects, in which I took an idea, and then turned it into a concrete
REMHFW

2003 Participates in The Basement Show, a one-week installation that also includes work
by Graham Gillmore, Angela Grossmann, Atilla Richard Lukacs and Derek Root. The press
release, prepared by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver, VWDWHVThe
Basement Show presents a body of work from a close quintet of ECIAD (Emily Carr Institute
RI$UW'HVLJQIULHQGVZKRJUDGXDWHGLQ7KHILYHKDYHFRPHWRJHWKHUWRH[KLELWIRU
the very first time in twenty years, new works and installations in the basement rooms of
9DQFRXYHUVPRVWIDPRXVVPRGHUQEXLOGLQJ7KHWUDQVLHQWQDWXUHRIWKLVRQHZHHN
show is intended to provide a brief overview of how styles, mediums and strategies have
evolved for this JURXSZKRVHOLIHPLVVLRQLVWRUHPDLQILUPO\HPEHGGHGLQWKHDUWV

2004 Eleanor Rigby is published. The novel is a first-person narrative recounted by the
central character, Liz Dunn, whose solitary life is changed when she reunites with her son
that she gave up for adoption.

2004 Souvenir of Canada 2 is published. As with its predecessor, LWLQWHJUDWHV&RXSODQGV

non-fiction musings on what makes Canadians Canadian with images of his artwork and
works by others. It contains extensive documentation of thHDUWLVWVCanada House
installation.

2004 The solo exhibition Douglas Coupland: The Thousand Dollar Blanket & The Hubcap
Quilt is presented at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Ontario, where two quilts that were
part of the 2003 Canada House installation are exhibited.

2004 Solo exhibitions of Canada House take place at the Canadian High Commission in
London, UK and the DX Design Exchange in Toronto.

2004 Participates in the group exhibition Terminal Five, which is installed in the disused
Eero Saarinendesigned TWA Flight Center at JFK Terminal 5 in New York. Curated by Rachel
Ward, the exhibition considers the idea of travel and includes nineteen artists from ten
countries including Vanessa Beecroft, Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer and Tobias Wong. Artforum
magazine names it one of the best exhibitions of 2004.

2005 Works as a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The Globe and Mail.

2005 Commissioned to write and present a one-man monologue called September 10,
2001: A Social History of the 1990s by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-
Avon, UK.

2005 Contributes an essay to Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art, a
catalogue produced in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name presented at the
Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Vancouver Art Gallery and CCA
Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco.

2005 AZDUGHGWKH&DQDGLDQ$XWKRUV$VVRFLDWLRQVMOSAID Technology Inc. Award for

Fiction for Hey Nostradamus!

2005 Terry is published. The massive fundraising non-fiction book combines text and
archival material to tell the story of Terry Fox, a teenager from &RXSODQGVHUD that lived in
9DQFRXYHUVVXEXUEV$fter losing a leg to cancer, Fox began a cross-Canada run in 1980
FDOOHG7KH 0LUDFOHRI+RSHWRUDLVHDZDUHQHVVDQGIXQGVIRUFDQFHUUHVHDUFK

2005 The solo design exhibition Super City, in which Coupland created an imaginary future
cityscape inspired by the Ideal Toys 1968 toy kit of the same name, is presented at the
Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.

2005 Dual solo shows, I Like the Future and the Future Likes Me and Retranslation, open
at Monte Clark Gallery in Toronto.

2005 Souvenir of Canada is adapted and released as a feature film at the Toronto
International Film Festival. The film documents Coupland as he installs Canada House and
includes interviews with the artist, his family and his colleagues. It explores modes of being
Canadian outside of those dictated by the politics of the 1960s and 70s.

2006 JPod is published. The novel centres around six programmers who work in the
fictional gaming company Neotronic Arts, based in Burnaby, British Columbia. It has been
referred to as a Microserfs for the millennium and, like Microserfs, there are epistolary
passages written as emails and text messages. Coupland appears as a character in the
book. It is longlisted for the Giller Prize.

