MOURNING IS AN ACT OF LOVE
From altars in our homes to large marble structures in our city centers, memorials and monuments provide a physical space for us to gather and grieve. We mourn because we love.
We create intimate and public spaces to remember that which we hold most dear. In this moment though, where connection is so confined to the virtual, we find ourselves struggling to mourn together. Simultaneously, the debates around memorials and monuments—which should stay, which should go, who we are remembering—have made them lightning rods for the deep fractures in our world.
The films, photos, and participatory art in MOURNING IS AN ACT OF LOVE ask us to reconsider memorial making, and reimagine how we build public experiences that are rooted in our histories, acknowledge our grief, and use love to inspire us to work together for our collective future.
Please join us at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in SOMA, San Francisco starting February 14th for this in-real-life complement to the ideas and issues we will engage with virtually throughout our festival. This installation takes place on the exterior walls, windows, and walkways of the YBCA building. The installation is free and open to the public, exclusively outdoors, and social-distancing-friendly. Please wear your mask.
Curation by Susannah Smith
WINDOW INSTALLATIONS
Ada Pinkston performing LandMarked, courtesy the artist
ADA PINKSTON
b. 1983, New York, NY
Lives and works in Baltimore, MD
adapinkston.com
Landmarked… Parts 1 – 3, a tribute to… (all the women that we know) (2018)
Photographs; Performance Documentation by Chris Chapa;
Courtesy the artist
Landmarked was a series of public performances on empty plinth sites where confederate monuments once stood in Baltimore, Maryland. The performances were performed without a permit and were used for a video installation that considered the stories of black women who are rarely recognized in the memorial architectures in public space.
In Mourning and Collage Portraits of Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh installed at YBCA, courtesy the artist
TATYANA FAZLALIZADEH
b.1985, Oklahoma City, OK
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
tlynnfaz.com
Collage Portraits of Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson (2020)
Wheatpaste
Courtesy the artist
In Mourning (2020)
Wheatpaste
Courtesy the artist
In Mourning is a multimedia project about grief and mourning from the perspective of Black people.
a
We Miss You installation, image courtesy the artists
We Miss You (2021);
Multimedia Window Installation
Courtesy the artists
Featuring work by the following artists.
SUSANNAH SMITH: Designer/Producer
b. 1977, Washington, D.C.
Lives and works in San Francisco, CA
MONICA MAGTOTO: Sign Painter
b. 1987, San Francisco, CA
Lives and works in San Francisco, CA
magtotoart.com
In homage to the small businesses closed during COVID, these window paintings acknowledge the community sacrifices and grief associated with shelter-in-place orders.
Monitors on Left:
Streets Under Quarantine Series (2020)
Videos
Produced by The New Yorker
Includes films from Milan, Rome, Paris, New Orleans, Tehran, NYC, Seoul
Scenes from a day of weirdness under lockdown, as cities around the world practice social distancing to avoid spreading the coronavirus.
Monitors on Right:
Still frame courtesy the artist and TRANSFER NEXT
JAVIERA GODOY
b. 1990, Santiago, Chile
Lives and works in London
javieragodoy.com
Circles (2020)
Video, 1:43 min.
Courtesy the artist and TRANSFER NEXT
TRANSFER invites a selection of filmmakers worldwide to share their personal view of changes in both domestic and public space in today’s circumstances. The video essay by Javiera Godoy features recordings made on different days in a car park in front of her apartment, in the middle of total lockdown ongoing in Santiago de Chile since March 2020. In this short film, Godoy shows how the local residents have been creating new “public spaces” from what we might call residual outdoor places, and how this journey has become a cyclical act in small spaces, in a powerful dialogue with the cyclical movements within the limits of her home.
Courtesy the artist and TRANSFER NEXT
SUSAN HOROWITZ
b. 1950, Richmond, VA
Lives and works in New York, NY
susanhorowitzproject.com
New York Pause… (2020)
iPhone photos & video, 3:26 min.
