The artist factory
Despite San Francisco’s reputation as a haven for the creative classes, the artists that have flocked here always seem hard-pressed to find affordable housing amidst the ever-skyrocketing real-estate market. But innovation is often desperation’s child, and one of the best examples of this is Project Artaud, the city’s first live-work space for artists. It was established in 1971 and named after mid-20th-century French surrealist playwright and poet Antonin Artaud, who famously said, “No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.”
Project Artaud is set up in the old American Can Company factory and spans an entire block on the edge of the Mission District. Working as carpenters and builders themselves to renovate the building, the artists who moved in embodied the idea of collectively seizing control of artistic production and presentation. Since then, their work has become the bedrock of the city’s avant-garde cultural life.
Info
Address 499 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110, www.projectartaud.org, +1 415.621.4240 | Public Transport Bus: 12 (Folsom St & 18th St stop) | Hours Visit the website for performance schedules, gallery hours, and Open Studios information| Tip Several times a year Project Artaud hosts Open Studios, during which the public can wander through the artists’ creative spaces. While you’re in the area, take a walk to 3057 17th Street, where you’ll find the nostalgic old Police Station, built in 1899 in the Romanesque Revival style.
Today, Project Artaud is home and hive to some 80 artists, including musicians, writers, sculptors, dancers, a robot designer, and a vaudevillian. The building also includes several performance spaces, such as the Theatre of Yugen, whose ensemble explores traditional Japanese aesthetics, and Z Space, one of the local incubators for new theatrical works. The Z Space Gallery, which displays a changing selection of works (often by resident artists) is open during the day, and is a great way to visit the complex. Along 17th Street you can also see the delightful umbrellas sculpture by artist Benjy Young.
Most evenings at Project Artaud, there are performances of some kind, be it dance, comedy, drama, or music. One unique and not-to-be-missed theater group is Word for Word, which stages productions of classic and contemporary fiction, read aloud, literally verbatim.
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