Mission Arts & Performance Project

WHAT IS THE MAPP?

The Mission Arts & Performance Project is a bi-monthly, multidisciplinary, intercultural community arts event that takes place in the South-East neighborhood of the Mission District of San Francisco. The MAPP connects visual artists, musicians, poets, dancers/choreographers, filmmakers, playwrights, and other artists, in an on-going collaboration with community organizers and local residents, placing art and performance on the street level through the use alternative spaces such as private garages, gardens, living rooms, studios, street corners, and small businesses, to manifest a non-centralized intercultural arts happening.

At its heart, MAPP shows how ordinary spaces, made extra-ordinary through creative techniques, can serve as improvised micro-centers of artistic and cultural exchange. The MAPP places cultural innovation directly into the hands of artists and local residents in partnership with one another, encouraging each to take ownership of the cultural development of their communities, to experiment with new models of community engagement, and to share in an ever more expansive dialog addressing the many issues that emmerge.

By transforming unlikely spaces into forums of creative exchange, the MAPP demonstrates that an integrated arts festival does not require an expansive budget, outside funding, and commercial marketing strategies, but can happen through the inspired efforts of artists and community members working together with a unified and inclusive vision. Through this processs the arts come to be seen and understood more widely, and deeply, as a vibrant, vital, and irreplaceable force, necessary to the health of our society.

The MAPP invites us to imagine a cultural setting in which participation in the arts is woven in the fabric of community life, where the value and cultural significance of each and every community member is given voice, and shared, through honest and meaningful exchange. This is the ideal towards which we aspire.

WHAT IS THE MAPP'S ORGANIZING STRUCTURE?

The MAPP stands as its own independent community arts event. There is no organization, committee, individual, or group of organizers in charge, and there is no admission fee to pay. It is a free and open forum in which any individual artist, collective, or community member may actively participate. MAPP meetings open to anyone who wishes to get involved, and participants are equally encouraged to organize their own MAPP initiatives outside of the MAPP meetings themselves.

HOW DID THE MAPP BEGIN?

In October 2003, a meeting of artist of varied disciplines was called together at the Red Poppy Art House (then called Porfilio Is) to discuss the possibility of a monthly alternative multi-venue neighborhood arts & performance event. That meeting was the spark that caught to flame, the beginning of the “Mission Arts Party”, a name coined in this first meeting inspired by an idea of Peruvian Performance Artist and Videographer Adrian Arias, to paint a mural “map of emotions” on the Art House wall. Two months later the first MAP took place with four exhibit spaces; one garage curated by Luis Vasquez-Gomez and Koch, and three other spaces; the Art House, Musa Alda’s Little Spot Café (the basement), and Musa’s garage, curated by visual artists Veronica Blanco and Todd T. Brown, and with the help of the aspiring painter Martin Arslanian. With no budget and just basic flyering for promotion, the event was a great success. The MAP quickly doubled its size when, the following month, the Mission Cultural Center opened its doors to co-host a MAP exhibition in their main gallery. Also added to the MAP was the local AutoTech Garage, curated by Danny Stuepenagel. (complete with a salsa band, Featuring Rennea Josefina Couttenye and Co., and with cars on lifts towering above).

From that time the MAP continued to grow and change. Not long after, the name “Mission Arts Party” was changed to “Mission Arts & Performance Project" with the intention of bringing the greater focus to process of bringing the arts to the community in a meaningful way. Performance took an essential role in generating the energy of the MAPP and constituted a significant difference from what would normally be considered just another “art walk”. Throughout 2004 the MAPP expanded with Raquel De Anda, Indira Urrutia, Veronica Solis, and Tyson Ayers (later on) joining in as curators. By mid 2005 the organizing body of the MAPP had grown from 3-4 people to 15 (aprox.). By the end of 2005, the MAPP had succeeded in incorporating three local businesses and a number of resident garden spaces. At the end of 2005 the first radio documentary (by nathanael Johnson) was aired on KALW radio. In 2006 the MAPP was awarded "Best Art All Over The Hood" by the SF Guardian's Best of the Bay.

Now, in its sixth year, the MAPP has produced over 35 community arts happenings, presenting more than 800 participating local artists, reaching audiences of 12,000+, and involving training and participation of more than 70 street-level organizing presenters.

WHO MAKES THE MAPP HAPPEN? WHO'S BEHIND IT? WHO'S IN CHARGE?

Since its inception, the intention of the MAPP was for it to take root within the community of which it is part, to become an integral part of neighborhood life and character, and not dependent on any one individual, organization or group.

