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

"Portals: Visions of Freedom and Abolition in The Past and Future" documents how it feels to walk through neighborhoods in San Francisco as Black, Queer and Trans people. Using emotionally charged textured soundscapes and spoken word testimony of racial profiling and sentiments about the police, this sound art experience explores themes of alienation and abolition.

Portals begins at the corner of Sycamore Street and 623 Valencia Street in the Mission. Participants are then guided to the opening of Clarion Alley, where they will be led through the mural-filled passage. The soundwalk features abstract emotional textured soundscape loops, spoken word, and audio that directly interacts with the content of some of the murals.

It takes place primarily in Clarion Alley and addresses how the alley in and of itself is a creative space that serves as a portal into past (and idealized) versions of the Mission, when it wasn’t as gentrified and sterile and when freaks, punks, and artists flourished in the neighborhood.

Produced and composed by Elsa Trash, Labryssa Deskins, and Titania Kumeh as part of the Big Freak artist collective and band based in Oakland, California.