In American artist Kenneth Tam’s Contemporary Calgary exhibit Silent Spikes, Asian-Americans dressed as cowboys dance, mime rodeo moves and have loose conversations where they awkwardly compliment each other’s looks and personality. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing, overlapping narrative that covers Chinese migrant labourers toiling in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to build the transcontinental railroad, leading up to an 1867 strike that became one of the largest labour actions in U.S. history up until that point. A narrator talks about his experiences using voiceover as a camera goes deep into the abandoned tunnels in northern California. Read More