Get on the Bus

About Get on the Bus
Get on the Bus will consider the experience, culture, and meaning of our nation’s least-loved transit mode. Stigmatized as the transit of last resort—the realm of the poor, elderly, and infirm—the bus nonetheless moves millions of people every day. On the cutting edge in some cities, marginalized in others, the bus evokes a surprising range of emotions for people, planners, cities and artists. Get on the Bus will begin to illuminate the world of the bus as a ubiquitous but neglected arena of city life.

An open call drew submissions from seven countries. Selected works are drawn from throughout the US, as well as Canada, Mexico, and the UK, and include fine art, documentary photography, lighthearted urban interventions, and a range of film and video projects. In addition innovative, historic, and artistically modified buses are anticipated to be on display at various times during the exhibition. CITY|SPACE is working with local transit agencies, including San Francisco MUNI, AC Transit, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and expects to collaborate with them on a variety of projects, including the donation of buses to the exhibit.

Get on the Bus will be on display at Levin Brothers Warehouse located at 2255 3rd St, in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood. This striking 9000 square-foot renovated warehouse space, at the convergence of 3 major bus lines and adjacent to the San Francisco’s new third street light rail line, has been kindly donated for the exhibition by the Martin Building Company, and features a large yard that can accommodate several buses.

A panel discussion, entitled "No F#@*ing Way! Selling America on the Bus," will bring together marketing and public relations professionals to consider how bus transit might be creatively reimagined to broaden its appeal.

A second panel presented with SPUR and entitled the Future of the Bus, will consider the rapidly unfolding future of the bus, as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems and new hybrid and fuel cell technologies alter the landscape of urban transportation.

CITY|SPACE will also present an evening of bus-related film, in the spirit of Asphalt Shorts, CITY|SPACE's popular annual festival of short films about cities and urbanism.

An additional component of Get on the Bus will be the publication of an anthology entitled "Get on the Bus: Short and True Tales of Bus Travel". The anthology will be self-published in conjunction with the exhibition, with future plans to develop a book proposal and approach publishers.

Get on the Bus is supported in part by generous grant from the LEF Foundation and by the donation of exhibition space by the Martin Building Company. CITY|SPACE is a fiscally sponsored project of Intersection for the Arts.


About CITY|SPACE
CITY|SPACE is a cultural organization dedicated to exploring the built environment through events and exhibitions in a wide range of disciplines, including design, visual art, cultural landscape research, and film. CITY|SPACE cuts across disciplinary boundaries to draw on a wide range of work: aesthetic, documentary, architectural, and beyond, that converges around the city as we find it, make it, and struggle with it. By engaging Bay Area audiences in complex and challenging questions about the cities we inhabit, we hope to deepen our communities' experience, understanding, and stewardship of urban places

CITY|SPACE was founded in 2002 by a group of urban designers, planners, artists, and enthusiasts of the urban landscape. Since 2003, CITY|SPACE has presented Asphalt Shorts, an annual program of short films on cities and urbanism projected on a parking lot wall in Downtown Oakland, creating an impromptu public space in a forgotten corner of the city. In 2004, CITY|SPACE mounted the exhibition Urban Legends: The City in Maps at Oakland's Oaklandish gallery.

For more information about CITY|SPACE visit: http://www.city-space.org