Beyond Repair‘s Crisis Logic and the Reader series presents: Erick Lyle, reading from and discussing his book Streetopia!
(This event will take place at Moon Palace Books: 3260 Minnehaha Ave)
After San Francisco’s new mayor announced imminent plans to “clean up” downtown with a new corporate “dot com corridor” and arts district–featuring the new headquarters of Twitter and Burning Man–curators Erick Lyle, Chris Johanson and Kal Spelletich brought over 100 artists and activists together with residents fearing displacement to consider utopian aspirations and plot alternative futures for the city. The resulting exhibition, Streetopia, was a massive anti-gentrification art fair that took place in venues throughout the city, featuring daily free talks, performances, skillshares and a free community kitchen out of the gallery. This book brings together all of the art and ephemera from the now-infamous show, featuring work by Swoon, Barry McGee, Emory Douglas, Monica Canilao, Rigo 23, Xara Thustra, Ryder Cooley and many more. Essays and interviews with key participants consider the effectiveness of Streetopia’s projects while offering a deeper rumination on the continuing search for community in today’s increasingly homogenous and gentrified cities.
Crisis Logic and the Reader: As sociological studies and our own experiences have shown us, crisis manifests relationships and modes of action uncommon outside of states of disruption. Egalitarianism, collaboration and cooperation, crisis highlights utopic possibilities in the midst of the destruction of the day-to-day.
But along with crisis comes anxiety. That boost of adrenaline, beneficial in small immediate doses, fracturing our clarity and composure over time.