Editor: Heather Seybolt
Courtesy the artist and TRANSFER NEXT
New York Pause… by Susan Horowitz is a tracking of one quarantine routine in this city of constantly evolving culture abruptly frozen. Weeks are spent viewing layers of urban history from the distance of the high-rise apartment building roof, apartment windows and long walks through the uncanny city. Inside the apartment, hours of compulsive reading about the arts present but closed or cancelled fail to compensate for missing highly valued experiences of city life. The close dialogue between Horowitz’s black & white images and Jason Moran’s jazz creates a very personal view of New York under quarantine, highlighting the strength and beauty of the city as a live theatre set.
Still frame courtesy the artist
MARK RAMOS
b. 1979, Los Angeles, CA
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
markhramos.net
w33p1ng m4dr0n3 (2021)
networked media/synchronous data visualization using AJAX + GLSL + Three.JS
Courtesy the artist
w33p1ng m4dr0n3 is a virtual memorial to those who have died of Covid-19 in California. A virtual 3D model of a native madrone tree is linked in real-time to publicly available health data published by the Covid Tracking Project at the Atlantic. The tree sheds one blossom for each new daily Covid-19 death reported. As the dataset is updated daily, the rate the blossoms fall changes to visualize the currently daily reported Covid-19 death rate among California residents. The lower monitor displays CA’s cumulative total reported Covid-19 deaths since March 2020; the falling blossoms pile up until the current number is reached. The Covid Tracking Project classifies CA as a state with serious data reporting issues. Thus this piece is not just a memorial to those lost, but also a reflection US metric response to the pandemic.
Image of poem installation courtesy the artist
MICHAEL WARR
b. 1955, Baton Rouge, LA
Lives and works in San Francisco, CA
michaelwarr-creativework.tumblr.com
The City Speaks of This Moment (2020)
Poetry
Courtesy the artist
Photo courtesy Melinda James
MELINDA JAMES
b. 1985, Yuba City, CA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
melindajamesdp.com
Know That I’ve Enjoyed Sunshine (2021)
Super 8, 16mm, Digital Video, 3:55;
Courtesy the artist
Composed of moments from her personal archive, Know That I’ve Enjoyed Sunshine, is a four-channel video installation exploring the presence of absence. The work looks at the way joy, pleasure, and longing become interwoven in the recalling and remembering of moments passed and the people and places found within them. By looking back at where we have found love, we acknowledge its nuance and almost inexpressible complexity—the weight of something heavy left by all that was good and the acknowledgement for new experiences that will eventually come to fill that space.
SIDEWALK INSTALLATION
36 Questions for Civic Love (2020)
Graphic design by Lauren Meranda
nphm.org/civiclove
The 36 Questions for Civic Love toolkit was created by the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) with the support of Sarah Pharaon, Principal, Dialogic Consulting. NPHM worked with the SF Urban Film Fest to curate a set of 9 questions specifically for this exhibit.
The National Public Housing Museum is the only cultural institution devoted to telling the story of public housing in the United States. Its mission is to preserve, promote, and propel the right of all people to a place where they can live and prosper — a place to call home.
FILM PROJECTIONS
New Monuments Taskforce, courtesy Cheyenne Concepcion.
CHEYENNE CONCEPCION
b. 1991, Los Angeles, CA
Lives and works in San Francisco, CA
cheyenneconcepcion.com
New Monuments Must… (2021); Digital animation, 1 min; with Bernadette Dia and the New Monuments Taskforce; Courtesy the artists
Before the toppling, vandalizing and collective re-evaluation of monuments from the past, these artifacts scattered our urban landscapes with little regard. Before the Relic Report and the City’s parallel study on the 87 civic monuments under their jurisdiction, these art objects often went unnoticed, felt unrelatable and invisible to many. It wasn’t until 2020’s global pandemic; the death of George Floyd; and the frustration of timeless injustice bestowed on marginal communities; that pushed our society into a collective state of reckoning with of our systems and all that upholds them — monuments included.
