On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) selected four artists to make works about this historic disaster from a contemporary perspective. Margaret Tedesco was one of four artists commissioned to make new work for the SFAC Exhibit “The Dust Never Settles.” Tedesco proposed an edition of ten copies of ten flip books (100 flip books for the 100th anniversary year). Her initial point of departure, Tedesco said, was historical eyewitness accounts written by individuals who lived in San Francisco at the time of the quake. However, she proposed to represent the psychological meaning of the disaster by using excerpts, not from historical documents, but from contemporary films selected from a range of film genres including adventure, science fiction, horror, and thriller. Her real interest, she said, was in exploring “the possible states one might experience under a catastrophe…where control of our surroundings is no longer available.”

On a Saturday afternoon in late July, I visited Tedesco’s flip books at the SFAC Gallery in the War Memorial Performing Arts Center on Van Ness Avenue. Like most flip books, these works are diminutive (each volume is 4 ½ inches wide and 3 inches tall). At the SFAC Gallery, they are carefully laid out in a row on a white wall shelf. From the outside, each of the ten books is identical, bound in a glossy brown paper cover saying “nineteen hundred o six – two thousand o six.” It seems clear that we are supposed to look at these ten volumes as part of a single work. The ten books are for sale as a complete set of ten volumes and in her proposal, Tedesco refers to the “accumulated viewing” of the fractured narrative contained by the set of books. However, it is equally obvious that both the ordering of the different flip books and, to an unknown extent, the narrative sequencing of the images within each book has been mysteriously disrupted. All we can piece together is that the world has been shaken out of its accustomed order and that we are not in control of the forces that have been unleashed. In one book called “magnetic fields” a young Jane Fonda in glittering sci-fi costume grapples on the floor with unknown forces. In another book—“a feeling coming on”—a young Richard Chamberlain fiddles with his car radio while driving in the rain. As water begins pouring in through cracks in the radio casing, we realize that the car has been submerged in water, and a final scene of drifting hands and floating fruit suggests that we are viewing a scene of death by drowning. In another flip book titled “jump jump” a young woman smiles as she jumps from a high place in view of a crowd that is horrified (and yet perversely excited) by the dangerous scene and the possibility of disaster or death.

I found the experience of flipping through Tedesco’s books unsettling—which I think is exactly what she intended. Although the moving pictures (both in flip books and in their big sister—the cinema) are evidence of our increasing ability to manipulate technology, the sense of control is illusory. The complex inner and external dramas encompassed by personal experience, history, and film remind us that the illusion of order and control can be disrupted at any time by unpredictable events.

Although there were three still images from the source films displayed on the wall in the Arts Commission Gallery, I wish that Tedesco had provided a few more references to the historical eye-witness accounts or film extracts that provided the source documents for her flip books. In particular, I am curious about how she compiled her flip book versions of the film narratives—whether she selected the images to go into the flip books through an ordered sampling of the film stills (i.e. one still from every “x” feet of film) or whether she thought about how the stills would flow together in the flip books.

Sidebar: Flip books are small hand-held booklets with drawings or photographs on each page that, when flipped, create the illusion of moving pictures. They were patented in 1868 and enjoyed popularity as novelty items at the turn of the 20th century. To a later generation, they were well known as giveaway prizes in Cracker Jack boxes. In recent years, flip books have gained some popularity as a format for artist books. In 2005, the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, Germany put on a comprehensive international exhibit, “Daumenkino: The Flip Book Show” that documented the history of the genre and featured work by contemporary artists and filmmakers. For more information about flipbooks visit http://www.flipbook.info

June 15 – August 26, 2006
San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco; also on display at the San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch, Book Arts and Special Collections Center.