Short Film "3020 Laguna St. In Exitum" Is A Visual Memento For San Francisco

"Architecture is always dream and function: expression of a utopia and instrument of convenience." ~ Roland Barthes

The above quote from the French theorist provided inspiration for the recent film by Ashley Rodholm & Joe Picard, who worked on the mind-blowing documentary on Bots & Dolly's project, Box, that The Creators Project premiered in September.

Titled, 3020 Laguna St. In Exitum, the sentimental, ten-minute short is both a document and memento, as the directors captured the final days of the eponymous house that stood for 150 years in San Fransisco's Cow Hollow District before getting destroyed.

Prior to the de facto community landmark's decimation in Februrary 2012, it was turned into a private residence in which 9 artists (including Jeremiah Barber, Chris Fraser, Gareth Spor, and more) were asked to build site-specific installations throughout the house, using only materials existing within the building.

Taking inspiration from Barthes' quote, Rodholm and Picard assembled a crew and shot the installations in four days, threading together each artist's work in a somnambulistic-yet-coherent manner.

All nine art installations feel like individual vignettes in the film, yet when watched in sequence, they provide a consistent, vital statement about preservation, history, memory, the home, decay, and community. Some have called this project "Tool Belt Conceptualism," and that title might just be fitting.

Watch the film above, and revisit our Bots documentary on the never-before-seen, robot-powered projection mapping on moving objects:

For more information on 3020 Laguna St. In Exitum, check out the project website.

@zachsokol