Talks: 2024 Videos

Primary Source

Shaping San Francisco hosts Public Talks on a variety of topics, usually on Wednesday nights, about 18 times a year. Our topic themes vary, but we've grouped them over time into these categories: Art & Politics, Ecology, Historical Perspectives, Literary, and Social Movements.

Since Covid-19 disrupted our use of the 518 Valencia Street gallery for our Public Talks after March 2020, we started hosting outdoor "Urban Forum: Walk and Talks" which turned out to be as or more popular than our original Public Talks series... Many of them were recorded on video which you can see on the video pages covering 2020-2023. This page may include some Walk & Talks from 2024 but will be primarily indoor Talks hosted at 518 Valencia.

May 8, 2024

Art& Politics: Hughen/Starkweather

“Conversations, interviews, and deep research are a significant piece of their process for every project they take on. Feeling a ‘responsibility to educate the viewer, to give them a window in,’ they have, over the course of the last decade, developed a nuanced strategy for avoiding what many artists fail to acknowledge as a problem: leaving their audiences out in the cold. . .When the colors and shapes of a nonrepresentational work of art rearrange themselves into remembrance or recognition, magic happens. Hughen/Starkweather describe this as ‘closing the space between abstraction and language.’” —Excerpt from Selene Foster article on Hughen/Starkweather's Adjacent Shores, April 2016.

April 24, 2024

History of Monopoly (the game)

David Giesen brings his extraordinary collection of original 1907 Monopoly game artifacts to anchor his presentation of the fascinating political history of the game, with roots in the anti-monopoly politics championed by Henry George in the 19th century. Following the presentation we will have a GAME NIGHT!

April 10, 2024

Life and Death in a Great American City

Cities grow, cities change. Some businesses and institutions thrive, while others die off and are replaced. In this joint presentation of words and images, Lorri Ungaretti (Vanished San Francisco), and Alec Scott (Oldest San Francisco) speak to the history of our great, sometimes troubled city, what's been lost over the years, what's stuck around. The discussion ranged widely, from science to religion, from food to drink, from sports to shopping, from sex to death.

March 26, 2024

Cultivating Food Resilience and Combating Global Challenges

The French Punk Gardener Eric Lenoir presents a discussion on territorial food resilience, combating biodiversity collapse, and addressing global warming effects.