While the Red Poppy Art House has played an instrumental role over the years in shaping and giving organizational support to the MAPP - connecting artists, organizers and neighbors; the people who actually organize the MAPP are always changing. First there were just three organizers and no funding. Then, through the years of 2004 and 2005, a community of artists formed, 20 or so, expanding it's momentum. And, from there, it has continued to grow and shift. There's not one center. There's no official committee. There's no selection process. In all honesty, it's simply a matter of showing up: the moment you walk into a MAPP meeting - you're it! You don't even have to come to a meeting, you can start your own. The MAPP is entirely governed by the self-initiative of each person who shows up.

CHAOS? YES, LOVELY CHAOS!

Such an open format of organizing brings with it an expected amount of chaos and confusion. We have learned to embrace it. In fact, it is our private pleasure, (and a running joke), that, no matter the chaos, the MAPP always manages to come together, often without a moment to spare. Somehow 60 -100 artists show up, and just do it. (there was even one MAPP happening, featuring perhaps 80-90 artists, that went down without one organizing/planning session! Now how does that happen?).

TRAJECTORY AND GROWTH?

It is insightful to consider the over-all trajectory of a large-scale community arts project. It's 2009, and with 34 MAPP happenings and counting, having featured more than 700 artists over the course of 5 years, the MAPP is still going strong. Despite the success and its number of years, we at the Art House see the MAPP as still being in its adolescent phase. This is the wisdom of long-term organizing: understanding that artistic integrity, community trust, and genuine integrated and diverse participation, can (will) take years to develop. It can not be based on trend or hype. The participants of the MAPP vary extensively, from artistic level of accomplishment to the varying levels of awareness and perspective, in relation to community cultural development - an area that embodies an interwoven complexity of issues related to class, race, sexual orientation, national origin, lifestyle, religion, political affiliation, and the complex dynamic of gentrification - particularly in regards to the artist presence in communities in transition. The cultural divides within our city are great, as they are in most American urban centers, and the MAPP still has a long way to go to reach it's goal of being genuinely, and broadly, embraced by its surrounding community - but the dream is there, and it is still evolving.

ORGANIZING & INTENTION

We hope, that as more people get involved in organizing the MAPP, that each considers deeply its basic premise - that to be not only an open and inclusive platform for artistic expression, but equally, if not more importantly, a space of exchange among the diverse, and often divided, communities that reside within our neighborhood and city. This is an ideal, towards which we strive, but will, invariably, always fall short. But it is a pursuit that offers the most extraordinary moments of grace, when we are lucky enough find ourselves present for an intimate experience of a poem, a song, a dance, or any moment in which human creative expression dissolves the psychological/emotional walls that divide us.

WHERE THE MAPP HAPPENS

While the MAPP "zone" is framed within the neighborhood from South Van Ness/Potrero, and 20th/26th Streets of the Mission District, we welcome the participation of artists from all over the Bay Area, and beyond. The MAPP's intention is to be neighborhood oriented, but, also, to integrate a broad spectrum of regional, national, and international artists. This intention is a reflection of the fact that even within a micro-neighborhood of the Mission District, one can find cultural roots that extends to an expanse of nations and cultures world-wide. There are many examples of city-wide and neighborhood-wide art "walks". But, for the MAPP, we feel it is important to point out that we are not seeking to replicate these models. The MAPP is not intended to be a city-wide, or even Mission-wide initiative. The MAPP seeks to go deeper, rather than broader, in its reach. Its challenge is to help shape a shared sense of community within a neighborhood that is both culturally rich and yet continuously troubled by the process of gentrification - the disconnection and dislocation of people along cultural and economic lines. For this matter, the MAPP focuses on forming a greater density of small and informal locations, all within sight-distance of one another, and/or within a short walk. While some are commercial locations, most are not. Many are residential, and each has its own character and community. Such a model invites a feeling of neighborhood intimacy and familiarity that is rare in the context of urban living. We ask that new organizers take time to closely consider these aspects of the MAPP, all of which has made the MAPP so unique. For the MAPP, it is a post-art-walk world.

HEALING CULTURAL DIVIDES

Art, and the creative process in general, have long been known for their regenerative capacity, for healing and transformation on both an individual and collective level. The MAPP is a project that places the arts at the center of our neighborhood as a means facilitating community interaction across cultural divides. It is apparent to us that our community is fractured into groups divided by race, national origin, economic status, educational opportunities, lifestyle and sexual orientation. We recognize that these groups can often have conflicting interests and/or are simply unaware of the actual realities that each face.
It is within this context that we set our intention to explore creative means of facilitating genuine human exchange in an intimate neighborly environment. At a time when impersonal urban existence has become the norm for city dwellers, the MAPP endeavors to invoke a neighborly spirit of familiarity and community, where greetings are exchanged, even among strangers, as they pass.