As a response to worldwide shelter-in-place ordinances due to COVID-19, For You has launched a new project that brings artists and elders together. Our desires are simple: connect artists and elders while we’re all sheltering in place, create and exchange art in the spirit of gift-giving, and inspire new forms of distant socializing. In our many meetings, we’ve discovered our share in experiences of isolation, restlessness and uncertainty. As a curatorial project, our aim is to collect documentation of these exchanges across the great divide and see the emergent shape of that cooperative effort. We imagine these gifts coming together, on the other side, as a portrait of our creative-mutual-aid.

THE WELCOMING I-III @ KQED HQ

DECEMBER 12th, 2021

The Welcoming is a series of shared, public rituals that build off our Artist & Elder pairings. For KQED, The Welcoming [I-III] includes a drag act performed by El Beh and Morningstar; a sermon delivered by Clarice, a Dominican Sister, accompanied by Crow’s woodworking; and a red carpet rollout for Harriet who stars in an animated short. In collaboration with Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly we brought Harriet and many other older adults and artists together with the goal of providing engagement and support during the pandemic. Through The Welcoming, we aim to emerge from the isolation of the pandemic by putting audiences into the hands and imaginations of our elders.

NINE FUCKING STEPS TOWARDS FORGIVENESS

Nine Fucking Steps Towards Forgiveness is a score for invoking the spirit of Jonnie Zheutlin. The title of each step is an instruction, accompanied by our own take-up, sometimes with Jonnie herself. This documentation is not intended to be viewed sequentially as a performance. Rather, we created a score for you to perform Jonnie; to invoke forgiveness in your own time. 

Commissioned by Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 19 Commission and developed at Berkeley Rep’s 2021 Ground Floor residency.

THE GREAT AAPI ELDER PRINT OFF

June 26-27th, 2021

As AAPI artists working in social practice and performance, we’ve launched a social engagement poster project for AAPI artist-activists to connect and creatively engage with AAPI elders living in San Francisco. Join us for a weekend of poster printing, live and online events during The Great AAPI Elder Print Off | Saturday, June 26th and Sunday, June 27th 2021.

Glenn Stultz: Out My Window

March 2 - 31, 2021

Spike’s Coffees and Teas

4117 19th St. San Francisco, 94114

Glenn Stultz moved to San Francisco from a small town outside Shreveport, Louisiana in 1967, seduced by the counter-cultural energy and political organizing. He never left and nurtures a deep love of this city he’s chosen to make home. Two years ago he started to teach himself to draw and more recently to paint, spending many hours learning about post-Impressionist and early modern art movements.

Court Theatre X Experimental Performance Initiative: A Bridge, A Gift.

We worked with Hyde Park Art Center to identify 10 elders who have ties to Chicago’s Southside. With the Experimental Performance Initiative and Court Theatre (University of Chicago), we identified 10 artists working across different disciplines. We paired those artists and elders together and offered creative prompts for their exchange. Drawing on dramaturgy from Court Theatre’s production of The Lady from the Sea (directed by Shana Cooper, choreographed by Erika Chong Shuch, and cancelled due to COVID), we looked for beacons of hope in our connections with strangers.

First Response

March - October 2020

In making this work, we’ve learned that listening is a valuable mode of creation; that everyone has a story, desire, or way of being in the world that is worth responding to. As a response to worldwide shelter-in-place ordinances due to COVID-19, and with awareness that many elders are at risk in terms of infection and the compounding hardships of isolation, we’ve launched a project that brings artists and elders together. Currently, we have 30+ artist/elder dyads working together:

• In some cases, artists are developing creative-gifts for their elders.

• In other cases, artist-elders are working in collaboration with younger artists. 

• Some are family members discovering each other anew. 

• Some are strangers, meeting for the first time; our team functions as a dating service between the artist and elder, and we meet with both parties separately to determine potential matches.