The Prophecy TV - We create the future together.
The Prophecy TV is back in action!
The Prophecy TV is a crowd-sourced art project that began in 2007 to collectively design the future. People in bars, at events, in high schools, and at Burning Man were asked to imagine an awesome future, and then to draw a picture of something in that future. These drawings were collaged into scenes together on 18" tall, 10' long scrolls of canvas and are viewed using the wooden Prophecy TV set (built by Jon Zensius).
The TV is on display in the SKY Exhibit at the Drawing Room Annex until March 26, and you can draw your visions to be included in future episodes. Scroll down to see some of the drawings I’ve already collected.
I will be giving an artist talk at the gallery on Thursday, March 16.
The TV set spent years at a friend’s house (thank you Wendy and Katie!), and has moved out just in time to make room for Nooch the Pooch.
Visitors view the Prophecy TV at the opening of the Drawing Room SKY exhibit.
Installation view at the Drawing Room Annex.
All of the collaboration worksheets are getting filled up at the exhibit. I will keep replacing them!
These visions of the future were drawn at the Drawing Room Annex gallery SKY exhibit:
Visions from students at Ida B. Wells High school:
A little history of this project:
I brought the Prophecy TV to friends’ parties (thank you Sarah and Oren).
The TV was on display at a tango party hosted by Donald Pribor in 2010 during a Mission Arts and Performance Project art walk.
I brought the Prophecy TV with me when substitute teaching at public schools in San Francisco, especially Galileo High School.
I would even add painting to the TV show at the schools.
At Burning Man, I would approach groups in the middle of the desert and ask if they wanted to see a TV show.
I brought the Prophecy TV to the Kidsville Camp for a showing.
Sewing a border on the Prophecy TV scroll is still one of my only successful uses of the Sewing Machine.
I gave showings of the Prophecy TV, and collected drawings, at the art market in UN Plaza organized by the San Francisco Arts Commission.
An earlier version of the Prophecy TV set was installed for a period at Buck Tavern (Chris Daly’s Market Street bar).
Tree Lined Street
acrylic on canvas, 30” x 24”, 2010
This is a painting of 24th Street in the Mission District that I traded to the Zensius family in exchange for a custom wooden “TV” set to display the prophecy canvas scrolls.
Eventually, I put the Prophecy TV aside to focus on the City of Awesome series of paintings. But now the Prophecy TV is back.
I’m inspired to spend so much time on this project because I want art to be useful. Imagining a better future is a first step to achieving it. Steve Lambert of the Center for Artistic Activism says it well in this speech about Utopia: