Site for Flower Interruption before action on morning of May 21,
2003, Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers
(painted with acrylic), performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market
Streets, San Francisco, CA
Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers
(painted with acrylic), performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market
Streets, San Francisco, CA
Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers
(painted with acrylic), performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market
Streets, San Francisco, CA
Woman picking up flowers, Flower Interruption (2003),
cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic), performance/installation,
Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers
(painted with acrylic), performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market
Streets, San Francisco, CA
Jody picking up flowers, Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper
flowers (painted with acrylic), performance/installation, Jones/
McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Jody picking up flowers, Flower Interruption (2003),
cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic), performance/installation,
Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Jody picking up flowers, Flower Interruption (2003),
cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic), performance/installation,
Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Bug driving through flowers
Woman and Jody, Flower Interruption (2003),
cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic), performance/installation,
Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Jody with flowers, Flower Interruption (2003),
cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic), performance/installation,
Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic), performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco, CA
Cars driving through
Mentone Hotel, Jody’s home, San Francisco, CA
Entrance to Mentone Hotel, Jody’s home, San Francisco,
CA
Jody’s room after installation (detail), Mentone Hotel,
San Francisco, CA
Asian Art Musuem, Flowers collected at Interruption and now installed
in the Museum's Education office
Thank You to the following for their help with the project:
Aaron Noble, Jill Weinberg Pfeiffer, Jacob Pfeiffer, Lisa Russ, Kevin Chen, Paige Cowett, Reanne Estrada, Julio Morales, Jennifer Wofford, Courtney Fink, Jeanne Batallones, Ly Nguyen, Chris Durazo, Ada Chan, Carolyn Castaño, Andrew Schoultz, Carolyn Ryder Cooley and Doug
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Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic),
performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco,
CA
In 2002/03 I launched Flower Interruption, a four-part series that
developed as a playful response to the monotony of the everyday
and business-as-usual routine. Flower Interruption was a strategy
for breaking up the expected. It was also a rejection of corporate
values and the surface aesthetics of capitalism. Working in opposition
to corporate advertising, the interruptions offered a respite in
the landscape from the onslaught of profit-driven messages, which
have become the backdrop for defining global culture and lining
the pockets of an elite few.
Beginning in the summer of 2002, I began hand-painting brightly-colored
paper cutout flowers. I used acrylic paint on heavy printmaking
paper that I glazed with a glossy "environmentally-friendly" polyurethane-type
coating. In total I made eight-hundred flowers that ranged in size
from 5" x
5" to 5' x 5.'
The flowers were installed in four locations: Tokyo, Japan, Ubud,
Bali (Indonesia), Yogyakarta, Java (Indonesia), and San
Francisco.
The slick technicolor flowers were a striking contrast to the grit
and gray of the city and a surreal addition to the tropical jungle
of Bali. They appeared as though they had been air dropped in by
a cartoon plane.
Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic),
performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco,
CA
The sites and the development of the project influenced one another
throughout the process. I had never been to Japan and the opportunity
arose when I decided to return for a second time to Indonesia (I
had traveled to Ubud, Bali and Yogyakarta, Java in 2001); the layover
was booked for Tokyo. Japanese art and culture have fascinated
me and had an influence on my work for a long time, including my
study of woodblock printing. Ubud is a popular tourist destination.
It's also a world of contradictions and complexity - a lush tropical
terrain with a Hindu culture that has a long tradition of music,
performing arts and craftwork; and a booming consumer market through
which the music, arts, and rituals that were once held sacred have
become products and services created and performed for profit.
Yogyakarta is my favorite city in Indonesia, though my first impression
of Yogya was that it was an armpit - very polluted (the entire
city has a brown/gray tinge to it), very overpopulated, and very
poor. The US corporate presence is really only directly visible
through the billboards that you see in Yogya for cigarette ads
(as well as McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and Coke) and they're everywhere.
San Francisco has been my home since 1994. My primary mode of transportation
is walking. I walk 2-3 miles a day on average and I've become very
familiar with the various routes from Nob Hill (where I live) to
the South of Market (where I work with a number of non-profits)
to the Mission District (where I have a studio and spend a good
deal of time).
Because of time constraints, I spent the month before I left for
Indonesia (and Tokyo) in 2002 painting the flowers I would take.
I also had to take space and weight into account and since I needed
to travel light, I was only able to carry a small portfolio with
me. Therefore the flowers that I took were no larger than 14" x
18" and there were about 300 of these. I was able to paint
larger flowers while I was in Yogyakarta since I was spending more
time there and I was able to paint at my friends Samuel Indratma
and Ade Tanesia's home. I also had to be careful with rationing
the flowers out in Tokyo and Ubud so that I would still have a
critical mass in Yogyakarta. The interruption in San Francisco
was the largest and most planned out of the four. The flowers had
a much greater range of size (up to 5 feet across) and there were
500 for one site. The SF project also became much more involved
with the planning and creating phase, which took over eight months.
Flower Interruption (2003), cutout paper flowers (painted with acrylic),
performance/installation, Jones/ McAllister/Market Streets, San Francisco,
CA
While the general format and process
for the Interruptions were the same, each event was quite distinct
with new narratives created by the culture and environment it was
presented in and the people who happened to stumble upon it. In
addition the overall project (planning, creating, and presenting)
had many different components and incarnations to it - from my
own fantastical imaginary world in which I envisioned these flowers
as playful superpower creatures taking on the world of the mundane
to the unpredictable, yet playful and benign covert actions, to
the actions themselves and the afterlife that grew from them. I
chose to install the work on the ground (with the exception of
the monkey forest outside of Ubud) in the roadbed so that the flowers
became impossible to avoid and provided an unexpected and unfamiliar
interface to negotiate the urban terrain. The flowers were stuck
to the ground with heavy, double-sided foam tape. In all of the
Interruptions (except Tokyo) outfits were worn during the performance/installations.
