It was all very boys' club, very soap opera and very confusing. Despite the sensitive ambiguities of Lum's work, which I have reflected on seriously since, his is also an oeuvre of the impervious and sealed up, not unlike the gruff persona he presented that day.
I have long wondered what it would be like to ask Lum some personal questions. Not only would it be more "estrogenesque"; on some level, I think, I longed to make him cry. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly what happened.
This interview took place nine days prior to the 2006 federal election in Canada--an election the Conservative party won.
Q. You travel a lot. What are some of your favourite Vancouver things to do after you've been away for a while and come back?
A. Coming back and just staying in my own place. I don't go out much, even here in my neighbourhood. And I rarely go downtown. Whenever I go downtown I'm always amazed how many people are there. I'm split between the [University of British Columbia] campus and my home, out on the west side of Vancouver. I go to the nearby supermarket and maybe a nearby diner. My gym is right across the street. That's all I miss, basically being home.
Q. When you're abroad, where do you tell people you are from?
A. First of ali I tell them I'm Canadian and then I tell them I'm from Vancouver. Particularly in Europe, and less so in recent years, people would ask, "But where is your family from?" and I would say China. That was a few years ago they used to say that, but now it's much less.
Q. Have you ever considered moving somewhere else?
A. I've moved lots of places. I've lived in Martinique. I've lived a year in Paris, a year in Munich. I lived in China. I lived in Winnipeg. I lived in Toronto for three-and-a-half years. I actually moved to these places. I'm not talking about going someplace for a week, but for at least a year or two, or three years. I think that's moving. Like even doing a residency where you're there half a year, you have to move. When I did all this, I put a lot of stuff in storage. I sublet my apartment one time and often I would give it up. Now I own the place so it's different. It makes you more tied to your place.
I have itchy feet all the time anyway; I'd like to move again. I don't know where, but I have some job offers and stuff. I'm still debating.
Q. Is it ever hard to make those choices?
A. It's not terribly hard. I don't wreck my head around it. If it's an interesting city, that's appealing ... but not always. Last year I received a great offer in San Francisco, but I just didn't want to go to the same time zone ... like why would I be moving [within] the same standard time? Hong Kong would be great. I also spent a lot of time in Dubai last year.
Q. Has racism as an issue gotten better or worse in Canada since you began your art practice? If not better or worse, how have the issues changed?
A. Well, I live in Vancouver so it's a little bit of a different question here because the city is so Asian anyways. It's much better now than when I was growing up or in early university. Yeah. Much more, I don't know, sympathetic and so on. The relations between people around 1986 had a lot of tension because of the influx of Hong Kong Chinese at that point. Now I think the non-Chinese have finally admitted defeat and admitted that these are the people who spur the engine of change and good restaurants and such.
I don't think, though, that it's improved at all in terms of aboriginal relations in Canada. And I think Canada's always got this degree of being a racialist country. Racialist, not racist. I'm not sure how to wrap my head around that. Racialist in that people are always very conscious of race but Canada always pretends we're not. I actually find America's much better that way. If you're in New York or Seattle or some other big city it's not an issue, you're just whoever you are. Well in Canada you're always Polish-Canadian, Korean-Canadian ... it's racialist. I don't know. I don't know if it's good or bad. I just sometimes wish we didn't have to mete attention onto those hyphens.
I mean look at the current election campaign. This hyphen community, that hyphen community, it's cynical: "How can we win this hyphen community vote?"
O. Your work seems to be a lot about perfection. Can you talk about that? Like, do you ever wish you could make something messy?
A. Perfection? You mean because of the finish? Well, why would I want an imperfect work? You try to develop the work to a certain standard and finish. When I say something looks finished, it doesn't mean shiny. Even good little scribble drawings always look finished. There has to be a finish that would represent actively the complexity of the artist's expression.
People have mentioned that about my work before. And I just think that's how my work is. Some say it's clinical, and some say it's rather cool and head-bound, and I don't dispute that either. That's just the way I am. And what I'm interested in are the fissures behind that. So as long as that's there on some level and is detectable in terms of inducing certain kinds of sentiments in the spectator, then I'm happy. And besides, often my work makes reference to advertising and publicity culture and so on, so in a way you'd have to match that; there's some degree of mimicry involved. I'm not trying to create advertising. But in order to have that considerable conceptual deviation from advertising you have to match it on a visual level
Also, my office is completely neat, so that's just who I am.
Q. If the Vancouver School were an actual building, what would it look like?
A. Well, first of all I guess there would be a lot of separate rooms with no common hallway. They would all open up in different directions. I could go to my office or studio and would never see the other residents until I die, basically. Once in a while I would hear music coming from Rodney's studio or Ian reading a book to some classical music or something, and I might sometimes feel like, "Hey, could you keep it down?" It would be something like that.
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