TENDER TRANSMISSIONS

visit us or phone in to listen!

2009-10-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

VISIT our listening station, program, and audio installations at

Luggage Store Annex/Tenderloin National Forest- 509 Ellis Street

Tuesday – Saturday 11AM - 4 PM

Tune in to 93.7FM 24 hours a day within the Tenderloin

or call 415.375.8282

2009-10-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

Here are some production shots from our recording sessions- along with samples of our programming on radio 93.7FM.

Participants

2009-10-06T22:58:00.000-07:00

Opening

2009-10-06T22:00:00.001-07:00

TENDER TRANSMISSIONS

Hosted by the Luggage Store Annex/ Tenderloin National Forest, 509 Ellis Street, San Francisco

93.7FM and 415.375.8282

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11AM - 4 PM

Opening Saturday October 17 11AM - 6 PM

Tender Transmissions is a temporary Tenderloin specific radio program (available locally on 93.7 FM), a series of phone messages (at (415) 375-8282) and an audio installation at The Tenderloin National Forest. We interested in the intimate and invisible characteristics of sound, and its potential resonance at the threshold of the public and the private. The transmissions include conversations about love, songs and poetry chosen and sung or recited by participants, soundscapes made from ambient neighborhood recordings, a screenplay derived from conversations with erotic dancers, ambient audio recorded during guided blindfolded walks, and conversations between visiting Japanese college students and first graders. It also includes interviews with curator Lance Fung and other key members of the organization which focus on issues of movement, migration, nomadism and the visible in relation to current residents, participating artists and potential visitors.

walk_#4

2009-09-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

On my fourth walk I was guided by Keystone members

Troy and Winnie. Keystone is a youth leadership program

through the Boys and Girls club working with Safe Haven to provide

escorts to the children of the TL neighborhood.

Winnie was recently chosen and "Youth of the Year" and Troy

is a rapper with a cd out and currently working on a new video.

Our walk lasted 20 minutes.

Tender Transmissions-Recorded series of Blindfolded walks through TL with various guides

2009-09-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

I am recording a series of walks with "guides" who live and work in the neighborhood that I will use to compile into a "soundscape" of

the TL for our Tender Transmissions radio broadcast. The "guides" determine the route, length, and content of the audio piece. I am attempting to find "guides" from a variety of ethnicities and ages as well as genders allowing for multiple perspectives. I place myself in a position of needing to trust my "guides" some who I meet for the first time just before we walk. The experience of being blindfolded allows me to use my senses beyond vision- a necessary tool when walking the streets of the neighborhood.

This movie is documentation of one of my walks.

Tender Transmissions

2009-09-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

Tender Transmissions is an aural network produced through community participation and site-driven research. It will be broadcast on a temporary FM radio station receivable in the Tenderloin district, and available in segments via a telephone number, throughout the duration of the Wonderland Exhibition. Speakers will be set up in the Tenderloin National Forest to provide a communal listening environment and space for gatherings.

The Transmissions team came to this project with an interest in the intimate and invisible characteristics of sound, and its potential resonance at the threshold of the public and the private. We approached the neighborhood with this in mind, engaging with intimacy, desire and tenderness in a variety of artist projects, by listening to individual voices, the sounds of the neighborhood and the desires and stories of various residents, workers and students.

Tender Transmissions will broadcast discrete content punctuated by ambient sounds from the neighborhood, differentiating its style of programming from that of a conventional radio station. The transmissions will include conversations about love with seniors and young mothers, songs and poetry chosen and sung/recited by participants, abstract compositions made from recordings at major intersections and on walks, a screenplay derived from conversations with erotic dancers around desires and fantasies that inspire their performances, ambient audio recorded during blindfolded walks with a community walking service exploring issues around safety and a composition which reflects on the cinematic history of the neighborhood. All recordings were made in the Tenderloin with people who live and/or work there. The project also includes a self-reflective engagement with the position of the radio broadcast and the other public art projects within Wonderland, through interviews with curator Lance Fung and other key members of the organization. These interviews will focus on issues of movement, migration, nomadism and the visible in relation to current residents, participating artists and potential visitors.

Tender Transmissions uses the figure of the network to define the project’s form as well as the set of processes by which the artists engage with the neighborhood. We are incorporating the voices of local youth by collaborating with teachers at the Glide Foundation and De Marillac Academy, and are hoping to establish a lending library for children’s books. We are working with Bay Fitted urban attire on graphics for our radio station and phone number. By working with accessible technologies, combining radio (communal) with telephone (private) transmission and including content in multiple languages, we intend for the network to be available to most residents and visitors.

Central to Tender Transmissions is the dynamic relationship between our base of operations at the Tenderloin National Forest and the larger radius of the neighborhood. Created by artistic directors Darryl Smith and Laurie Lazer of Luggage Store Gallery, this greened oasis and community commons provides a beautiful and open listening environment and a connection to the longstanding artistic communities of the Tenderloin. We are honored to be able to inhabit the forest (in the making since 1989) after its official dedication and opening in May 2009.

Tenderloin National Forest

2009-09-13T22:20:00.001-07:00

Forest-Satellite

2009-09-13T22:19:00.001-07:00

Recording session at the Annex, 9/9

2009-09-13T16:24:00.001-07:00

Celebrated Poet Charles Curtis Blackwell did a 35 minute reading and Robert Weber sang 'You''ll never Walk Alone" with a beautiful introductory message for his fellow tenderloin residents!

