Black Rock Arts Foundation Letter of Intent

Low estimate: $8500, considering price of car, insurance, registration, smog, fees for registration as "tour bus" among other requirements for street legality, even outside of materials, stipend for contributing artists and ideal final version of the car.

My computer crashed right at the deadline for this. Such a bummer. Sought solace in scanning old half-done sketches.

Studio 13

A. Physical presence and theme

This art car is a direct jab at realty greed. San Francisco lacks space for musicians to rehearse, especially if they can’t afford to pay for space. SF is one of the most expensive places to live, so the local scene lacks diversity compared to other places. Inspired by my virgin Playa adventure in 2011, the Studio 13 double-decker art car will be used by over half a dozen local bands ranging from rappers, djs and turntablists, to hardcore and pop-punkers.

The name Studio 13 is in honor of the rehearsal space at Tommy Guerrero's Audiobox Studios that housed the Freshkimos, Golda Supernova, Slashton, and Ghosts and Strings for over a year, a prolific time before the two lessees could no longer afford the rent. Aside from dedicated rehearsal space, goals for Studio 13 include: 1. Helping local music/education foundations. 2. Coordinating with activist communities to provide big audio for hedonistic and political actions. 3. Creating a live talk show, Manafrio radio. Local activists and journalists will be free to hold panels, interviews and give speeches.

When there are no scheduled speakers and no band is using the car, the public can still hold a conversation. 4. Bringing the Playa spirit to the S.F. streets by offering free rides to revelers at night, from the Mission to Potrero and throughout SoMa. This cuts down on drunk drivers and offers a magical experience for passengers.

B. Physical Presence, Frequency of Exhibition and Relation to BRAF theme of "Interactivity"

The heart of Studio 13 is a converted bus or van. The exterior will have swirling, wavy metal and fiberglass work inspired by the ocean and interlaced with mostly found or secondhand mirrors and possibly a few old televisions wired with closed-circuit cameras. This composes the “Sea of Vanity”. I may look to Flux Foundation for help with the body work. The second level of the art car is a wooden boat inspired by Southeast Asian “outrigger” boats from Indonesia or the Philippines whose design and construction would passed on to CCA masters student Peter L'labbe.

Both components will be joined by a spiral staircase at the rear of the vehicle. Cushioned benches will line the boat’s perimeter with two forward facing benches and room for a coffin DJ booth at the bow of the boat, though the merits of having the booth at the port side (the sidewalk side) may rearrange things a bit. Handrails and moorings will surround Studio 13 with a space for a pole in the middle that will serve as a mast for tarps or a parachute. The boat may also have outriggers to give it the genuine aesthetic of the aforementioned while serving double duty as a bike rack and weather shelter that may or may not rise up for driving.

Inside, we can maintain the upholstery that doesn’t impede storage/transportation of the audio system and its mobile components. Now, the dream scenario would be new electronic systems with amps and a huge amount of wattage and whatnot all plugged into an interface with modern electronic amenities, but at present I’m looking at this project from a minimalist perspective. There must be room to keep the 8 x 10 Ampeg bass cab and the tiny 12-channel portable PA system with its two monitors that I already have. If we can keep the interior intact, all the better, as it’d be nice to if the van could hold as many passengers as possible. At a minimum all we need to buy is a generator and rewire the stock speakers and radio to make the system integrated.

As far as when this project appears, it seems contingent on weather and our own weather proofing, and law-enforcement and legality. The option of rehearsing on a warm fall day by the zoo and ocean is a Bacchanalian dream, just as providing a public forum for political discourse in San Francisco, while exciting in its own merits, is scary. Also, the idea of having art car frequency increase in San Francisco brings up questions of whether it takes away from experience on the Playa.

While my lesson from Burning Man was that there is no such thing as a default world and that we should strive for magic and transformative experience as frequently as possible, some diehards might beg to differ. And though I feel that BM has started to change the world (I didn’t know that those burn barrels at Ocean Beach were paid for by BRAF! I grew up surfing down there!) in a sort of unconscious way (really, how much is Occupy Wall Street possible without decades of people not questioning the merits of camping out in a treacherous desert for art, music and burning stuff’s sake), I’m not one to assume that this project can be overtly political on its face (though I just read the BRAF mission statement!). Anyway, given the opportunity to bring this project to fruition, I would personally see to it that its potential as a transformative, community-oriented vehicle, bringing music and audio to the world would be everywhere in this city that it’s needed.

