Trapeze Artists in the Mission

Bending Over Backwards by Susan R. Green 2010

Bending Over Backwards (BOB) is a collaborative community, interactive and interdisciplinary project of re-membering and creating histories of the Mission and SOMA. BOB explores the high wire act that thriving in today’s world can be, providing visual and audio metaphors for the tenacious, exhilarating and daring flights made in the attempt to realize one’s dreams in San Francisco in the 21st century.

Trapeze artists (painted on wood cut-outs and attached to the wall) are pictured in two neighboring places in San Francisco: the Mission and SOMA. The figures are shown in an electrifying peak moment of their craft, embodying a mixture of whimsy, pathos and a sense of extraordinary possibility in their gravity-defying feat. The trapeze artists’ success is possible only with great discipline, communication, strength, teamwork, vision and humor; echoing some of the skills necessary for a viable life in the city of San Francisco. (The SOMA portion has not yet been completed).

Susan Green is a visiting professor at the San Francisco Art Institute. According to their website: Susan Greene is an artist, educator and clinical psychologist. Her practice straddles a range of arenas, new media, and public art; focusing on borders, migrations, decolonization, and memory. Through these projects Greene researches the intersections of trauma, creativity, resilience and resistance. Recently Greene has developed interdisciplinary site-specific projects that make use of social networking technologies and cell phone audio programs. Greene’s projects stretch from the streets and prisons of the USA to refugee camps of Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza. She is a founding member of Break the Silence Mural and Art Project and has a psychotherapy practice in San Francisco.

The bottom line of this reads: To Political Prisoners Everywhere. In Memory of Jon Kaplan and Tricia Sullivan. To Hear The Mural Speak – 415- 325-4474.