2006 Writes a blog for The New York Times about his life as an artist and writer.

2006 (YHU\WKLQJV*RQH*UHHQa film directed by Paul Fox and written by Coupland, is

released at the Toronto International Film Festival and is named Best Canadian Feature Film
at the 2006 Vancouver International Film Festival.

2006 Life After God is adapted into a play and presented by Touchstone Theatre in
Vancouver.

2006 Play Again?, a solo exhibition featuring only text-based works, is presented at The
Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in 6W-RKQV1HZIRXQGODQG
2006 Participates in the group exhibition Vancouver School, organized by the painter
*RUGRQ6PLWKV$UWLVWVIRU.LGV*DOOHU\&RXSODQGVFROODERUDWRUVDUHKLVHDUO\-1980s Emily
Carr compatriots Graham Gillmore, Angela Grossmann, Attila Richard Lukas and Derek Root.
7KHDUWLVWVZRUNFROODERUDWLYHO\GLVDVVHPEOHVDGHUHOLFW1RUWK9DQFRXYHUHOHPHQWDU\VFKRRO
gym and rebuilds it into an imaginary school space that is later used by the Gordon and
Marion Smith Foundation as an exhibition space.

2007 The Gum Thief is published. It is selected as one of The Globe and MailV Best
BookV and as an (GLWRUV3LFN by the New York Times.

2007 Receives an Honourary Doctor of Letters from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.

2007 The solo exhibition Fifty Books I Have Read More than Once is presented at Simon
Fraser University in Burnaby.

2007 The solo exhibition Penguins is presented at Monte Clark Gallery in Toronto.

2008 Participates in the group exhibition Logotopia: The Library in Architecture, Art and the
Imagination at Cambridge Galleries (now Idea Exchange) in Cambridge, Ontario.

2008 Participates in the group exhibition A Spoken Word Exhibition at the Center for
Contemporary Art in Prague.

2008 Participates in the group exhibition Dream House, organized by the Plug In Institute
of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

2008 Completes Monument to War of 1812, a large-scale public commission installed

outside of a condominium in Toronto.

2008 JPod is adapted and airs on CBCTV as a television series of the same name.

2009 The solo exhibition Mom & Dad is presented at Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver.

2009 Generation A LVSXEOLVKHG,WLVDILQDOLVWIRUWKH5RJHUV:ULWHUV7UXVW)LFWLRQ3UL]H

2009 Extraordinary Canadians: Marshall McLuhan, a non-fiction book on the life, work and
impact of McLuhan, is published.

2009 Group exhibition Logotopia: The Library in Architecture, Art and the Imagination tours
to Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatechewan; Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery in
Halifax; and MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ontario.

2009 A solo exhibition of mixed media works titled Atelier is presented at Clark & Faria
Gallery in Toronto.

2009 Completes Canoe Landing Park, an outdoor installation in Toronto full of Canadian
symbols including a beaver dam, fishing tackle bobbers, a canoe and the Terry Fox Miracle
Mile in a 20 hectare development of condominium towers by Concord Pacific.

2009 Creates Toronto 1950: Canada Goes Electric, a commissioned wall-relief mural at
7RURQWRV5%&'H[LD7RZHU

2010 Player One: What Is to Become of Us is published. The novel is an adaptation of the
2010 Massey Lectures, in which Coupland delivered five one-hour readingseach of which
served as a chapter of the bookin cities across Canada. It is longlisted for the Giller Prize.
2010 Collaborates with Roots, the Canadian clothing retailer, to produce the Roots X
Douglas Coupland collection, which includes clothing and custom-designed retail spaces in
Toronto and Vancouver that are filled with sculptures and objects designed by Coupland.

2010 Group exhibition Logotopia: The Library in Architecture, Art and the Imagination tours
to Triangle Gallery in Calgary, Alberta.

2010 G7Y2K10, a collection of canvases and prints examining the potency of the Group of
6HYHQVOHJDF\LQWKH&DQDGLDQSV\FKH, is exhibited at Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver.

2010 :ULWHVWKHLQWURGXFWLRQIRU+DQV8OULFK2EULVWVInterviews Volume 2, published by

Charta.

