A 4″x5″ picture of two people riding skateboards brushing their teeth in a large warehouse with a camping tent.
In 2004 I helped start a punk/art warehouse collective space in Oakland, California called Huffin House. It was called that because it was located above a metal shop and the fumes would periodically come through the floor. We were 3 music/art projects (Yellow Swans, Grouper, and Eats Tapes) and two artists (myself and Jonh Blonco). The tent in the picture is where Jonh lived until he made a mobile living structure that was never completed.
I can’t imagine what kind of artwork I might be making now having not had the supportive and judgment-free space to be weird. It saddens me now that post-Ghostship fire and high cost of rent in cities has made spaces like this rare for other young weirdos.
Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork is an artist living in Los Angeles. Her hybrid practice combines work in sound installation, sculpture, and performance with the aim of reconfiguring the traditional hierarchies between audience, performer, and architecture. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and researched the history of acoustics and computer music at Stanford University.
