Department of Space & Land Reclamation

When: Thursday, October 2 - Sunday, October 5, 2003
Convergence Space: Mission Badlands / Balazo Gallery; 24th and Mission

Reclaiming Public Space!

During the weekend of October 2-5, over one hundred participants from across the country will be converging in San Francisco for 72 hours of non-stop occupation, intervention, recreation, and re-invention of public space. DSLR-West is a creative campaign that will fuse art exhibition, urban reclamation, and citywide street festival into a massive transformation of public space.

Using the community art space Mission Badlands/Balazo Gallery as a hub of operations, projects associated with DSLR-West will radiate out across the metropolis. Pirate radio, mobile sound systems, bicycle tours, architectural modifications, street extravaganzas, and graffiti will all figure prominently in DSLR-West. The emphasis of this campaign is on the creative usage of public space by artists, groups, and individuals from all walks of life.

“What do graffiti artists, urban ecologists, mariachi troupes, and monkey-wrenching saboteurs have in common? DSLR-West,” says Julia de Burgos, one of the event’s organizers. “The culture of this city is defined by the people who live, work, and play in it. Why passively submit to a land of parking lots and advertisements when we can actively build a city from our imagination?”

At a time when public space is increasingly privatized, and individual freedoms are being steadily eroded, DSLR-West emerges from the shadows to shed some light on creative community practices.