The Museum of Joy

GALLERY: PAST PROJECTS

The 2nd Annual Festival of Light & Gratitude: November 2014

Black Friday (Nov. 28th), 2014 | Baker Beach, San Francisco

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  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach
  • 2014 Festival of Light and Gratitude: The 2nd Annual Black Friday luminous labyrinth walk at Baker Beach

VIDEO



The Annual Festival of Light & Gratitude, now entering its 3rd year, is a celebration of bright flames in times of darkness. Each Black Friday, we build a candlelit labyrinth on the northern half of Baker Beach (where Burning Man started, as the regular beach denizens will invariably remind you).

Why a labyrinth made of lights? Because winter is hard, and long, and we like to think that making some rough attempt to walk with grace or thoughtfulness or gratitude or glee though a mystical symbol of the complexity of the universe all on fire with light and beauty helps the sun come back to us one day.

The 2014 Festival was coproduced by Collaborating Artist Natalie Nayun and included a performance by Collaborating Artist Jens Ibsen. Our thanks to Carissa Mosley for the lovely video!

Pop-Up Opera: June 2014

Embarcadero & Civic Center BART Station

Collaborating Artist Jens Ibsen and students from San Francisco School for the Arts singing Sir John Tavener's "As One Who Has Slept" on the platforms at Embarcadero and Civic Center BART in a piece investigating "appropriate" places for spiritual music and the ways traditional classical music venues exclude many populations.



See more videos of this event on the Museum of Joy Vimeo page

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The Library of Joy: April 2014

San Francisco Public Library | April 20 & 21, 2014

A hundred tiny handmade books, each telling the story of one person's experience of a moment of joy, hidden in a dozen branches of the San Francisco Public Library system over the 2014 Easter/Passover weekend for readers to find. The Library of Joy was supported by a grant from the SF Awesome Foundation.

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  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014
  • The Library of Joy, 2014

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The 1st Annual Festival of Light and Gratitude: November 2013

Black Friday (Nov. 29th), 2014 | Baker Beach, San Francisco

The first festival was inspired by the 2013 overlap of the holidays of Hannukah & Thanksgiving. It was also co-produced by Collaborating Artist Natalie Nayun.

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  • The 1st Annual Festival of Light and gratitude, November 29th, 2013
  • The 1st Annual Festival of Light and gratitude, November 29th, 2013
  • The 1st Annual Festival of Light and gratitude, November 29th, 2013
  • The 1st Annual Festival of Light and gratitude, November 29th, 2013
  • The 1st Annual Festival of Light and gratitude, November 29th, 2013
  • The 1st Annual Festival of Light and gratitude, November 29th, 2013

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More Museum of Joy projects

From 2013-2014, we experimented with several different forms of performance and creative engagement in public/civic space. We wanted to discovers what engages passersby and what they're willing to walk right past, as an investigation of the idea that discovery and transformation within ordinary, unbeautiful spaces can play a powerful role in eliciting joy. Here's a quick overview of our smaller, more experimental projects.

extra ordinary: an online meditation
extra/ordinary: January 2014

THE QUESTION: How do we capture the fleeting moments when something mundane suddenly appears marvelous?

THE EXPLORATION: An online meditation space paired works by poet Theodosia Henney and photographer Laura Mason, both of whom excel at evoking momentary fragments of beauty in everyday, ordinary places. The goal was to create a 'resting place' within the normally unrestful space of the internet itself in which ordinary moments of meaning could be delighted in.

Poemflowers: Valentines Day 2014
Poemflowers: February 2014/2015

THE QUESTION: How do we combat the alienation, pressure, and loneliness that so many people experience on Valentine's Day?

THE EXPLORATION: Poets from all over the country wrote love poems for strangers, and we turned them into paper flowers and gave them away to people on public transit all day long. Because gifts matter on lonely days, and everyone deserve a love poem just for making it through another day.

Museum of Joy Muni Dance March 2014
Muni Dances: March 2014

THE QUESTION: How can we play with new ways to get people to engage with art and performance, especially in non-traditional venues?

THE EXPLORATION: Choreographer and dancer Amber Slemmer, aka blackhoodygrrl, provided a lovely Bob Fosse-inspired genderqueered dance piece as a pop-up performance in SF's Castro neighborhood so we could investigate the ways passers-by interact with spontaneous performance.

Museum of Joy Memorial Lanterns May 2014
Memorial Lanterns: May 2014

THE QUESTION: How can we engage with joy in the face of emotions like grief, and what can we do to honor both?

THE EXPLORATION: For Memorial Day 2014, we asked people all over the world to send in memories of a moment of joy they shared with someone who has passed. We turned those memories into paper lanterns so that their joy could quite literally be a light in a time of darkness.

Museum of Joy Muni Magnets July 2014
MUNI Magnets: July 2014

THE QUESTION: How can we engage in "creative non-vandalism" or ways to legally add art to our public spaces?

THE EXPLORATION: When we discovered that magnets will stick to the new Muni shelters, we created hundreds of tiny weatherproof magnets containing poems and prose meant to inspire comfort, gladness, fierceness, love, and creativity, from writers, thinkers, and artists ranging from bell hooks to Leonard Cohen, and left them on bus shelters all over San Francisco.

Museum of Joy Pop-Up Opera August 2014
Pop-Up Opera #2: August 2014

THE QUESTION: What's considered 'fine art,' who has access to it, and how can we subvert the expectations surrounding it?

THE EXPLORATION: Collaborating Artist Jens Ibsen led a second pop-up opera that wound its way through Muni, BART, the tourist center Union Square, and ended outside the front door of the San Francisco Opera House itself. Without the context set by the traditional 'marble halls' in which opera is usually performed, people encountering the music experienced it in an entirely unexpected way.

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