Peeking mischievously out from behind this official-sounding name is a loose confederation of artists, activists, and geographers who have decided to band together and reclaim the Bay Area's public spaces. ("Kinda like the A-Team," the alliance's press materials explain, "but not all dudes.") Reclaim them from what? Here's an explanation, found on the group's articulate Web site: "Global capital has reached such a point that both the physical and intellectual landscape have been completely purchased. To exist today means to tread on the property of others. ... Like a minefield of manipulative codes, urban space has been designed to maneuver us from one point of sale to the next." The organization has a strong presence in Chicago as well, where activities have included guerrilla gardening and putting up signs encouraging loitering.
"DSLR West," as the group's San Francisco-based event is known, is designed to reconfigure urban spaces in order to put them at the service of citizens, not corporations (at least for the weekend). Organizers invite one and all to plan projects to achieve this goal, using a combination of art, street theater, protest -- and hide-and-seek, sardines style: One of the event's participants, Meg Duguid, plans to instigate a neighborhoodwide version of the traditional children's game. "I will be trying to cram as many people as possible into odd public spaces," she e-mailed us recently. Hers is just the kind of intelligent, off-kilter perspective organizers hope to foster.