In Ubud and Yogyakarta, I wore a very loud, sixties-style pant
suit with platform sandals, a flowing hairpiece and large sunglasses.
In San Francisco the Interruption crew wore orange traffic vests
(also worn by SF Department of Public Works street crews).
Jody’s room after installation, Mentone Hotel, San Francisco,
CA
San Francisco – The
Flower Interruption in San Francisco took place on Wednesday, May
21, 2003 at 6:15
am at the intersection of Jones, McAllister, and Market Streets.
The site is surrounded by the now abandoned Hibernia Bank, the
San Francisco Islamic Society, the Renoir Hotel (an SRO), a doughnut
shop, and 24-hour check cashing shop. I worked for many months
under the plan that I would install the flowers in the intersection
of 7th and Market Streets. The location changed when I spent several
early mornings (4:00 - 7:00 am) at the site and realized it would
be impossible to pull off with the level of activity even at 4:00
am, including a good number of cop cars driving through the intersection
and/or parking on the sidewalk of the Civic Center area. The new
site at Jones, McAllister, and Market Streets was only half a block
away, however because of the street formations (Jones and McAllister,
which are perpendicular to each other, are both one way streets
and the intersection is the end of Jones and the beginning of McAllister)
the area is relatively deserted.
The planning for the San Francisco Interruption
was an eight month process, which took on a life and world of its
own. In addition to painting the 500 flowers, I made many site
drawings with the flowers appearing as colorful surreal creatures
exaggerated in proportion and dominating the black and white environment
around them. I also photographed and made graphic drawings of the
Interruptionists. Finally, I spent a considerable amount of time
planning out the action itself: spending time on location to note
the activity, lining up a crew of Interruptionists to assist in
the installation, and developing an Action Plan for the morning
of the Interruption.
The actual Interruption went quite smoothly and much faster than
I had anticipated. I had 17 assistants, who had all received the
Action Plan prior to the event. However, as it turned out, the
process did not go exactly as planned and instead felt like five
minutes of total chaos. We put on our vests and collectively scrambled
to get the flowers down. There were a couple cars that drove through
and we had to move for, but no cops during the installation. When
we finished, it felt quite strange because the area was so quiet
and deserted except for the flowers and there we were, a small
crowd in our vests, unsure of what to do next. We took off our
vest and just stood around waiting. There were a few other people
hanging out around the area - mostly street people and a few early
risers on their way to work.
As the morning moved on, a cast of characters rolled through and
responded to the installation. A street cleaner on foot with a
broom showed up briefly and went off on how "gay" the
whole thing was, an older lady walked through and stopped to take
it all in and then picked up just one flower to take with her,
several folks in wheelchairs wheeled through and pulled them up,
a gay couple with their Chihuahua wanted it to pose for pictures
on the flowers, a dad driving his daughters to school yelled out
how it was the best thing he'd seen in the area. At times the area
seemed like a three ring circus, especially when two men in wheelchairs
were both in the middle of the intersection trying to pick up the
flowers while dodging traffic.
My favorite interaction was with a woman named Jody who showed
up and started pulling the flowers up. She took off with one load
(and a couple of pillows) in her arms and then returned a while
later to collect more. We learned that she was on her way home
from a methadone clinic when she came upon the flowers. She lives
a few blocks away on Jones and Ellis in the Mentone Hotel, which
recently had a fire in it. She was delighted to come upon the flowers
and learn that they were free for the taking so that she could
take them home to use to cover the fire damage on her walls. I
asked if I could come over to take pictures of the installation
when she finished putting it up and she said I could come over
the following day. I did, and when I got to her room she had left
a note for me saying: "Megan, Larry's still here. I didn't
know he had 2 days off. He checked out at noon but he's spending
tonight. I don't mean to run you around you know waste your time & bullshit.
He'll be gone by noon tomorrow. I then go to lunch at St. Anthony's
and home by 3:00 then 5:00-6:00 across the street I eat dinner
at Glide. I'm sorry! I want you to see it." I went back on
Friday at 3:00 and Jody was home -- she had hurried back from visiting
a friend to clean her place up for us and she said she still wasn't
done adding everything to the installation that she wanted, including
a bunch of cutout cat pictures (she has four). Her space was quite
small (just one room and a bathroom), yet very homey -- and now
it's over the top with the flowers.
We left the Interruption at about 9:30 to get some breakfast. When
we returned at 11:30, the whole thing was gone. I learned later
that the cops had shown up and blocked the entire intersection
off to bring in a clean up crew and a crowd had gathered and everyone
had an opinion. I heard this from someone who works at the Asian
Art Museum, who I learned later had come upon the installation
and ended up picking up a bunch of the flowers to take back to
the office with her (they're now up around the education office
at the Museum). I also heard from someone else that several weeks
later they saw a car in the area with one of the flowers on the
dash board. The most recent, story came through my friend Glen
who had contacted a real estate office to inquire about office
space at 7th and Market. He asked the agent he spoke with if she
had seen the interruption. She hadn't, but a man on the street
gave her one of the flowers and she now has it up in her office.
The work lives on.
Other Projects I have done that relate to this work include:
Produced by Marina Perez Wong for Megan Wilson
Bikes
Becaks
Flower Interruption Yogya Indonesia
Flower Interruption Bali Indonesia
Flower Interruption Tokyo Japan
Bungas
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