And since that mission statement is fresh in my mind, I will state that I’ve become increasingly enamored with the Occupy Movement and its potential for change. If my involvement increases from ivory tower/facebook activist to front line, I would use this project much in the same way I would on the playa: it’d be shared in all the ways my delusions would provide me.

That being said, I feel like there is an aesthetic/frequency of appearance ratio that has a somewhat fine line. The more frequent Studio 13 appears the less gaudy and more professional and subtle it should be, especially considering that audio is the central impact of the project. But that in-itself is debatable.

C. Fit with BRAF Mission Statement, Civics and Community

Studio 13 fits the BRAF mission most directly in the vein of community. It's primary and founding purpose (1) as a portable rehearsal space is a direct reaction to a lack of resource for a community of musicians, many of whom grew up in the Filipino-activist community in SoMa. The first gigs for Slashton, for instance, were in annual festivals like Pistahan and Asian-American talent competitions. After the original Studio 13 became too expensive to maintain, Slashton, along with Freshkimos and some other bands became inactive.

The dynamic of this community of musicians serving SoMa, as many of the musicians worked with youth groups like United Playaz and Loco Bloco, changed, with less concerts and promotion, putting music on the backburner for many folks who'd just learned the first lessons of what goes into live music. This put added pressure to re-open Bindlestiff Studio on Sixth and Howard, so there would be a place for theater productions or even jam sessions and parties.

This is just one facet of the potential for community involvement with the Studio 13 art car project. This describes the relationship of community art to the "Institutional Hierarchy" that has everything to do with positions in the monetary scale. Another aspect of this is (2) the potential to work with youth in SoMa who would never have an opportunity to play on a professional bass amp or drum set anywhere, much less any spot in the Bay Area that could logistically be reached by the art car, the beach, Treasure Island, an open pier on the Embarcadero. Golda Supernova, an activist, poet and singer, has been working as an artist since she was a teenager. She and her husband, Wern, who played bass for Slashton, now have children who are following in their parents footsteps picking up the guitar, getting comfortable with the spotlight of performing. Having studied journalism at City College at the beginning of the decade, I was introduced to activism at an interesting time--2000 till 2005--when my first stint as editor of The Guardsman newspaper coincided with a time of unprecedented upheaval--I'd never seen so many pissed off people decrying the patriotism and reactionary politics.

I was swept into it, learned the power of print and research, and burnt out after we invaded Iraq. But the time is right. (3) I've been imagining a live-talk show for over three years now, but had to wait for music to stall and be left in a strange limbo with an excess of musical equipment (It felt like the Lord of the Rings with amps instead of rings!), run into a group of crazy people who'd multiplied since my surfer friends returned from the desert in 2000 hell-bent on renting water trucks for some "Mirage" something or other, buying white suits when we were in Indonesia for what sounded like a cult, wondering what was going on with all of the bikes with PA systems during Critical Masses that looked so fun from my lonely window working at Harvest Market, and finally getting dragged to some weird Potrero Hill address in late October when I was more concerned with the Giants in the Playoffs and Jimi James' amazing full moon party in Pacifica.

I was just like these people and my crazy ideas were encouraged instead of dismissed. I'd found something that I never wanted to stop. And I didn’t care that my buddy painted over the stuff I’d worked on down the stage from the Mermen and the crazy lady offered $500, because I’d never been so happy. I guess this last rant could cover my last bullet point (4) the importance of hedonistic action to balance all the civics, something Joseph Campbell would understand and make archetypes out of.

Caveat on Manafrio radio

Just to clarify, point 3 is an artistic concept that I've been pondering for a while now: the question posed is this: What happens when an every day dialogue between people, two or more, is broadcast on a powered P.A. system in a public place like Dolores Park or Justin Herman Plaza. If the parties are uninhibited in their expression and empathetic in listening and using their highest potential--through past education, current spiritual paradigm and personal barriers of trust, abuse, memory, etc.--is not the conversation heard just as profound, insightful and transforming as any educated, power-based, hierarchical or canonical discussion or panel? I've been curious about this for years. Though this doesn't take away the importance of the aforementioned "expertise" I feel that this experiment could reveal a lot and the Studio 13 project could easily suit both the personal and the expert-based discussion. This is civic, interactive and community-oriented.