With the Relic Report, New Monuments Taskforce set out to do just that: re-examine our civic monuments and the systematic themes which they uphold. In doing so, the Relic Report spurred a public conversation; asking Bay Area residents to reflect on their relationship to monumental relics and what a new wave of monuments could and should look like. Most importantly, we learned what the people of San Francisco (and beyond) want to see in their new monuments. And as a taskforce, we created recommendations, outlining what New Monuments must be.
newmonumentstaskforce.org
Ada Pinkston performing LandMarked. Image courtesy of the artist.
ADA PINKSTON
b. 1983, New York, NY
Lives and works in Baltimore, MD
adapinkston.com
LandMarked Part 5… A tribute to Fannie Lou Hammer (2018); Video documentation of performance, 3 min; Courtesy the artist
Landmarked was a series of public performances on empty plinth sites where confederate monuments once stood in Baltimore, Maryland. The performances were performed without a permit and were used for a video installation that considered the stories of black women who are rarely recognized in the memorial architectures in public space.
Still from Spirit never dies, only transitions. by Logan Lynette Burroughs. Image courtesy of the artist
LOGAN LYNETTE BURROUGHS
b. 1999, Atlanta, GA
Lives and works in Atlanta, GA
llburroughs.com
Spirit never dies, only transitions. (2019); Video, 10 min.; Courtesy the artist
This body of work serves as documentation of the existence of Black folks and its communities in parts of Atlanta, GA and north Florida. This 10 minute piece displays slow moving Black and White imagery, accompanied by mixed audio of natural and altered sounds, instrumentation, a phone conversation, as well as silence in itself. Despite all the many things Black folks have experienced throughout the centuries, we’ve still managed to keep our spirit alive and moving through time and space. There’s debate (including in the Black community as a whole) about what is appropriate and are traditional practices. Regardless of what negative connotations are placed, these rituals remain generation after generation.
Still from Primavera by Adrian Garcia Gomez. Image copyright of the artist, courtesy of Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
ADRIAN GARCIA GOMEZ
b. 1972, Richmond, CA
Lives and works in New York, NY
superadriancito.com
Primavera (2020); iPhone video and animation, 4:57; Courtesy the courtesy of Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Primavera is a frenetic experimental animation that documents the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests as they intersect in springtime Brooklyn. Shot during isolation on a phone, the video explores the effects of imposed distance on touch and intimacy, the proximity of an invisible virus and invisible deaths, and the revolt against the racist, corrupt systems that commodify, exploit and render their most vulnerable citizens disposable.
MELINDA JAMES
b. 1985, Yuba City, CA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
melindajamesdp.com
THAO NGUYEN
b. 1984, Falls Church, Virginia
Lives and works in Oakland, CA
thaoandthegetdownstaydown.com
Between One World and the Next (2021)
Digital Video, 4:00
Courtesy the artists
Director/Editor/Cinematographer: Melinda James
Musical Score: Thao Nguyen
Producer: Susannah Smith
After visiting our installation, participate in our virtual programs to dive deeper into…
- How remembrance in public space can dictate our present in How We Mourn, Where We Remember on 2/20 at 4:30pm PST
- How to recognize and honor the wisdom that’s been here for thousands of years in Exploring the Urban American Indian Experience in Yelamu on 2/18 at 5:30pm PST
- How we can shift systems by connecting at the interpersonal level in Let’s Make Civic Love on 2/19 at 4:30pm PST and Love is The Antidote: 36 QUESTIONS FOR CIVIC LOVE with DA Chesa Boudin and Artists Yesica Prado on 2/14 at 5:00pm PST
- Who to look to when trying to make sure everyone has the right to the city People-Led Solutions: Models of Our Shared Future on 2/19 at 6:30pm PST
- How we can move towards a world where everyone feels loved by their city in Crisis of Care on 2/20 at 2:30pm PST
Wisdom Lives in Places: Stories as Catalysts
Is It Enough To Uplift A Voice? How Do We Take Action With Storytelling?
