Thursday, February 22, 2007

Project Description Page

Hi All,

Here is the information I will need from you to post "Project" pages on the website. I imagine there will be 1 page for each project we do. you can cut and paste the fields below and just fill them in an email. If you have photo documentation and its manageable in size, feel free to attach along with the email, otherwise, it would be great if you put it onto a CD and gave it to me in class or in my mailbox.

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Your Name:
Project Name:
Project Date:

Project Overview: [2-3 sentence capsule of what the project is and why you did it]

Project Location: [be as specific as possible. if you can provide an address, then i'll link to a google map so people can find how to visit your project]

Project Description:

Mediums Used/Dimensions of the piece (if relevant):


Of course either attach documentation or give to me in another way to post.

Press Release Template

Of course you should tweak this to meet your own needs and personalize, but Crystal brought up the good point of trying to make all of the writing on the site sound like it comes from the same voice

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For Immediate Press Release:

From [opening date] through [closing date], come see new [installation, performance, etc] art work by San Francisco based artist [your name]. [your name] is part of the Alternative Contexts collective and MFA student at the San Francisco Art Institute in the [your department] department.

[description of your project]

[how, when, and where can the public view your piece]

Entrance is free and open to anyone who might be interested.

About [Your Name]
Brief Bio

About Alternative Contexts
Alternatives Contexts aims to investigate public sites. It questions the role of the artist in a social context and the possibilities inherent within it to produce work. These sites are bound to history, memory, function and transition. From the discreet intervention to collaboration, the artists’ interests vary from the activist to the activation of social space to research.

The Alternative Contexts collective is directed by Tony Labat, Chair of the New Genres Department at San Francisco Art Institute



For additional information or inquiries please visit:
www.alternativecontexts.com or email info@alternativecontexts.com.


Thursday, February 15, 2007

ALT CON Distribution List

Meghan - meghan@moretreeshemp.com
Jonathan - jonsajda@mac.com
Chris - flybarn@hotmail.com
David - milkbreak@gmail.com
Crystal - crystal.nelson@gmail.com
Paul - paulkyle@gmail.com
Leslie - lesliegm@gmail.com
John Stewart - stewartjohn2001@hotmail.com
Jen - jen_selden@yahoo.com
Tony - tlabat@sbcglobal.net

or copy and paste:

jonsajda@mac.com, flybarn@hotmail.com, crystal.nelson@gmail.com, milkbreak@gmail.com, lesliegm@gmail.com, stewartjohn2001@hotmail.com, jen_selden@yahoo.com, paulkyle@gmail.com, tlabat@sbcglobal.net, meghan@moretreeshemp.com

Friday, February 9, 2007

Calif. Online Archive

Great resource I just found to find primary documents of historical events/locations:
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/

Tanforan Mall

Here are some photos from a project I started last semester called the Historical Plaques Project. The idea of that project is to have people create, post, and document plaques on forgotten historical events, personal/familial histories, or whatever it is they want to commemorate.

In this particular example, I installed some plaques at the Tanforan Mall in San Bruno (right by the airport). The mall used to be a horse race track that was used as a staging area during the Japanese Internment. The Japanese Americans who were evacuated from SF were forced to live in the horse stalls for about 2 years before being taken to internment camps in the California and Utah desert. These plaques were installed at the mall to recall this history:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81566435@N00/sets/72157594427291288/

I also had some friends do the project as well:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81566435@N00/sets/72157594427286987/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81566435@N00/sets/72157594427286363/

If you would like to participate in this project by creating plaques in the Dogpatch, Japantown, or UN Plaza, or wherever, i would really appreciate it as I'm having trouble getting this project off the ground and its power is really in getting people engaged and interested enough to create plaques of their own.

Japanese Interment/Japantown Links

Hey all,

when you are ready, here is some info on the Japanese Internment/Japantown:

"It’s like visiting Japan without the hassle and expense of a long trip across the Pacific."
--from the Japantown website
http://www.sfjapantown.org/

Japantown entry on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japantown,_San_Francisco,_California

Overview of the internment on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_Internment

SF Virtual Museum on the specific evacuation of SF Japanese Americans:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/war/evactxt.html
(Check out also the primary documents at the bottom for a flavor of how the Japanese Americans were perceived and talked about back then. Its a little bit shocking)

Site with some multimedia assets about the internment:
http://www.asianamericanmedia.org/jainternment/

Photos by Ansel Adams in Manzanar, one of the internment camps:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/anseladams/

Sunday, February 4, 2007

interesting commentary on panhandling....

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

..."Reverse-Panhandling" brought to us by Rob Brezsny