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Leslie Dreyer

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Leslie Dreyer is a Bay Area-based artist, educator and organizer. She designs creative action, art, and media strategies for social justice initiatives, largely focused on global real estate speculation, hyper-gentrification, displacement, and the tech industry's impact on housing and inequality. The collaborative work often fuses public installation,[1] guerrilla theatre, tactical media and smart mobs.[2]

Career and work

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Unsanctioned public installation on the site of a burned-out affordable housing complex in San Francisco. Designed by Leslie Dreyer and co-organized with San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition, Coalition on Homelessness, housed and unhoused residents.

Dreyer was the director of Parallax View: The Political Economy of Images for Cinematexas International Short Film Festival from 2003 to 2007[3] and also curated international and political films for Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2006 and 2007.[4] She was a writer for ArtThreat from 2007 to 2010.[5] In 2013, she directed and edited the documentary Ghosts of the River: Out of the Shadows for ShadowLight Productions.[6]

Throughout 2011, Dreyer was an organizing artist with US Uncut's San Francisco chapter,[7] which used creative direct action to draw attention to corporate tax avoidance and its links to social spending cuts.

From 2013 to 2016 she was an artist and member of Heart of the City Collective,[2] which initiated the San Francisco tech bus protests.[8] This fast-growing network of private shuttles that ferry tech workers to Silicon Valley are linked to rent increases and evictions in neighborhoods they serve.[9] The first action resulted in over a hundred articles in local and international media[10] and set off a series of tech bus blockades led by both Heart of the city and other grassroots groups. According to Berkeley professor Abigail De Kosnik, the resulting protests can be viewed as "synecdoches for the anger that many San Francisco residents feel towards technological privilege and its facilitation of a widening of a class divide in the city."[11]

Since 2015 Dreyer has worked as an artist and anti-eviction organizer in collaboration with Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco,[12] San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition,[13] and Coalition on Homelessness.[14] Dreyer has organized collaborative creative interventions at AirBnB's headquarters,[15] in a burned-out affordable housing complex,[16] and outside tech conferences.[17][18][19]

Dreyer also lectures and organizes workshops focused on housing justice, techno-capitalism, surveillance, displacement, tactical performance, creative direct action, and media strategies rooted in on-the-ground movement work.[20][21][22][23] She has presented work at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,[24] the DeYoung Museum,[25] Berkeley Center for New Media,[26] and the San Francisco Art Institute[27] among others.

Awards

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  • 2018 San Francisco Arts Commission Grant in collaboration with Coalition on Homelessness for Stolen Belonging, a year-long initiative working in collaboration with San Francisco homeless residents to archive and spotlight personal items stolen and trashed by SF Police Department and City workers during their ongoing homeless sweeps.[14]
  • 2016 and 2018 UC Berkeley American Cultures Engaged Scholarship Artist in Residence.[28]
  • 2015-16 East Bay Fund for Artists Grant[29] for Boom: The Art of Resistance gallery show
  • 2014 The Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Arts Award, SF Bay Area, CA[30]

References

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  1. ^ "Site of a Mission Fire Becomes a Political Art Site". Mission Local. 2016-11-05. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  2. ^ a b "Murphy Cadogan Artist Interview: Leslie Dreyer". sff.org. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  3. ^ Dunbar, Wells (September 22, 2006). "Parallax View: The Political Economy of Images". www.austinchronicle.com. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  4. ^ "44th Ann Arbor Film Festival program" (PDF). media.aadl.org. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  5. ^ "Art Threat". Art Threat. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  6. ^ Ghosts of the River: Out of the Shadows, retrieved 2018-12-07
  7. ^ Kilkenny, Allison (2011-03-28). "US Uncut Fights to Secure America's Future". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  8. ^ McClelland, Cary (2018-10-09). Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393608809.
  9. ^ "Tech Bus Stops and No-Fault Evictions - Anti-Eviction Mapping Project". www.antievictionmappingproject.net. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  10. ^ "Press". HEART OF THE CITY. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  11. ^ De Kosnik, Abigail (2014). "Disrupting Technological Privilege". Performance Research. 19 (6): 99–107. doi:10.1080/13528165.2014.985117. S2CID 220340395.
  12. ^ "HRCSF Staff". Housing Rights Committee of SF. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  13. ^ "Is it Possible to Fight Gentrification and Win?". KQED. 2016-09-08. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  14. ^ a b "San Francisco Arts Commission FY2017-2018 Panel Rankings" (PDF). sfgov.org. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  15. ^ Booth, Kwan (2015-11-02). "Protesters occupy Airbnb HQ ahead of housing affordability vote". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  16. ^ "Site of a Mission Fire Becomes a Political Art Site". Mission Local. 2016-11-05. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  17. ^ rleisher. "iUncut: Taking on Apple's Tax Dodge". Yes! Magazine.
  18. ^ "Reclaim Disrupt". Reclaim Disrupt. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  19. ^ "'Dissidents' Tackle Displacement and Surveillance in Two-Part Exhibition". KQED. 2015-06-03. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  20. ^ "Tech Profiling, Policing, and Disruption of Our "Sanctuary Cities" | Academic Innovation Studio". ais.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  21. ^ "Toward Real Sanctuary Cities - 4/2 | The American Cultures Center". americancultures.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  22. ^ "The Right to the Creative City: Urban Technopolotics – Stanford Arts". Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  23. ^ "2017 Summer Symposium // I Object!". www.sfai.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  24. ^ "'Take This Hammer' Reveals Power of Art and Activism at YBCA". KQED. 2016-03-22. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  25. ^ "Reclaim Disrupt with Leslie Dreyer". de Young. 2015-07-14. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  26. ^ "Revisited: "Reclaim Disrupt" Installation - News/Research - Berkeley Center for New Media". bcnm.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  27. ^ "How We Party: Join us for Overnight Strange!". Bay Area Society for Art & Activism. 2014-10-21. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  28. ^ "ACES Artist In Residence | The American Cultures Center". americancultures.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  29. ^ "East Bay Fund for Artists Grantees – EBCF". Retrieved 2018-12-08.
  30. ^ "Murphy Cadogan Artist Interview: Leslie Dreyer". sff.org. Retrieved 2018-12-08.


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