WORTH YOUR SALT
Worth Your Salt, was an immersive installation and ongoing research and interview project hosted by the Please Touch Garden, an urban community space located at 165 Grove St. directly adjacent to San Francisco City Hall. This installation and performance series focused on the stories of San Francisco’s Bayview Older adult community choir and their intersecting histories with the landscape along the Bay’s shore. Worth Your Salt, a temporary, hot salt room filled with organic materials mined from San Francisco’s shores, such as salt and eucalyptus, which have a history of medicinal and healing qualities, was erected onsite. Inside the sauna, participants were invited to view and listen to a series of interwoven and fragmented interviews from choir members. Visitors could listen while members of the choir recount their personal narratives as they unfold within San Francisco and the continually changing physical landscape of the city’s edges. Outside of the sauna, a video work documenting choir members singing to the shores of San Francisco was projected onto an building. Combined, these different installation elements provide a small glimpse into the shore’s history, its evolution as it related to industry and defense, and it’s ultimate healing capacity to affect those who live alongside it.
Over the course of this two week installation, three Older Adult Community Choirs, directed by Maestro Curtis, performed toning and sound healing workshops. Artist, Kim Zitzow, also led a series of movement workshops in direct response to the site of the Garden and its positioning within the city.
This project was generously funded by the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Intersection for the Arts, and Grants for the Arts.
