Related Tactics
The future now, 2023
Archival posters
First commissioned by the University of San Francisco’s Thacher Gallery, The future now was a site-responsive public art project that was exhibited in the Bayview in 2020. The Related Tactics collective spoke with Bayview community members about their lives and dreams. These conversations and Related Tactics’ research on the intersection of Black San Francisco histories and contemporary American politics informed the production of 45 text and image posters that offered poetically phrased questions, calls to action and meditations in English, Chinese, and Spanish. Bright, colorful and oriented as pictures mounted on the Third Street corridor’s building fronts and windows, the posters engaged pedestrians and worked as an active and accessible neighborhood archive. Extending Related Tactics’ objective of creating a trans-disciplinary platform that made space for community voices and thoughts, we present a selection of The future now posters at the Museum of Craft and Design, itself a Third Street presence.
Related Tactics’ members are multidisciplinary artists Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nathan Watson. Hailing from Seattle, Honolulu, and Louisville, respectively, the three met while studying in graduate programs at California College of the Arts. Related Tactics was formed in 2015. Since then, they have made creative cultural work designed, as they describe it, to “confront systemic and institutional racism or inequities that influence our immediate socio-cultural lived experience.” The Bay Area is integral to the spirit of Related Tactics. This is our collective’s home, and the root of our networks, feeding us as we feed into it.
Carlson is an Associate Professor of Printmaking at the Corcoran School of Art and Design at the George Washington University; she lives in the Washington, DC area. Teruya is a grant writer who lives in Oakland. Watson is a Visiting Lecturer in the 3D4M program at the University of Washington’s School of Art, Art History, and Design in Seattle. He plans to return to the Bay Area this summer.
Photos courtesy of Henrik Kam.
ARTIST BIO
Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nate Watson) is a multidisciplinary collective of artists of color creating work together at the intersection of race and culture. Formed in 2015, Related Tactics projects utilize a variety of modes— sculpture, writing, print, and social engagement, and curatorial tactics—to explore the connections between art, movements for equity & justice, and the public. They create opportunities to gather, amplify, and connect a multiplicity of voices in our work that draws upon community-facing, site-specific research to invite reflection, social action, and envision a more just society.
Their projects have been exhibited and supported by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Southern Exposure Gallery. Related Tactics was announced as Kala Art Institute’s 2021-2022 Print Public artists, were awarded the Craft Research Center Artist Fellowship by the Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, and a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Initiative grant.
