SF Atlas live

Explorations For An Infinite City

A focus on the Mission, its stories, subcultures, changes, treasures, and landmarks

Infinite City atlas director Rebeca Solnit is joined by the Mission's own Adriana Camerena, researcher and writer of the North of Home, South of Safe map/essay, and by the Galeria's own Jaime Cortez, author of the beautifully illustrated Tribes of San Francisco map, to focus on the Mission, its stories, subcultures, changes, treasures, and landmarks. The trio will read, talk, show images, ask questions, and hope for stories from the audience.

ABOUT REBECCA SOLNIT: San Francisco writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of 13 books about art, landscape, community, ecology, politics, hope, and memory. Her new book is a departure from the previous 12 solo projects, a tall book of 22 colorful maps and 19 essays titled Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, made with 27 artists, writers, and cartographers. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she has worked with Native American land rights, antinuclear, human rights, antiwar and other issues as an activist and journalist.

ABOUT ADRIANA CAMARENA: Adriana Camarena is a Mexican from Mexico, complicated by an upbringing in the U.S.A., Uruguay, and Mexico. She became a resident of San Francisco in 2007. Adriana likes to talk to strangers on the streets of the Mission District. She has a professional background in law, society, and development studies. Her essay "The Geography of the Unseen" for "Infinite City: An Atlas of San Francisco" is a story of the stories told by men who stand on corners - day laborers and homies. Migrant day laborers take us South of the border to mega cities, rural towns, and desert crossings, while the homies (often children of immigrants) draw us into intimate home life in the Mission, and the struggles of assimilation that swirl with the possibilities of drugs, gangs, and education. The essay asks the reader to find their own space of belonging in the Mission District. Adriana is currently working on a book about The Mission, which is also based on the storytelling of neighborhood residents with an eye to the history of development of La Missión. She is collecting tales of borders, line-crossings, claims on physical space, and overlapping identity to provide a layered picture of an American working class immigrant neighborhood and its tribes.

ABOUT JAIME CORTEZ: Jaime Cortez's writing has appeared in over a dozen anthologies. He edited, among others, Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas, and the comix anthology Turnover, a finalist for Independent Book Publishers Award. His multidisciplinary visual art encompasses drawing, sculpture, photo and hybrid practices. His art has been shown at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum, Southern Exposure, The Lab, Intersection for the Arts and Galeria de la Raza. Jaime has worked and volunteered in the AIDS sector since 1990. He was the education coordinator for the 1996 display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington, DC. He subsequently served as Program Manager at Galería De La Raza and Arts and Culture Fellow at The San Francisco Foundation. Jaime has lectured on art and activism at Stanford, Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, University of Pennsylvania, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He received his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA at Berkeley. He is currently working on a short story collection slated for publication in 2009 by Suspect Thoughts Press.

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