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CounterPULSE Mission & HistoryCounterPULSE provides space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators, serving as an incubator for the creation of socially relevant, community-based art and culture. CounterPULSE acts as a catalyst for art and action; creating a forum for the open exchange of art and ideas, catalyzing transformation in our communities and our society. We work towards a world that celebrates diversity of race, class, cultural heritage, artistic expression, ability, gender identity & sexual orientation. We strive to create an environment that is physically and economically accessible to everyone. CounterPULSE was formally created in 2002 when 848 Community Space (848) merged with its fiscal sponsor the Bay Area Center for Art and Technology (BACAT). This partnership combined 848's strength as a cutting-edge performance space with BACAT's expertise in literary, historical, and media arts. In 2005, CounterPULSE secured a ten-year lease at a new, larger, ADA-accessible facility in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. 848 was originally founded in 1991. BACAT was started in 1985. In this way, for over fifteen years the organizations comprising CounterPULSE have played a key role in the arts ecology of the Bay Area by providing resources, support, and space for artists, activists, and culture creators. 848 Community Space played a unique and significant role in the SF performance community since the early 90's. No other single space has supported a comparable breadth of performance, queer art, improvised dance, cutting edge lit and word, and contemporary ritual. 848 hosted the first performances or premieres of many of SF’s most exciting and successful dancers and choreographers. 848 also hosted San Francisco’s longest-running Contact Improvisation Jam, and has been a key site in the global network of improvised dance and somatic experimentation. With a special focus on women visual artists, 848 nurtured emerging and risk-taking art for over a decade, and has been a pioneering venue for experiments in sexual liberation, hosting a diverse crowd of artists, performances, rituals, workshops, and parties. Responding to an increasingly alienated society, 848 was a home to all manner of soulful and participatory celebrations from weekly early morning meditations to raucous pagan festivals to intimate healing circles. CounterPULSE retains 848’s classic slogan: “we have done and will continue to do almost anything.” Since 2005, when CounterPULSE re-located to a bigger space, BACAT's pre-existing projects have flourished within the broader, multidisciplinary public space provided by CounterPULSE. Some fiscal sponsees, such as the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and the Rockin' Solidarity Labor Chorus, have enjoyed continuous support from our growing administrative staff. Shaping San Francisco has expanded its presence considerably since the doors opened on CounterPULSE in 2005. Not only has the project steadily proceeded towards its next online versions, the ability to use the CounterPULSE theater has given rise to our popular series of Public Talks, starting in 2006 and continuing to the present. The Talks have allowed us to invite in members of many other San Francisco communities to discuss the issues that shape their lives, both historic and contemporary. For example, an early Talk covered the Philippine-U.S. relationship, with a focus on San Francisco, highlighting the long-term presence of a dynamic and large Filipino community here, originating in the imperial seizure of the Philippines by U.S. militarism at the turn of the 19th century. Another Talk revisited the sordid history of "black eviction" through redevelopment of the Fillmore in the 1960s and 70s, providing historic context for today's renewed efforts to use redevelopment to change the population of Bayview-Hunters' Point. Augmenting the indoors discussions, Shaping SF director and former CounterPULSE Board President Chris Carlsson regularly leads a series of award-winning bicycle history tours, covering labor, ecology, transit and dissent in four-hour excursions. The CounterPULSE facility has also been converted twice annually into a theatrical dinner club to host our biannual "Slow Food Feast of Fools and Friends." CounterPULSE and Shaping San Francisco have embraced the slow food agenda, working in our own way to promote new relationships between local food producers and urban diners, wrapping up the educational and culinary experience in a wild theatrical experience.
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