Recording session at the Annex, 9/2

2009-09-13T16:14:00.001-07:00

We had a day of the beautiful voice! Umair Khan sang the love song 'Tere Bina' in Hindi. The song is from the movie Guru (sung by Ar Rahman). Rachelle Brooks returned to the Annex to sing three songs for the Transmissions: Marvin Gaye's What's Goin On, John Lennon's Imagine and Phil Collins' Another Day in Paradise.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

2009-08-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

...the Water Genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Streams of Story, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one of a different color, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and [the Water Genie] explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each colored strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories...

Salman Rushdie- Haroun and the Sea of Stories 1990

Recording session at the Annex, 7/10

2009-07-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

Rachelle Brooks sang Sam Cook's "Change is Gonna Come", Molly Rosenberg sang "To Teberith", a song she wrote while living in Asmara Ethiopia and Jawanza Bomani Saunders sang "Be Not Grieved", A Tribute to Michael Jackson- Holy Scriptures fromthe Bahai faith.

Tenderloin National Forest with Satellite

2009-07-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

2009-07-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

TENDER TRANSMISSIONS

ScreenLab: Alex Beckman, Kaif Ghaznavi, Malak Helmy, Lynne McCabe,
Lauren Marsden, Mike Maurillo, Ranu Mukherjee, George Pfau, Kris Timken

Based at the Luggage Store Annex/ Tenderloin National Forest, 509 Ellis Street

Tender Transmissions is an aural network composed of individual sound works produced through site-driven research and community interaction. These auditory sojourns are made with the intention of opening up the social imaginary of the Tenderloin and providing spaces for listening for the community/audience. They reframe the neighborhood’s narrative, historical, spatial and musical layers.

The network will be broadcast daily via micro-transmitter for a one mile radius around a base of operations at the Luggage Store Annex/Tenderloin National Forest, where speakers will be placed to encourage gatherings of visitors to listen during opening hours. Various pieces will also be available at all times by phone and others positioned at different sites within the neighborhood. The pedestrian audience will be cued to call or tune in by bold and lighthearted graphics, potentially creating temporary listening sites around the neighborhood. By working with accessible technologies, combining radio (communal) with telephone (private) transmission and translating information into multiple languages, we intend for the network to be available to most residents and visitors.

We chose to work with sound because it is intimate and invisible. It has resonance precisely at the threshold of the private and public, engaging listeners in an immediately visceral way. The Tenderloin seems to be a place that is described from outside by a narrative derived from the visible- by what is seen when passing through.

By mobilizing the audible, we are hoping to reflect broader realities and more effervescent fictions, and to create a field of inquiry and rumination. We inquire, document, enhance, sample, translate, and remix, evolving a network through presence which embodies a spectrum of aural experience. The ever-present but sometimes unnoticed, condition of sound is an interesting point of departure from which to address such a densely populated, complex and diverse neighborhood.

Central to Tender Transmissions is the dynamic relationship between our base of operations at the Tenderloin National Forest and the larger radius of the neighborhood. Created by artistic directors Darryl Smith and Laurie Lazer of Luggage Store Gallery, this greened oasis and community commons provides a beautiful and open listening environment and a connection to the longstanding artistic communities of the Tenderloin. We are honored to be able to inhabit the forest (in the making since 1989) after its official dedication and opening in May.

Through our various interactions with community and graphic postings, we hope to gather groups of our diverse participants as well as listeners in the forest during the exhibition period for quiet listening and weekend events. We welcome the opportunity to meet the forest's visitors and to contribute to the rich history of this place, which has been an inspiring focal point for the transmissions. We will be posting radio schedules, phone numbers and other project information in the gallery, as well as installing a foley booth made from materials collected in the neighborhood.

Screenlab’s collaborative methodology is to set up unifying structures which allow for individual artistic ideas and sensibilities to be placed in relation to one another, for a common purpose. Tender Transmissions uses the figure of the network to defines the project’s form as well as the set of processes by which the artists work and engage with the neighborhood. The spectrum of approaches includes direct community participation, field recording, collecting and staging of interactions and events. We are interested in mobilizing the dynamic energy produced between these different sensibilities.

The transmissions artists are connecting with the neighborhood through a wide range of activity.

These different processes include;

- Recording community members of various ethnic and other social groups choosing and singing songs in various languages with the intention of making a Play List for the Tenderloin
- Collecting field recordings at specific intersections and in motion between locations
- Composing urban/synthetic sounds in relation to naturalistic sounds
- Composing a screenplay derived from interviews with strippers
- Meeting groups of seniors to discuss marriage, parenting and their memories of reading to children with the intention of setting up a childrens book library for young mothers
- Recording conversations with the seniors and readings from chosen children’s books
- Collecting materials from the neighborhood to be used for a foley booth in the gallery
- Composing a sound track with the foley materials
- Working with the youth poets group
- setting up a call in Phone Fantasy Walk line where visitors can engage in a conversational audio guide of the Wonderland exhibition which is re-scripted each time.

In the end, each of these individually directed audio projects becomes a node, offering a point of access to the wider network, our group of artists and community participants and to the Wonderland exhibition.

The ScreenLab collective was born out of an intensive, shared investigation into the function of screens under wide ranging aesthetic, social and technological conditions. We examine the notions of architectural thresholds, (mis)translations, behavioral surfaces, filmic codes, and the ever-changing technological interfaces that shape our interactions.