It's hard to click a link these days without seeing another story about San Francisco's class divide. The artists and working class are being priced out, and everyone blames the techies first and the real estate industry second. But at 55 Ninth St. downtown, a couple of artists, a few foundations, and, gasp, a developer are collaborating on a surrealist happening held in San Francisco's long tradition of public weirdness, and a grand piece of site-specific art.
From a distance, And My Room Still Rocks Like a Boat on the Sea (Caruso's Dream), looks like 13 floating pianos. From underneath, the viewer might wonder if the pianos are falling. The installation created by Brian Goggin and Dorka Keehn is large, impressively intricate, and deeply symbolic. It's also covered, or under construction, most of the time.
The piece will have its official unveiling Sunday, in what the artists are calling "a very magical, realist, Dada-esque opening."
Goggin is probably best known in San Francisco for Defenestration, his installation on the old Hugo Hotel at Sixth and Howard, which features couches, tables, and a refrigerator hanging from the side of the condemned building. This isn't the first time he's collaborated with Keehn. The pair won an award from Americans for the Arts for Language of the Birds, their sculpture of illuminated books shaped like flying birds that hangs over Columbus and Broadway.
Both artists tend to prefer large, site-specific installations with deep ties to their location, and Caruso's Dream is no exception. It was inspired by the famed tenor Enrico Caruso's stay in the Palace Hotel during the 1906 earthquake. Caruso was said to have woken up in his room after performing in Carmen at the Mission Opera House to find his bed "rocking as though I am in a ship on the ocean." The experience was so traumatic that he vowed never to return to San Francisco.
Goggin and Keehn see Caruso's Dream as a real-life manifestation of what might have gone through Caruso's mind that night. Pianos were chosen as the great cultural symbol of the time, and tie in to the fact that Caruso was a musician. The body of the pianos was made from chicken wire safety glass, a type of glass common in factories during the early 1900s. The artists also see a connection between Caruso's early adoption of sound recording, and the piece's location in a neighborhood known for technology companies.
"It all relates to the images he would have seen while he was in San Francisco," Goggin said.
The pair will attempt to recreate some of those images at the "unveiling happening" on Sunday.
Participants are asked to come wearing masks, early 1900s attire, and to bring FM radios. Caruso's original recordings will be broadcast during the ceremony on the FM dial at 90.9, a station once used by the Palace Hotel. A team of aerialists coordinated by Karl Gillick will reveal the piece, and Mauro ffortissimo of the Sunset Piano project will bring 13 real pianos to conduct the ceremony. Veronika Krausas will perform a work composed for the occasion, il sogno ad occhi aperti di Enrico Caruso, on ffortissimo's pianos.
The idea is to use the power of the music, the artists, and the audience to reconnect with Caruso's lost dream.
"I'm thinking of a story that relates to Borges or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where things are just slightly different than they normally are," Goggin said. "It's almost as if the voice that is related to this dream was held captive in this in-between state, and then will be conjured up by this happening."
Conjured spirits or not, the ceremony will have a lasting effect. Caruso's Dream will be on display permanently on the new AVA apartment complex at 55 Ninth St. The pianos will stay on Market Street after the unveiling, and Caruso's music will continue to broadcast from 90.9. Anyone with a radio will be able to stop by, tune in, and watch the lights follow along with Caruso's Dream.
The unveiling event, it's lingering effects, and Caruso's Dream were funded by San Francisco's one percent tax for the arts, and grants from the Kenneth Rainin and Black Rock Arts foundations. The piece was commissioned by the developer of AVA, AvalonBay Communities. Keehn was quick to credit them for having an interest in art as well as real estate.
"AB has been amazing," she said. "They went for a very crazy, wild art project -- I don't know if another developer would have done that."
The Caruso's Dream Unveiling Happening starts Sunday, February 23 at dusk (around 5:45 p.m.) at 55 Ninth St., S.F. Admission is free; for more information visit blackrockarts.org.
