Ongoing PROJECTS

  • The Opulence Project
  • Unpleasant Design
  • Inside Iroquois
  • Memorials Project

The Opulence Project

The Opulence Project: A project of Deirdre Visser, Gabriel Christian, and the Skywatchers Ensemble 

The Opulence Project is an ongoing performative photography series that attempts to create a Tenderloin folklore, inviting local residents to dream up the most opulent, lavish, powerful, and regal versions of themselves.

Unpleasant Design

Unpleasant Design is a performance intervention and video project led by Malia Byrne and jose e abad about hostile design in the Tenderloin. The artistic team explores hostile design elements in the neighborhood and encourages their interrogation, mapping, and redesign, while also choreographing creative intervention. The Ensemble collaborated with filmmaker Irene Gustafson to create a short video about unpleasant or hostile design entitled reimagining the city as our own: towards an architecture of inclusion. Watch the video trailer here.

Inside Hotel Iroquois

In 2019 Skywatchers partnered with residents and staff of the Iroquois to explore the hotel’s present-day conditions and resident policies, as well as the architectural and social history of the neighborhood. What emerged from a six-month process of sharing stories was an intimate, guided performance experience called Inside Hotel Iroquois.

The Memorials Project

The Memorials Project is an annual artistic intervention and processional led by Choral Director Melanie DeMore honoring those who died on the streets in SF each year. Hundreds of people from around the Bay Area gathered to carry handmade banners bearing the names of each of the deceased to the steps of City Hall, making a typically unseen and tragic reality visible.