Between above and below

Between
above
and
below
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
Between
above
and
below
Words by David Buuck
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
Between above and below
San Francisco Arts Commission for the Art on Market Street Program
March 12 - July 12, 2007
This publication was produced as part of the San Francisco Arts
Commission’s Art on Market Street Program. The Art on Market
Street Program is funded in part by the San Francisco Municipal
Transportation Agency and CBS Outdoor.
Catalogue © 2007 San Francisco Arts Commission
Artworks © 2007 Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
Photographs © 2007 Amanda Hughen and John Jackson
Text © 2007 David Buuck
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written
permission from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Text excerpted from The Treatment by David Buuck, forthcoming
from Palm Press. For more information about the San Francisco
Arts Commission and the Art on Market Street Program, contact
www.sfartscommission.org. Prints of Between above and below,
are available through Electric Works: www.sfelectricworks.com
Between above and below is a series of six collaborative artworks
commissioned from Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
by the San Francisco Arts Commission for the Art on Market Street
Program. The images were displayed in poster kiosks along Market
Street in downtown San Francisco from March 12 through July 12,
2007. The artworks reflect the artists’ exploration of maps and
systems in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each image consists of a
collaborative drawing in which they isolated and juxtaposed
particular forms and patterns derived from built systems and natural
movements — such as traffic, electricity, water, or trees. The work
represents the intersections and collisions of the built environment
with emergent natural systems.
Special thanks to Judy Moran, Maizie Gilbert, Noah Lang, Jack and
Gay Reineck, and Rick and Megan Prelinger. Also thanks to the San
Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, the San Francisco Bicycle
Coalition, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Michele
Liapes from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the
Department of Public Works , and the United States Geological Survey.
Maps courtesy of the Prelinger Library and Jack and Gay Reineck.
Marshland once penetrated as far as the corner of then
and now. But there I was, across the street from here.
Beneath the beach, the pavement, chalked with slogans for
sidewalk sales. 528 billion gallons of water. What history
there is of these waters and of contiguous lands is to be
found only in the statutes and decisions of the courts. The
banking fraternity weathered this storm fairly well and
continued their functions of ministering to the financial
needs of the swift growing city.
Beneath the pavement, the beachhead, delineated as
civic works and daze, hotwired to the ambulatory transit
machines. Anti-blueprints wheatpasted up and down the
battlements. Palimpsest mappings across the power lines
grid into historical reckonings. Here’s where Tom Mooney
didn’t bomb the war parade. The signage says here that
you’re there now, reading that there here. For every tree,
a citizen breathing.
Bay area rapid trance it, from the resident base camps to
the clamor and throng. Heaved out into the scablands,
street-rocks popping against the undercarriage of the
survival carts. The turn lanes apropos the new gold rush.
Billboards tower as trees might shadow that. Steetside is
saddle leather, limbered for the pickets. 425,258 a day,
fro and to it. The future belongs to the passersby.
3
Reading the news by virtue of its happening
just-now, right here amidst ourselves. The
pavement sliced for text and meta-text, slits that
eat bicyclists. Abstracted maps, hacking that, finetipped instruments compose that traffic-pack.
Walking around with some string and a camera.
Site-writing’s embodied thought in action, charged
and aware of positionality in mediated space and
vectors of power. Stringing together some
sentences. The parts left out are out of sight,
hidden behind the street-signs. Here’s some
language I gathered elsewhere, practicing string
theory as urban historiography. Like all histories
and all maps, you have to believe it to see it.
4
5
6
7
8
9
12
15
So attitudes are latitudes — as lattes clear the lanes. Beneath the pavement, the beechwood benches shake to the trembling of the trains. Shaded
in the faded colors of another era’s future tense. The physical distance
between the zero crossing and the peak of the groove modulation marks
the measure of the music. Twitch it into the bloodstream, but don’t yet eat
the shredded scripts. They’re biofuel for the next of our kind.
16
18
19
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
Between above and below
San Francisco Arts Commission for the Art on Market Street Program
March 12 - July 12, 2007
LIST OF WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
LIST OF WORKS IN THE CATALOGUE
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
BART riders save over 200,000 gallons of
gas a day by taking public transportation
Ink on paper and mylar
2007
Amanda Hughen and
Jennifer Starkweather, Over 1500 bike racks
are installed on San Francisco sidewalks
(detail), ink on paper and mylar, 2007
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
In 2010, an average of 425,458 people will
commute to San Francisco every day
Ink on paper and mylar
2007
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
In San Francisco, there are over 700,000
trees: one for almost every person who
lives in the city
Ink on paper and mylar
2007
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
Marshland once penetrated as far north as
the corner of Mission and Seventh streets
Ink on paper and mylar
2007
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
Over 1500 bike racks are installed on San
Francisco sidewalks
Ink on paper and mylar
2007
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer Starkweather
Over 528 billion gallons of water flow
through the Golden Gate Strait every
six hours
Ink on paper and mylar
2007
COVER IMAGE:
PAGE 5: Jennifer Starkweather, In 2010,
an average of 425,458 people will commute
to San Francisco every day (detail), ink on
mylar, 2007
PAGE 7: Amanda Hughen and Jennifer
Starkweather, In 2010, an average of
425,458 people will commute to San
Francisco every day (detail), ink on
paper and mylar, 2007
PAGE 8: Amanda Hughen, Marshland once
penetrated as far north as the corner of
Mission and Seventh streets (detail), ink
on paper, 2007
PAGE 9: Jennifer Starkweather, Marshland
once penetrated as far north as the corner
of Mission and Seventh streets (detail), ink
on mylar, 2007
Amanda Hughen and
Jennifer Starkweather, Marshland once
penetrated as far north as the corner of
Mission and Seventh streets (detail), ink
on paper and mylar, 2007
PAGES 10 - 11:
Amanda Hughen and Jennifer
Starkweather, Over 528 billion gallons of
water flow through the Golden Gate Strait
every six hours (detail), ink on paper and
mylar, 2007
PAGE 13:
PAGE 14: Amanda Hughen and
Jennifer Starkweather, BART riders save
over 200,000 gallons of gas a day by
taking public transportation (detail),
ink on paper and mylar, 2007
PAGE 16: (top left) Amanda Hughen,
Over 1500 bike racks are installed on San
Francisco sidewalks (detail), ink on paper
and mylar, 2007; (bottom left) Jennifer
Starkweather, Over 1500 bike racks are
installed on San Francisco sidewalks
(detail), ink on mylar, 2007
PAGE 17: Amanda Hughen and Jennifer
Starkweather, Over 1500 bike racks are
installed on San Francisco sidewalks
(detail), ink on paper and mylar, 2007
PAGE 18: Amanda Hughen, In San
Francisco, there are over 700,000
trees: one for almost every person
who lives in the city (detail), ink on
paper and mylar, 2007
PAGE 19: Jennifer Starkweather, In San
Francisco, there are over 700,000 trees:
one for almost every person who lives in
the city (detail), ink on mylar, 2007
PAGE 20: Amanda Hughen and Jennifer
Starkweather, In San Francisco, there are
over 700,000 trees: one for almost every
person who lives in the city (detail), ink
on paper and mylar, 2007
Using maps and narratives, urban planning grids and statistics, routes of everyday movements and data-flows, Amanda
Hughen, Jennifer Starkweather, and David Buuck chart the intersections of information and abstraction as they explore
how to represent our tangled civic experiences.