Every Bus Stop in Surrey, BC Screen Shot 3, 2004 Virtual Museum of Canada
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'Every Bus Stop in Surrey' represents a public transportation system in a sprawling Vancouver Suburb in the midst of transition. This low density urban area, whose development was driven by the automobile, is represented by the bus routes that follow lonely, empty spaces. This first image is a screen shot from the web site. It shows a bus stop in a residential area, beside a driveway with a parked car and garbage bins put out for collection.

Every Bus Stop in Surrey, BC Screen Shot 3, 2004   (120 KB)

Images in the Series: This screen shot is of a bus stop at 104th Ave in Surrey from 'Every Bus Stop in Surrey.' It is of a bench with a Re/Max ad. By using institutional maps as a basis for the project, the artists reveal the areas that would not be put on the map, focusing on the long, lonely gaps between development and growth.This is a screen shot from the 'Every Bus Stop in Surrey' website. The bus stop represented here is located outside a UHAUL business on Barnston Hwy.'Every Bus Stop in Surrey' represents a public transportation system in a sprawling Vancouver Suburb in the midst of transition. This low density urban area, whose development was driven by the automobile, is represented by the bus routes that follow lonely, empty spaces. This first image is a screen shot from the web site. It shows a bus stop in a residential area, beside a driveway with a parked car and garbage bins put out for collection.         » View Website

Every Bus Stop in Surrey, BC is a project consisting of over 1,800 images that were shot by the artist, or members of the public, to document each bus stop in Surrey's public transit system. The geographic magnitude of Surrey, as well as its relatively low density, presented Borda with the daunting challenge of mapping a transit grid that spans an area of over 370 square kilometers. Many of Borda's photos reveal a pastoral emptiness and a calm anticipation of the bustling transit-taking community that hasn't quite arrived. By focusing only on the civic public transportation infrastructure and its apparent underuse, the vast, empty and almost lonely space becomes readily apparent. We can imagine a city that could, eventually, catch up to these bus stops, but what we see is an empty city made up of non-spaces and nowheres. No official map would represent the city this way, and no tourism-board photographs would focus on these lonely-looking voids. Borda's piece is the alternative document of this inchoate city; by using the transit infrastructure (an imaginary map devised by the City itself), and turning it into a critique of the City's visions of progress, Borda is committing an act of poignant detournement.

Sylvia G. Borda is a practicing digital media artist who is based in Vancouver, British Columbia.


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