Blueprints for survival: Artists construct The Civil Defense Information Centre

Vancouver's status as a major target area has led to an increasing need for information facilities to provide the public with blueprints for survival from nuclear attack. Current data forecast two to three megaton warheads targeted at the VancouverVictoria area. (Civil Defense Information Centre, Press Release, Jan. 1982). When the Vancouver Sun printed this statement verbatim they believed that they were excerpting from a press release by the federal government. In fact, they were providing an advertising channel for a multi-media anti-nuke exhibition created by three Vancouver artists, Laura Hackett, Dean Mitchell and Daniel Werger. The three recent graduates of Emily Carr College of Art, working in collaboration, sought to create a show which would grasp at the growing public fear of nuclear annihilation. Their two week presentation (Feb. 1-14, 1982, Unit Pitt Gallery, Vancouver) combined performance, video, sculpture, architectural media, slides and blueprints within the gallery space and a media and leafletting assault without. They were unusually successful in their ability to educate a mass audience, rupture traditional gallery space and in their generation of mass media coverage. In this interview, FUSE talks to Laura Hackett and Dean Mitchell