2011 Participates in the group exhibition In Dialogue with Carr: Douglas Coupland, Evan
Lee, Liz Magor, Marianne Nicolson presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

2011 Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People is published. It is a dark collection of
seven short stories illustrated by Graham Roumieu and described by the publisher as: "Seven
pants-peeingly funny stories featuring seven evil characters you can't help but love."

2011 Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario commissions a public work for the
exterior of its building titled Group Portrait 1957, based on a photo of the Painters Eleven.

2011 Completes Terry Fox Memorial, a large-scale public commission commemorating the
Canadian athlete who attempted to run across Canada to raise money and awareness for
Cancer research. It is installed outside BC Place in Vancouver. The work consists of four
bronze sculptures in a Muybridge-like row depicting Fox running; the first sculpture is life-
sized and each increases in size until the final one is twice as large as the first.

2011 Receives an Honourary Doctor of Letters from Mount Allison University in Sackville,
New Brunswick.

2012 Completes Digital Orca, a large-scale public commission installed outside the
Vancouver Convention Centre.

2012 The University RI%ULWLVK&ROXPELDDQQRXQFHVLWKDVDFTXLUHG&RXSODQGVDUFKLYHV,

which are stored in 122 boxes and feature 30 metres of text and graphic material, 30
objects, 40 audio and videocassettes, 1,425 photographs and the first draft of his
manuscript Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Coupland will continue to add to
this archive in the future. The president of UBC FDOOVWKLVDFTXLVLWLRQWKHILUVWVWHSLQDEURDG
HQJDJHPHQWZLWKDQLPSRUWDQW&DQDGLDQLQWHOOHFWv

2012 Receives an Honourary Doctor of Letters from the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver.

2012 The solo exhibition Douglas Coupland, organized by the Art Dealers Association of
Canada, is presented at The Armory Show in New York.

2012 Participates in the group exhibition Oh, Canada at the Massachusetts Museum of
Contemporary Art in North Adams with two large-scale paintings, Permanent Press
Landscape and Arctic Landscape Fuelled by Memory.
2012 Completes Canadian Fallen Firefighters Memorial, a large-scale public commission
installed in LeBreton Flats in Ottawa to commemorate the nearly 1,100 Canadian firefighters
killed in the line of duty or from work-related illnesses.

2012 Group exhibition Logotopia: The Library in Architecture, Art and the Imagination tours
to Grand Bibliothque Nationale du Qubec in Montreal and The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery
in 6W-RKQV

2012 Presents Vancouver Codes on the video screens of the Canada Line public
transportation system in Vancouver from January 16 to January 31 as part of the City of
9DQFRXYHUV3XEOLF$UW3URJUDP

2012 Completes Infinite Tires, a large-scale outdoor public commission installed at

&DQDGLDQ7LUHV0DULQH'ULYHshopping complex in Vancouver.

2012 Awarded the inaugural Gamechanger Award by the Design Exchange in Toronto, an
award WKDWZLOODQQXDOO\KRQRXUDQLQWHUQDWLRQDOO\DFFODLPHGGHVLJQHUZKRHIIRUWOHVVO\
moves between creative disciplines, consistently demonstrating an expression of creativity
DFURVVDOOSODWIRUPV

2012 Participates in Nuit Blanche, a night-long exploration of contemporary art in Toronto,

where he presents The Museum of the Rapture, a large-scale installation exploring the
theme of Rapture in Christian eschatology, in which proponents have faith that during the
Rapture true believers will be raised up to heaven leaving their non-believing counterparts
behind on earth.

2012 Participates in and contributes an essay to Supersurrealism at Moderna Museet in

Malm, Sweden, a group exhibition examining contemporary manifestations of Surrealism.

