Date: 11/21/2010

co-presented with San Francisco Zen Center's Expert's Mind Series
Sunday, November 21, Noon – 5PM
Building 944 | FREE General Admission to Project Space
Invite friends via the Facebook event page

2PM Infinite City Talk is SOLD OUT, but we invite you to enjoy Project Space Studios and the Mess Hall Cafe

Mess Hall Cafe open Noon - 4:30 serving Hand rolled udon noodles, enoki mushrooms, spinach and carrots in ginger scallion broth | Udon noodles with wild Bristol Bay salmon cake | Kaiso seaweed salad | Tea and tea sweets

A day-long investigation of alternative cartographies by artists, writers, activists, and you. Free, open-to-the-public activities throughout the afternoon include projections of maps in the West Wing from Rebecca Solnit's new, collaborative book project Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. In Project Space East, Seher Shah presents a work-in-progress series of topographic landscapes made of multiple cast objects which intersect with drawings. Shah explores the use of drawing as an intrusion or disturbance on this constructed topography, as well as the tension between these two components, their relationship to one another, and the nature of the disturbance. In Project Space West, Richard T. Walker shares an in-progress video and performance series investigating the mountain terrain around Headlands' buildings. In the performances, entitled "if I had a window in this situation I would look out at you longingly," Walker sings and records songs derived from an ongoing project that investigates the images in Max Knight's 1970 book Return to the Alps. Thematically, these pieces are part of Walker's continued investigation into our cultural understanding of such 'natural' environs and how we come to project and idealize upon and within such spaces.

SOLD OUT From 2 - 3:30PM, in the East Wing, Rebecca Solnit presents Infinite City: Mapping Trees, Love, Time, Butterflies, Salmon, Zen, and Practically Everything Else in San Francisco. Solnit will discuss the Atlas project and join naturalist Derek Hitchcock and Reverend Furyu Nancy Schroeder in a conversation about Map #20, which pairs the topics of Bay Area salmon migration and the spread of Soto Zen Buddhism through the region and beyond. The Green Arcade bookstore will be on-site selling Rebecca's books.

PARTICIPANT BIOS

DEREK HITCHCOCK is a sixth generation northern Californian who grew up on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada in the watershed of the Yuba River, outside the town of Nevada City, CA. Educated at UC Berkeley, Derek worked internationally for a decade conducting original ecological research and working with communities on environmental issues. 5 years ago he returned to his home region to engage in the life-long process of becoming indigenous to this place, initially working for the North Fork Mono Indian Tribe in the upper San Joaquin River, before having the opportunity to work in his native Yuba Watershed.

REV. FURYU NANCY SCHROEDER, a resident at San Francisco Zen Center for over 30 years is currently the Director of Family Programs at Green Gulch Farm, where she lives with her partner and teenage daughter. She was recently appointed as a Trustee to the Marin Community Foundation by the Marin Interfaith Council Board of Directors.

SEHER SHAH creates large-scale drawings that explore the relationship between iconic architectural spaces and universal geometric symbolism. She trained as an architect, perfecting skills in perspective drawing and line work that are fully evident in her drawings and prints. Shah’ s work references Islamic iconography, appropriating images from the history of India and Pakistan, and American and European conceptual art. Shah's work is collected by the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Queens Museum, Queens, NY. Shah has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.

REBECCA SOLNIT is an activist, historian and writer who lives in San Francisco. Her twelfth book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, came out in 2009. The previous eleven include 2007's Storming the Gates of Paradise; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities; Wanderlust: A History of Walking; As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender and Art; River of Shadows, Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim, the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism, and the Lannan Literary Award). A contributing editor to Harper's, she frequently writes for the political site Tomdispatch.com.

RICHARD T. WALKER's films, photographic works, and performances take on solitude, human nature, and dialogue as their subject. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, screenings, and performances in Europe, Japan, China, and the United States. He has had recent solo shows at Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Angels Gallery, Barcelona, Spain.