Setting Skywatchers’ “At the Table”: Connection, Empowerment, and Art at the Margins by ROB AVILA
Skywatchers / photos by Deirdre Visser
direction by Adele Prandini) in which sub- jects imagine themselves without the con- straints and tribulations of their daily lives and instead cast themselves into an imagined past/future of heroic possibility. And there’s a series of home tours, “Inside the Iroquois Hotel,” on O’Farrell Street, made in collaboration with residents of this supportive housing community to bring wider public attention to the nature of life inside these vital sources of low-income housing in the Tenderloin. The multifaceted project—grounded in daily collaboration between Tenderloin resi- dent co-creators and Skywatchers' seasoned community-practice artists Shakiri, Zul- fikar Ali Bhutto, Gabriel Christian, Dazié Grego, and others—culminates in May in a three-day festival. The event will show- case much of the preceding two years’ work through documenting exhibits and perfor- mances, while crucially serving as an entry point for collective, creative action by other
sphere for its marginalized members and their neighbors, especially in the realm of supportive housing and laws and policies impacting the city’s homeless citizens. Like Skywatchers’ work as a whole, At the Table is more about process than prod- uct. Nevertheless, it has produced a host of related actions and discrete productions. Among them are forays into the physi- cal landscape to highlight (and creatively overcome, in videos shot and edited by jose e. abad and Malia Byrne) instances of “unpleasant design,” those structures of deterrence in the built environment – such as subdivisions on benches that prevent reclin- ing or speakers blaring classical music – that target homeless people, youth of color, and other members of the public deemed undesir- able as parts of the social flow. There’s also a publicly displayed series of large photographic portraits of Tenderloin residents called the Opulence Project (fea- turing photography by Deirdre Visser and
community groups, like Tenderloin Votes, to address that imbalance. At a more fundamental level, today’s pro- cession has been about relationship build- ing—the M.O. of Skywatchers since 2011, when choreographer Anne Bluethenthal founded the Tenderloin-based company in collaborative partnership with residents of the Senator Hotel (a low-income perma- nent supportive housing building owned and operated by the non-profit Community Housing Partnership (CHP)) on the principle that “relationships are the first site of social change.” This is a neighborhood that can use more of both. For DeMore, a self-described “vocal activ- ist” who has worked with Bluethenthal’s core company, ABD Productions, for over 20 years, the first point of relationship is always in song—especially among co-creators con- tending with various challenges that can include trauma and social isolation. “People don’t feel like they have a voice, and that’s how they’re treated,” says DeMore in a recent phone conversation, “like they’re not even seen. So when I start working with a group, we just start singing. To give people permission. The only qualification you have to have is that you’re breathing. That’s pretty much it.” While Skywatchers takes a multidisci- plinary approach to its projects, nothing so readily illustrates its underlying philosophy as the choral music that remains a central element in its work. “For a lot of people, it’s the first time that they’ve joined their voices together with oth- ers,” explains DeMore. “And it gives them strength. Every powerful movement in the world is pretty much led by song. You have to think about song as food. Song as fuel to keep you going ahead.” “Tenderloin Processional” is just one of a long list of disparate actions, performances, installations, instigations, and interventions being staged throughout the Tenderloin and beyond—in public spaces, in single-room occupancy hotels (SROs), in the corridors of power, occasionally even in theaters—that together make up At the Table , Skywatchers’ two-year exercise in politically engaged com- munity-based art. At the Table extends Skywatchers’ com- munity-driven work, while building ambi- tiously on its foundation of relationships and networks to claim space in the political * * *
MELANIE DEMORE IS LEADING a procession from the Tenderloin to San Francisco City Hall. It’s the last Saturday in October, a little more than a week before Election Day, and a cou- ple dozen people from the neighborhood— the majority associated with something called the Leadership Academy, a grassroots organizing effort instigated by Skywatch- ers in collaboration with GLIDE (where I work)—gather in Boeddeker Park to march together and cast their votes early. But first they sing. Addressing the diverse group of men and women through a speaker strapped to a luggage cart, DeMore raises several choruses of “This Little Light of Mine.”Wearing a T-shirt that reads “I am a Skywatcher” and a loose braided bob that gracefully frames her open and expressive face, the company’s choral director goes on to remind everyone, in song, that “Every- body Here’s Got a Place at the Table.” As if to underscore the point, a man wear- ing a motorcycle helmet studded with spikes comes over a few minutes later, yelling angrily at the proceedings. DeMore doesn’t hesitate to offer him the microphone, invit- ing him to say his piece, which he does, not too coherently but passionately, before qui- etly making his way out of the park again. Now the group is moving out, too. DeMore, supported by other members of the Skywatchers ensemble, leads the marchers in song along a zigzagging route through some of San Francisco’s most densely populated, poverty-plagued, vibrant and varied streets— Eddy, Jones, Turk, Leavenworth, Golden Gate—inspiring responses from people on the sidewalks, some of whom raise their heads from seated or supine positions to nod approvingly, sing along, laugh, or join the line for a block or two. The procession comes onto United Nations Plaza, pausing to speak and sing words of encouragement and solidarity to the homeless people gathered there at a time of increasing police presence in the area. Continuing on, the group crosses Larkin Street, passes through Civic Center Plaza, and arrives at the steps of City Hall, where they discover and rally alongside a youth group also assembled to vote en masse. Finally, everyone heads inside to cast their ballots. This scene, over in a few hours, could easily have passed you by. But it leaves a trace of itself nonetheless—not least in votes cast by first-time voters from a neighbor- hood woefully underrepresented in gov- ernment decision-making. Indeed, today’s action dovetails with a concerted effort by
Opulence Project / photo by Deirdre Visser
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