‘X Marks the Steps’ Field Trip

Saturday, May 11, 2019, 2:00–4:30 PM
San Francisco, CA

Stairwell’s (Carey Lin and Gabriel Gilder) led a speculative walking tour exploring San Francisco’s Golden Gate Heights and Sunset neighborhoods. Together we surveyed sculptural topiary, dabbled in esoteric cartography, and climbed public stairways for sweeping views of the city, Golden Gate Park and Ocean Beach.

Along the way, participants conducted a group signaling experiment using non-verbal, long-distance communication with a site-specific signal key and fluorescent flags and encountered skeletons dating back 150 million years (a.k.a. Franciscan chert) while playing a game of ‘I Spy’ atop Grandview Hill to locate local landmarks. We engaged in close listening on either side of a busy 19th Ave. intersection while forming a temporary human sculpture with our bodies and concluded our walk by adding new observations to complete our own personal maps of the Field Trip route.

‘X Marks the Steps’ began at the NE corner of the Sunset Reservoir and ended with a group visit to Sunset Reservoir Brewing Company.

Photos by Gabriel Gilder, Graham Holoch, Sarah Klein, and Carey Lin.

‘X Marks the Steps’ was presented in partnership with Intersection for the Arts as part of the Intersect SF Series supported with funds from Grants for the Arts.