Grass, Gravel, & the Space Between Trees: Unfolding, Merging, Marking time
September 13th / Music Concourse, San Francisco
JPMW’s Grass, Gravel, & the Space Between Trees: unfolding, merging, marking time is presented in collaboration with San Francisco Recreation and Parks, as a “dancescape” or movement installation integrated into the urban landscape of the Music Concourse.
2025 marks the fifth anniversary of the Covid Pandemic, when we found ourselves both compelled and limited to create and “perform” outdoors, and informally, in Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse, as a ritual; a non-digital dance archive; and a social experiment in intimate distance, solidarity care, and the sharing of public space, in an isolating time.
We return to the Music Concourse five years later with Grass, Gravel, & the Space Between Trees, to explore what cumulative, ongoing, and sustainable art practices might be at this juncture, with a different set of boundaries, concerns, and desires around collective intimacy and grief, embodied ecologies of place, public gaze, and the intersection (disruption/harmony?) of art in urban landscapes.
Concept and Direction: Jennifer Perfilio
Performance + Co-Creation: Shareen DeRyan, Irene Hsi, Chin-chin Hsu, Maya Mohsin, Phoenicia Pettyjohn, and ainsley e. tharp.
Original Sound Score + Performance: Clark Buckner
Original Text + Performance: Chin-chin Hsu, Maya Mohsin, Phoenicia Pettyjohn
DATE: Saturday, September 13th
SHOWTIMES: 3pm, 4:30pm, & 6pm
WHERE: Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park, SF
Meet at the Rideout Fountain here
WHAT TO EXPECT: Grass, Gravel, & the Space Between Trees unfolds over three adjacent areas of the Concourse. We invite audience to take agency over where and how they want to view the work. Please plan to enjoy the work the way you would otherwise enjoy the park; utilizing the already available park benches and grassy meadows as your access to viewing, and/or stroll, pause, move around in whatever form is accessible to you, in order to accommodate your needs and your viewing pleasure.
Run Time Approximately 1 hour
RESERVE YOUR SPOT: This is a FREE event, in collaboration with the SF Rec and Parks Department. Please RESERVE your spot below.
Photo Credit: Hillary Goidlell
Thank you to San Francisco Recreation & Parks
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
JPMW acknowledges that this creative process and performance occurs on Yelamu, the unceded, stolen, ancestral lands of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We honor the Ramaytush Ohlone for their long-lasting commitment to mother earth, and recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. This process has afforded us the opportunity to see, listen to, and be in movement with the surrounding urban nature of Golden Gate Park. We acknowledge and reflect on the land that was here before, and the original peoples who stewarded it with grace and care. JPMW makes an annual donation to the Yunakin Land tax, and encourages all non-Indigenous people living in this region to do the same. We acknowledge that no amount of money will undo the damage caused by colonization and land theft, but that this is one step in the process of repair. ramaytush.org