Downtown Eastside Vancouverians got all fretful over a burning building that was actually a video installation by Montreal artist Isabelle Hayeur. Setting the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor windows of a heritage building ablaze with Blu-Ray projectors, the artist assumed that “unless someone is really, really drunk” there wouldn’t be any alarming “ambiguity.” Wrong.

“It could express a human distress and also the architectural distress, the loss of heritage buildings, the gentrification of the area,” Hayeur explained, having previously exhibited in Montreal’s red light district and the dilapidated lands of Brooklyn. Apparently, either she was being modest about her installation’s realism or overestimating the average Vancouver resident’s depth perception. A daily call or two since the exhibit’s opening forced the Fire Department to ask that unless people see some smoke to go with that fire, stop calling. |The Vancouver Courier|