You Make a Better Wall Than a Window: The Tour by Constance Hockaday

Constance Hockaday on a ferry ride across San Francisco Bay to contemplate water as public space, our evolving relationship to the ports, and the territories and boundaries we create for ourselves.

As urban space is increasingly privatized, the public realm is a tenuous concept. For Public Works: Off-Site, new temporary artistic interventions lead us into new places, playfully address the boundaries surrounding us, and make visible the fragile publics we live within.

Steam & Sound Night with SYRINX and Ven Voisey

Steam Work is a sculptural installation by Michael Parker that invites bodily participation in a sensorial experience. At its core is Steam Egg 2, a mirrored sculpture housing a fully-functioning sauna, accompanied by suspended cascading cold rinse pools, wet and messy seating, and redwood and ceramic hydration stations built by the artist.

Michael Parker, Steam Work

Steam Work is a sculptural installation by Michael Parker that invites bodily participation in a sensorial experience. At its core is Steam Egg 2, a mirrored sculpture housing a fully-functioning sauna, accompanied by suspended cascading cold rinse pools, wet and messy seating, and redwood and ceramic hydration stations built by the artist.

Up In the Air- Bernie Lubell

Bernie Lubell creates unlikely wood mechanical metaphors for the human condition. Gears, pulleys, bellows, valves, levers, human force and sophisticated engineering power his interactive wooden machines. As an artist who has lived and worked in the Bay Area for 40 years, his influence is felt in the work of many local artists.

Off Shore

Abandoning the limitations of solid ground, five artists create new projects considering the boats, creeks, nautical communities and very edges of San Francisco. Through off-site excursions and gallery-based installations, these projects bring historical waterways to light, celebrate a space for outsider communities and imagine the possibilities of water as an expanded territory.

With a calendar full of walks, celebrations, lectures and performances of all varieties, Off Shore makes full use of the Bay Area’s numerous – and often unnoticed – waterways. Participants are invited to partake in the artists’ research, join in excursions and enjoy the liberating thrill of large-scale events.

SETS - Chris Kallmyer

For his two-week stint at Southern Exposure, sound artist Chris Kallmyer establishes an office space and Northern Bureau headquarters for his ongoing project, the Los Angeles Department of Weather Modification. Continuing their sonic explorations into our experience of weather, the LADWM uses immersive sound, ritual and radical environmental experiments to end the California drought and create weather. Interactive performances include rain-inspired ragas, foggy music, a dance to end drought, a weather opera and a thunderous Valentine’s Day celebration.

100 Statements About Myself - Jim Melchert

100 Statements About Myself was performed by Jim Melchert on September 26, 2013, as part of The Long Conversation, organized by Southern Exposure and curated by Courtney Fink, Valerie Imus, Gay Outlaw and Chris Sollars. The exhibition and performance series presented work by current and former Bay Area artists whose practices are rooted in the strategies of the West Coast, alternative, idea-based, experimental and time-based artwork pioneered in the 1970s. Organized in conjunction with Southern Exposure's 39th Birthday, the exhibition featured actions, videos, performances, installations and events presented both on and off-site.

12 Moments of Brevity - By Michael Swaine

Monthly from February 2013 through March 2014, Michael Swaine read and performed twelve short text-based works at Southern Exposure. "Twelve Moments of Brevity Spread Over One Year" was inspired by a class taught by Cooley Windsor titled BREVITY. The subject matter of each "Moment of Brevity" differed greatly, from Swaine's personal history to absurd linguistic proposals. At each gathering, Swaine solicited audience participation through gentle instruction, engaging small groups of people in activities like regimented breathing, hand holding and scissor balancing.Twelve Moments of Brevity Spread Over One Year is also a publication of all twelve collected texts, available at Southern Exposure.

a real line ran near an ear by Christine Sun Kim

In January 2014, artist Christine Sun Kim and her collaborators Stijn Schiffeleers and Shira Grabelsky were in residence at Southern Exposure to produce a month-long process oriented project, culminating in a performance investigating the various states of breath, wind, sound, silence and communication. Deaf since birth, Kim creates work largely reflecting on her relationship to sound and language. In the final event, performers and then audience members took on the role of wind interacting with a network of lines and mechanisms, guiding hanging objects as they ricocheted like colliding wind chimes, and communicated via large scale projected text.