about the work

Survey: Renaming Bush Street, 2007-2008
Though San Francisco’s Bush Street most likely was named for J. P. Bush, who assisted Jasper O’Farrell in his surveys of the city in the 1840s, the potential associations with our 41st or 43rd president spurred Amber Hasselbring, Jerome Mast Grand and the design collective Corndog Brothers to form the Renaming Bush Street Project. As its name implies, the project sought to query San Francisco residents about the possibility of changing the street’s name. The respondents ranged from those passionately in favor of the idea to those deeply upset at the notion of altering the public face of the city in any way. By confronting our awareness of local history—or lack thereof—and our relationship to tradition, the artists urge us to consider our urban environment and its history as fluid, participatory and rewritable. They also underscore Americans’ often-willful ignorance of history, a condition that seems to characterize the current Bush Administration and contributes to our political missteps around the world.

For more information, please visit www.art-eco.org/renamingbushstreet.html or www.foldout.net.