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Living Archive: Temescal Amity Works 2018

You Had to Be There, Swissnex Gallery, Pier 17 San Francisco

Curated by CCA Curatorial Practice students MK Meador and Rosa Tyhurst, and alumna Amanda Nudelman.

Artists: Jeremy Deller, Fieldfaring Projects (Susanne Cockrell & Ted Purves ), Futurefarmers, Thomas Hirschhorn, Xandra Ibarra, Postcommodity, Kateřina Šedá, Cassie Thornton & The Feminist Economics Department (the FED), Mark Tribe

Nodes: California College of the Arts MA in Social Practice, Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Cantonal School of Art of Valais

(ECAV) MA Arts in Public Spheres, Furk’Art.

For this exhibition I invited artists and neighbors we engaged with through Temescal Amity Work between 2004-7 to make a 1-minute video remembering the project. Ted and I had intentionally not videotaped TAW believing that its presence and activity would be shared through neighborhood lore and gossip - word of mouth. Recollections by Sarah Klein, Scott Oliver, Marksearch, Michael Swaine, Jeff Norman, and Joe McHenry.

You Had To Be There is a group exhibition at the swissnex Gallery that playfully examines what remains beyond the completion of a public artwork or an action, and imagines various modes for experiencing projects in their aftermath. Through close collaboration with the artists and groups involved, the exhibition hopes to tell a story that diverges from the official lines read and promoted through art history. Through unconventional displays of firsthand accounts, reenactments and ephemera, You Had To Be There aims to tell a story that is not necessarily the story. You Had To Be There also questions the role of care and myth-making in the preservation of public works by exploring the legacy of such practices in San Francisco and Sierre, Switzerland. It will present educational initiatives; site-based projects, such as the Center for Land Use Interpretation; and Furk’Art, a little-known artist residency program that has been operating in relative isolation in the Swiss Alps since 1983. You Had To Be There is the first time archival documents, videos, and images from Furk’Art have been exhibited outside of Europe. -excerpt from the exhibition description

Marksearch and Michael Swaine's recollections.

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