I STILL LIVE HERE / 2018

Who gets to live in urban centers like the San Francisco Bay Area? What does it mean to call a neighborhood or a city home?

"I Still Live Here" was a hybrid social practice, institutional critique and site-specific video installation that examined the displacement of Bay Area citizens due to development in downtown San Francisco. Many of San Francisco’s current SRO residents are members of communities that were displaced or directly affected by the urban renewal projects in downtown San Francisco, specifically in order to create space for YBCA and the land which most of the city’s cultural institutions now stand on. The project collaborated with San Francisco SRO residents Yolanda M. and Rose P. and filmed them doing everyday, intimate domestic activities at Rose’s SRO home, with the intention of allowing their images to reclaim the land that YBCA now stands on.

The video was then installed on a 3rd story wall in YBCA, looking down over the public square so that Yolanda M. and Rose P. appeared to interact with the museum visitors below and actively re-claim their space on the land. As opposed to being mere housing statistics, when self-represented in the installation, Rose and Yolanda appear at they do at home: they drink coffee, catch up, play with Rose’s dogs, appear to heckle the people below and dance to a song that the rest of us cannot hear. They are unapologetically themselves. During the installation Yolanda’s poetry and both Yolanda and Rose’s self-narrated biographies were available on museum brochures.

Thank you Yolanda and Rose for sharing your home and stories with us, and YBCA for supporting this project.