Big Freak presents Portals: Visions of Freedom and Abolition in the Past and Future

Growth is a sound art experience that begins at the 1969 Ruth Asawa mosaic of the same name at 580 Capp St. It's a series of guided meditations situated in the urban landscape of the Mission. Participants are invited to slow down, listen, reflect on the past, and contemplate our collective responsibility to future generations. Proceed to each stop from west to east. This experience will take approximately 50-60 minutes. Wear comfortable shoes, use headphones, and please stay alert to traffic and other hazards while you walk. Produced by Rumi Koshino and Fereshteh Toosi as part of the Oil Ancestors project, with music by Danny Paul Grody. http://oilancestors.com/growth Rumi Koshino is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in San Francisco. Her intuitive process of making art is informed by everyday experiences as well as social, emotional, and political climates that surround it. She recently published a limited-edition art book, Solo Walks -The First 100 Days, from RITE Editions. Rumi will be a resident artist at AGA Lab in Amsterdam in 2021. She holds a BFA and MFA from the University of Washington. https://rumikoshino.com/ Fereshteh Toosi's artworks foster animistic connections through encounter, exchange, and sensory inquiry. Fereshteh lives and works in El Portal, Florida, on stolen lands still stewarded by the Miccosukee and Seminole people. Responding to place, Fereshteh designs experiences for small audiences. These intimate, immersive live art events are often produced in conjunction with small sculptures, short films, installations, scores, and poetry. http://fereshteh.net Danny Paul Grody is a solo musician and founding member of San Francisco based bands Tarentel and The Drift. He is a self taught guitarist, and the melodies at the core of Danny’s songwriting bring to mind his love of West African kora, finger-style guitar and all things minimal, repetitive & hypnotic. https://dannypaulgrody.wordpress.com

(re)collection is a series of site-specific installations by LeeAnn Perry that bring together memories of defunct and ephemeral music venues in the Bay Area, in order to reconnect participants in musical communities that have fragmented through time, to resurrect networks of musical collaboration that have lain dormant, and to invite newcomers to these communities to pay tribute to their inspirations.

(re)collection is a series of site-specific installations by LeeAnn Perry that bring together memories of defunct and ephemeral music venues in the Bay Area, in order to reconnect participants in musical communities that have fragmented through time, to resurrect networks of musical collaboration that have lain dormant, and to invite newcomers to these communities to pay tribute to their inspirations.

(re)collection is a series of site-specific installations by LeeAnn Perry that bring together memories of defunct and ephemeral music venues in the Bay Area, in order to reconnect participants in musical communities that have fragmented through time, to resurrect networks of musical collaboration that have lain dormant, and to invite newcomers to these communities to pay tribute to their inspirations.

(re)collection is a series of site-specific installations by LeeAnn Perry that bring together memories of defunct and ephemeral music venues in the Bay Area, in order to reconnect participants in musical communities that have fragmented through time, to resurrect networks of musical collaboration that have lain dormant, and to invite newcomers to these communities to pay tribute to their inspirations.

A Dove is a Pigeon is a Dove is speculative documentation of a pigeon's stroll through Golden Gate Park, a place that once had several pigeons but now has very few. Starting on the sidewalk in the Richmond District and ending on the sidewalk in the Inner Sunset, the walk is made up of sounds recorded on site from a late summer day. Each recording is a 1-5 minute looped audio documentation of the space recorded at pigeon height. As the participant walks along, the sound of the recordings will mix with the live sounds of the walk, juxtaposing memory with the present day. In addition to the sounds, every other space contains a musing on the rock dove, as well as on the concept of infrasound, a tool the birds use to navigate their environments. Participants are invited to reflect on their own experiences with Golden Gate Park, as well as their relationship to the common pigeon.

The audience is invited into the fold of the National AIDS Memorial Grove park site circumference with the ushering of a gentle build of complimentary sounds based off their current surrounding like footsteps, bending tree branches, clattering leaves, wind breathing by their ears, soft conversations in the distance and the buzz of nearby cars driving by in succession. As they are welcomed into the entrance of the trail they begin to feel a sense of stalking and swarming along the parameter’s edge of the memorial site. A slow build in sound volume and intensity increases as the audience makes their way walking along the trail as they peek down into the center of the park memorial site with a curious sense of wonder and intrigue through the chiaroscuro light beams dovetailing through the nature formed trees trunks, moss drippings and floral blooms to the heart of what they are about to embark into below. This flirtation of walking along the outskirts of the memorial site while listening to the sounds of nature and humankind, and peering into the seemingly forbidden center compliments a feeling of anticipation as the audience is guided around the entire 360 degree circumference before being permitted to enter into the heart of the memorial site. All the while, the sound score begins to incorporate such things as, but not bound or confined to, iconic LGBTQ voices both sung and spoken, protesters, activists, preachers, politicians, disco and dance music, words of writers and poets etc. spliced into the sonic fold in creatively distorted ways. As the audience makes their way into the memorial site at the point of completing an entire exterior journey around the grounds, they begin to make connections between the provided sonic score and the visual moments around them like a babbling brook, empty or occupied benches, engraved memorial stones varying in size and familiarity of the dedicated, beautiful flowers, and a seemingly infinite choice of pathways to navigate their way forward on this journey. Eventually, a dell in unveiled which reveals a partially dressed middle aged overweight gay man of color and mixed ethnicity in the middle of a plot of grass sitting at a small table with a vanity mirror applying drag makeup while singing to himself as if no one else is around, although he is surrounded by a suitcase of women’s clothes scattered about while picnicking onlookers are equidistantly seated amidst the drag. This performer stays confined to his scene as he goes back and forth from applying makeup to trying on various drag performance clothing articles. Once he feels his makeup and clothing looks are complete, he then packs up and exits the dell.

A new track from the electronic artist Boron, presented in the form of a site-specific sound walk. http://boron.bandcamp.com

Guiding the audience to the top of Huntington Falls and back down again, this audio tour walks you through a lifetime in 20 minutes.The narrator begins the tour as a 5-year-old in the 1950s. She ages 5-10 years at each stop on the tour, ending in the present day at the end of her life. Inspired in part by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, this piece explore the idea of “queer time,” investigating the ways in which queer people transgress the linear timelines a life is supposed to follow, while tracing the changing symbolism of San Francisco and Golden Gate Park.