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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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