2012 Presents Welcome to the Twenty-first Century, a solo exhibition at Daniel Faria
Gallery in Toronto.

2012 Participates in the group exhibition By Land and Sea We Prosper at Art Labour Gallery
in Shanghai, China.

2013 Participates in the group exhibition DECENTER: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the
1913 Armory Show at the Abrons Arts Center in New York. The exhibition examines the
legacy of Cubism and the changes in contemporary perception brought on by new
WHFKQRORJLHVWKDWFORVHO\SDrallel the Cubist vernacular of fragmentation, nonlinearity,
VLPXOWDQHLW\DQGGHFHQWHUHGQHVV7KHH[KLELWLRQWUDYHOVWR/XWKHU:%UDG\$UW*DOOHU\ at
George Washington University in Washington D.C.

2013 In June, The Twenty-first Century Continues, Part 1 is unveiled at Daniel Faria Gallery
in Toronto.

2013 In August, The Twenty-first Century Continues, Part 2 is unveiled at Daniel Faria
Gallery in Toronto.

2013 Receives an Honourary Doctor of Letters from OCAD University in Toronto.

2013 A collection of essays and articles on art titled Shopping in Jail: Ideas, Essays, and
Stories for the Increasingly Real Twenty-First Century is published by Sternberg Press in
Berlin, Germany. Includes works previously published by The New York Times, Granta, the
Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., the White Cube Gallery, London the
Kunsthaus Bregenz.

2013 Participates in the 2013 Biennial of the Americas with the outdoor public artwork
Welcome to Detroit.

2013 Designs a line of furniture that includes bookshelves, escritoires and lamps for
9DQFRXYHUV6ZLW]HU&XOW&UHDWLYH

2013 Worst.Person.Ever is published by Random House Canada. Coupland describes the

main character of the novel, Raymond Gunt, as "a living, walking, talking, hot steaming pile of
pure id."

2014 Presents Slogans for the Early Twenty-First Century, a solo exhibition at Or Gallery in
Berlin.

2014 Major solo exhibition Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is

everything, accompanied by this major publication, opens at Vancouver Art Gallery. The
exhibition tours to Toronto and Munich in 2015.

i
Josef Grubisic, National Post, January 28, 2000, B4.
ii
Ian Verchre, Planet of the Arts, December 1987.
iii
The Globe and Mail, October 14, 2000.
iv
Michael Scott, The Vancouver Sun, May 24, 2001, A1.
v
Tom Hawthorn, The Globe and Mail, May 21, 2010, A6.
Growing up Utopian

By Douglas Coupland

I grew up on the North Shore of Vancouver, up on the slope of Hollyburn Mountain

where the 1960s subdivisions kiss the wire fencing that separates suburbia from
9DQFRXYHUVGULQNLQJZDWHUUHVHUYRLU Beyond the reservoir seems like wilderness that
stretches to the North Pole and then over into Siberia. North and West Vancouver are, in a
cartographical sense, at one end of western civilization, or rather, the end of its metropolitan
reach.

I remember the suburbs being built, and I clearly remember, and often dream of, the
sounds of chainsaws leveling a forest to make space for the middle class homes of my youth.
I clearly remember, and often dream of swiping 2x4s and plywood and building tree forts in
the trees that survived being cut down. A century ago, logging is what the North Shore was all
about. Below my elementary school, down in Capilano Canyon, lie the decaying remains of
lumber railway bridges that once crossed the mountainside, as did a network of flumes. In
my mind it felt like I was living overtop the remains of a massive and highly implausible roller
coaster. As well, the roads I grew up on were once logging roads andwell, I guess the point
of all of this is that I grew up with a very clear sense that progress, or enlightenment, at least
in my part of the world, invariably comes at the expense of nature. In other places, if you
want to build something, you have to tear down something else. In West Vancouver, no such
luck6RLI\RXUHJRLQJWREHUHSODFLQJQDWXUH\RXGEHWWHUEHVXUHWKDW\RXUHUHSODFLQJLW
with something worthy of the exchange.

