**Mapping the City: Artists Engage with the Urban Environment**

LOCATION: DE YOUNG MUSEUM, KORET AUDITORIUM
COST: FREE
TIME: 10AM - 5PM

On Saturday, June 30th Southern Exposure will present a day long artist symposium at the de Young Museum commemorating their SoEx Off-Site program, a year-long series of public art projects. Mapping the City: Artists Engage with the Urban Environment is co-sponsored by the de Young Museum and brings Southern Exposure's Off-Site artists together in dialog around their projects, which have investigated artists' strategies for exploring and mapping public space over the past year.

The SoEx Off-Site program was launched in September 2006 following Southern Exposure's relocation to their current temporary home at the corner of 25th and Mission Street. Eight Off-Site projects were chosen from a pool of over 300 submissions by Southern Exposure's curatorial committee. Chosen Off-Site artists and art collective projects included COMMONspace by Rebar; The Mission Lake Project by Ledia Carroll; Radio Cartography by Neighborhood Public Radio; Lottery Ticket by Packard Jennings; Life/Theater: San Francisco by New York based artist Lee Walton; NOSO by Brooklyn based Glowlab; Bio-Mapping by U.K based artist Christian Nold, and Jeannene Przyblyski's current Land's End Time Travel Project "Comings and Goings". Southern Exposure's Artists in Education program presented five public Off-Site projects including Location: Carnaval and Nomads and Homesteaders: The Mission and Beyond in partnership with the Columbia Park Boys and Girls Club; Power: Connectivity: A Video Series in partnership with Balboa High School's Media Arts Program; and SoEx's Youth Advisory Board developed two projects including Street Works and Encountering San Francisco. Over 100 youth and 8 teaching artists were involved in these projects.

Several of the 13 public art projects involved audience participation through the use of strategies such as simple acts of walking and note taking, public performances, or community-oriented events, as well as high-tech projects utilizing technological apparatuses as a means to disseminate geographical and historical information. As Courtney Fink, Executive Director of Southern Exposure notes, "public participation in the Off-Site projects enabled people to engage in publicly executed art activities, acts of urban mapping and reflect on their own experiences in public spaces."

The Mapping the City symposium will focus on Southern Exposure's Off-Site artists' perspectives around the artistic legacy of the Situationists, contemporary mapping strategies, and tactics for urban intervention. The strategies Off-Site artists implemented in their projects can be traced to the Situationists' derive, the practice of drifting through urban space, and psychogeography, which is the study of the effects of the geographic environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The afternoon portion of the symposium will highlight site-specific projects performed during the lunch break by Rebar and Neighborhood Public Radio, an Off-Site artist panel discussion and a grand finale lecture by Simon Sadler, UC Davis Associate Professor of Architectural and Urban History and author of "The Situationist City".

Symposium Schedule
10:00-10:15 Introduction
Courtney Fink, Executive Director of Southern Exposure

10:15-11:00 Jeannene Przyblyski, SoEx Off-Site artist, historian and urban strategist

11:00-12:00 Artist Presentations
Moderated by Jaren Bonillo, Artist in Education Program Manager, Southern Exposure
Presenting Artists: Jesse Clark, Amy Hicks, Packard Jennings,
Suzy Poling, and Joshua Short

12:00-1:30 Lunch
Witness Off-Site artists in action during lunch
Projects presented by Rebar and Neighborhood Public Radio

1:30-2:30 Artist Presentations
Moderated by Maysoun Wazwaz, Exhibition Program Manager, Southern Exposure
Presenting Artists: Ledia Carroll, Glowlab, Christian Nold, Jeannene Przyblyski, Rebar, and Lee Walton

2:30-3:30 Panel Discussion: Urban tactics: artists interventions in public space Moderated by Alison Sant, Curatorial Committee Member, Southern Exposure
Participants: Matt Passmore, Rebar; Christian Nold; Ledia Carroll; Lee Montgomery, Neighborhood Public Radio; Jeannene Przyblyski; and Joshua Short.
Decades after the Situationist drifts, Dada tours, Fluxus events and happenings first led us from the gallery into the street, where is the urban artwork today and what aspects of the city does it respond to? This panel will address how artists in the Off-Site exhibition position themselves within the tradition of urban art practice and reinterpret its legacy. We will explore artistic tactics for intervention, focusing on the nature of the contemporary landscape and artists reactions to it. We will also consider the relevance of site-specificity and community engagement in a time of international art fairs and touring artists projects, questioning the role of arts organizations in supporting public work.

3:30-4:15 Lecture: Atmospheres of Democracy
Simon Sadler, author of The Situationist City, and Associate Professor of Architectural and Urban History, University of California, Davis.
This talk considers how art and design has related a clean atmosphere to a truly civic life. In tracing a brief history from the Garden Cities of the nineteenth-century, through modernist urbanism to its radical successors in the Situationist and hippie movements in the late twentieth-century, he asks: what are the "atmospheres of democracy" we have been craving?

4:15-4:30 Conclusion
Courtney Fink, Executive Director of Southern Exposure
About Southern Exposure
Located in San Francisco’s Mission District, Southern Exposure is a 33 year old, non-profit, artist-run organization dedicated to presenting diverse, innovative, contemporary art, arts education, and related programs and events in an accessible environment. Southern Exposure reaches out to diverse audiences and serves as a forum and resource center to provide extraordinary support to the Bay Area's arts and educational communities. Activities range from exhibitions of local, regional, and international visual artists' work, education programs, and lectures, panel discussions, and performances. Southern Exposure is dedicated to giving artists - whether they are exhibiting, curating, teaching, or learning - an opportunity to realize ideas for projects that may not otherwise find support. SoEx Off-Site is Southern Exposure's yearlong series of public art and related programs investigating artists' strategies for exploring and mapping public space.

For more event information contact Southern Exposure at
415-863-2141 or visit www.soex.org.

S O U T H E R N
E X P O S U R E

Dynamic, cutting edge art, education, and community programs since 1974.

2901 Mission Street @ 25th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
t: 415.863.2141
f: 415.863.1841
e: soex@soex.org
w: www.soex.org