Far Along
Part 1 of Far Along will be a boat expedition/mobile exhibition to the Farallon Islands, officially a part of the City of San Francisco, though located 27 miles offshore. Forty-five participants will sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, and out into the Pacific Ocean to visit the shark-filled waters and aviary habitat of the mythic Farallon Islands. While on board, passengers will become participants in Far Along, part performance, part investigation, and part exhibition. Participants become a community, through the close proximity on the boat, this intimate setting being an important feature of ap-art-ment projects: the act of sharing an immediate environment and the potential for influence that exists when people find themselves in an immersive space. Participants will be both contained within the vessel and un-contained by land. Upon return to the city, we pass through 'the gate"; we rarely experience the Golden Gate as "a gate". Passengers will be reoriented to the city's pace and its consumption of products and culture provided by the ports and manufacturing industry so immediate to its geography, so immediate to the trade of goods on the ships we share the Bay with.
Subsequently and in contrast, Part 2 of Far Along will be a fixed exhibition at an industrial location with a historical tie to San Francisco’s manufacturing past. Considering the consequential history of labor that connects the Bay to the port and the warehouse districts in San Francisco, participants from the sail become laborers and makers in Part 2 of Far Along with the goal of producing the exhibition.
In exchange for the day-long journey to the Farallon Islands, objective, passive participants from the boat expedition, become active, subjective workers when they are invited to contribute to this building of the exhibit. The works planned in the exhibit are a scale-replica sailboat made with reclaimed objects and construction materials, two large "paintings" of the gallery walls the color 'International Orange', the iconic color of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a piece referencing a lighthouse. The transformations that are experienced on the boat will be translated into form in the gallery. The community formed on the boat, will reproduce elements of those newly formed relationships within the objects produced. This exhibit asks questions about transformations, active and passive participation, and the act of returning.
As points on a world map, The Bay and The Bridge are both beautiful and simple, and also terribly complicated for they are a source of cultural movement and connectivity with the world, through the manufacture and the transport of goods and people, through tourism, and as a place of historical significance to much of the city’s labor and migrant populations. The water itself is a force never quite entirely appreciated by it's close inhabitants, and even the boarding of a vessel at the mercy of the water, only grants an approximation of its understanding, its capacity. The title of this project, Far Along, a literary spin on the name of the islands, Farallon, is also a measure of the progress of understanding, as we move closer to it, but we never quite reach our destination. We always remain, Far Along.
Far Along
Part 1 of Far Along will be a boat expedition/mobile exhibition to the Farallon Islands, officially a part of the City of San Francisco, though located 27 miles offshore. Forty-five participants will sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, and out into the Pacific Ocean to visit the shark-filled waters and aviary habitat of the mythic Farallon Islands. While on board, passengers will become participants in Far Along, part performance, part investigation, and part exhibition. Participants become a community, through the close proximity on the boat, this intimate setting being an important feature of ap-art-ment projects: the act of sharing an immediate environment and the potential for influence that exists when people find themselves in an immersive space. Participants will be both contained within the vessel and un-contained by land. Upon return to the city, we pass through 'the gate"; we rarely experience the Golden Gate as "a gate". Passengers will be reoriented to the city's pace and its consumption of products and culture provided by the ports and manufacturing industry so immediate to its geography, so immediate to the trade of goods on the ships we share the Bay with.
Subsequently and in contrast, Part 2 of Far Along will be a fixed exhibition at an industrial location with a historical tie to San Francisco’s manufacturing past. Considering the consequential history of labor that connects the Bay to the port and the warehouse districts in San Francisco, participants from the sail become laborers and makers in Part 2 of Far Along with the goal of producing the exhibition.
In exchange for the day-long journey to the Farallon Islands, objective, passive participants from the boat expedition, become active, subjective workers when they are invited to contribute to this building of the exhibit. The works planned in the exhibit are a scale-replica sailboat made with reclaimed objects and construction materials, two large "paintings" of the gallery walls the color 'International Orange', the iconic color of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a piece referencing a lighthouse. The transformations that are experienced on the boat will be translated into form in the gallery. The community formed on the boat, will reproduce elements of those newly formed relationships within the objects produced. This exhibit asks questions about transformations, active and passive participation, and the act of returning.
As points on a world map, The Bay and The Bridge are both beautiful and simple, and also terribly complicated for they are a source of cultural movement and connectivity with the world, through the manufacture and the transport of goods and people, through tourism, and as a place of historical significance to much of the city’s labor and migrant populations. The water itself is a force never quite entirely appreciated by it's close inhabitants, and even the boarding of a vessel at the mercy of the water, only grants an approximation of its understanding, its capacity. The title of this project, Far Along, a literary spin on the name of the islands, Farallon, is also a measure of the progress of understanding, as we move closer to it, but we never quite reach our destination. We always remain, Far Along.