This notion of upward twentieth century futurity at the expense of nature also
overlapped with a post-war reality called plywood. When WRUOG:DU,,HQGHG&DQDGDV
lumber industry produced crazy amounts of the stuff, and one thing producers badly needed
were examples of what people might build with it. This need for new architectural ideas,
combined with the recently deforested North ShoreDORQJZLWKWKHRIWHQXQEXLOGDEOH
locations on the North Shore created a potent form of Modernist housing. It used the post-
and-beam technique in tandem with the uQIOLQFKLQJ[ORJic of plywood, and the regionV
rocky and steep topography to create homes of compelling simplicity and elegance. To live in
one of these houses was to live in dialogue with nature. Large windows allowed in light and
the beauty of the surrounds, and also served as metaphors for social and moral
transparency. The absence of ghosts reminded one of the power of science. Utopia was
achievable, and it took the form of the built landscape of my youth.

Because of where and when I grew up, it never occurred to me until later in life that
WKHUHDUHSHRSOHZKRGRQWEHOLHYHLQSURJUHVVRUZKRGRQWYLHZKXPDQKLVWRU\DVDQHYHr
upward moving line on a graph, or who even have time to think about history let alone
philosophize on it. In fact, as the years roll on, it feels like people who still believe in progress
are like the last members of a doomed civilization who have lived through a massive
scourge, and who now cling together for warmth in small cliques scattered about the globe in
Vancouver, Sydney and small patches of California.

Okay, ,PH[DJJHUDWLQJ,QIDFW,PIODWRXWZURQJ:KDWKDSSHQHGLVWKDWP\QRWLRQRI
progress was replaced by actual progress that did happen elsewhere: the dazzling yet iffy
dreamscapes of the Emirates that Sophia al Maria has labeled *XOI)XWXULVP; by the
astonishing clip of China in the ascendant; the European Union experiment that actually
worked in the end0HDQZKLOHoOGIDVKLRQHG progress largely stopped in North America,
only to be replaced by what the Chinese humblingly FDOOF\FOLFDOVWDJQDWLRQ'LVQH\V
Tomorrowland feels stupid. California needs a power washing. The entire US South needs a
shampoo, a comb through and ten thousand hours of TED lectures.

Vancouver was always where hippies from elsewhere in North America came as the
jumping off point to start any number of failed utopian communities along the coast. Growing
up I remember seeing them camped out on a vacant lot near Stanley Park, marshalling
themselves together, unbathed and stoned, before they headed off to an island or up the
coast in some futile attempt at utopia building. I was relieved, indeed, when the Sex Pistols
arrived and vaporized what remained of that era. I mean, why would you want to go up the
coast and start a useless and doomed XWRSLDZKHQWKHUHVa functioning utopia happening
right here? Plywood! Space! Lots of cheap energy! Very few entrenched hegemonies!

Lego as a toy feeds directly into the modernist utopian impulse, with its crisp binary
edges and its digital logic that preceded the personal computer by 25 yearsDQGWKHUHV
probably a bit of cause and effect there. In 2005 I did an art/design fusion project at
0RQWUHDOV&DQDGLDQ&HQWUHIRU$UFKLWHFWXUHDQGLWVSUHPLse was that the building systems
you play with as a child go to the tip of your cerebral taproot and manifest themselves in later
OLIH3&VZHUHFUHDWHGE\WKHILUVWJHQHUDWLRQRI/HJRXVHUVDQGLWVQRZEHFRPLQJFOHDUWKDW
Lego was more than just a way to fritter away a Sunday afternooninstead it was installing a
pixel-like software system into hundreds of millions of brains, and its influence only grows.

A utopia is a clean place where everyone is busy doing something they like, free from
bullying and disease, a place where they can prosper and feel hope. For me that promise
crystalized itself in the form of Lego Kit No. 345, a suburban Copenhagen bungalow with
clerestory windows. In producing a phalanx of them, my hope is to reignite the dampened
spark plugs of classic modernity.

I also created DJDUGHQRUIDUPRIIDQWDVWLFDOLego structures. I used a process of

curated crowd-sourcing to which I applied my own logic systemscreating unlikely hybrid
structures that embody a forward looking utopianism once found in places like
Tomorrowland. The towers at once feel optimistic, varied and compelling, which is how I still
view both the future and progress.