Pick up the phone. Dial (415) 364-1465. Wait for instructions. “Walk, bike, or take public transit to the northeast corner of Liberty Street and Dolores. Listen to the sound of the first tree along Liberty Street. Stand here for a bit and think about rattlesnakes.”
Got it? Now do it. Sound mundane? It’s supposed to be.
Mundane Journeys is a weekly, self-guided tour provided by San Francisco-based artist Kate Pocrass. Part tourism and part art, Mundane Journeys encourages callers to explore their city, all while finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Those compelled by a particular task are then invited to leave their comments and observations on the hotline’s answering machine.
“It’s really fluid with my life because I take a lot of walks,” says Pocrass, who estimates she’s taken hundreds upon hundreds of walks in her lifetime, turning a keen eye to the overlooked each time.
Recent weeks have included instructions for visiting the XOX truffle shop in San Francisco’s famed North Beach district where only one truffle should be purchased, though it is predestined that you will be tempted to buy two. Excavations, via the 31 Balboa bus line, to a dumpling house in the city’s Outer Richmond as well as a trip to Mission High School to observe a set of blue double doors (each door a shade off from the other) also have been recorded.
Pocrass started the hotline in 2001 for an art show where none of the works could physically be inside the hosting gallery. For four months, the duration of the exhibition, Pocrass would update the hotline on a weekly basis. Though the response to the hotline ebbs and flows, the artist continues to record new tasks simply because she likes it.
The project has since spawned two books, bus and walking tours, and, for a brief time, a second hotline in Orange County as part of the biennial. Her favorite journey is still a trek out to the Bay Bridge when construction first began on a planned new span.
“They had all these construction spray-paint paintings on the beams,” Pocrass recalls. “I didn’t know what they meant construction-wise.” Saying as much in her weekly recorded instructions, one particular fella left his name and number, offering to decipher the engineering hieroglyphics for her. Pocrass was touched.
– Tiffany Martini
Mundane Journeys
Kate Pocrass
San Francisco Hotline: (415) 364-1465
www.mundanejourneys.com