Join the Tenderloin Museum and Skywatchers for the world premiere screening of Skywatchers' 10th Anniversary documentary, Skywatchers: The Slow Art of Belonging. Since 2011, Skywatchers has created performances that center the urgent concerns of formerly unhoused residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, working with professional artists in an initial collaboration rooted in the ethos that large-scale social change begins with intimate, interpersonal relationships. Born out of a collaboration between Anne Bluethenthal’s ABD PRODUCTIONS, Community Housing Partnership, and the Luggage Store Gallery, Skywatchers has created or collaborated on a repertoire of twenty multidisciplinary works and over forty events that range from formal- and site-specific performance, to intervention, ritual, visual art, and multi-media work as part of a long-term community-embedded social practice. In the group’s own words:
In ten years in the Tenderloin, the Skywatchers Ensemble has
articulated a method for collaborative art making that they've come to call
Relational, Durational, Conversational, and Structural.
These words reflect the ensemble's commitments to
center community,
interrogate power and privilege,
and redefine rigor through the lens of community engagement and social justice.
If you've seen their work—and if you haven't yet!—this film is a celebration and revelation about collaborative art making in the Tenderloin. Skywatchers: The Slow Art of Belonging is a collaboration with Loren Robertson Productions; the world premiere screening will occur in person at the Tenderloin Museum. This event is free and there are no tickets or sign-up; however, full vaccination and mask wearing will be required!