SiteWorks

SiteWorks: San Francisco Performance 1969-85 is an ongoing site-specific curation of archival remains of past ephemeral art and performance in the present city of San Francisco. The project is led by Professor Nick Kaye and created in collaboration with the San Francisco Art Institute.

SiteWorks presents memories, traces and archival remains of events that occurred between 1969 and 1985, encompassing the period in which Tom Marioni established and curated the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA) at locations on 3rd Street in the SoMa area of the city.

Delivered from an Omeka database through Google Maps so that a walker may encounter and respond to a haunting of the present city through past acts – and the places they define – Siteworks invites participants to become agents of performance, art and site.

This is the second phase of SiteWorks, incorporating GPS, way finding, layered mapping, and timelines. As it develops, SiteWorks will incorporate spatial histories to connect these site-specific performances to political and social events and contexts that may inform their meaning.

The site also explores oral histories through extensive interviews with the artists whose work the site represents, including Tom Marioni, Doug Hall, Richard Alpert, Bonnie Sherk, Paul Kos, Darryl Sapien, Eleanor Antin, and the documentary photographer Janet Delaney.

SiteWorks is supported by Natasha White, project Research Assistant, at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Richard Holding of the Exeter Digital Humanities team.