“Streetopia’s projects were futuristic, idealistic, historically sensitive, and surprisingly practical. They offer enough ideas to keep anyone who cares about public life, culture, and art busy for the next decade.” – Chris Kraus

“Streetopia asked how artists might intervene against systemic oppression rather than just offering window dressing.” — Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, LA Review of Books

“Streetopia is a squat, dense little brick of a book, loaded with colorful photographs and reproductions of documents from the exhibition... Reading Streetopia will prepare you to think about what such an exhibition would entail, and why it’s so necessary.” — Seattle Review of Books

“Lyle played an integral role in trying to keep radical politics and messy, sometimes desperate utopian dreams of equality and creativity alive, even as those ideals in San Francisco became swallowed by startups and tech wealth.” — KQED

STREETOPIA

BOOKLYN (2015) Edited by Erica Dawn Lyle. Includes essays by Lyle, Rebecca Solnit, Chris Kraus, Sarah Schulman, Chris Johanson, Sam Green, Daphne Gottlieb, A.C. Thompson, Renny Pritikin, Amy Franceschini, Antonio Roman-Alcala, Jesse Drew, V. Vale, Kal Spelletich, James Tracy, Isaac Jackson, Amos Gregory, Roxy Monoxide, Eve Ekman, Joey Alone, and The Water Underground. Interviews with Ernest Callenbach, Ivy Jeanne McClelland, Sy Wagon.

After San Francisco's new mayor announced imminent plans to "clean up" downtown with a new corporate "dot com corridor" and arts district--featuring the new headquarters of Twitter and Burning Man--curators Erica Dawn Lyle, Chris Johanson and Kal Spelletich brought over 100 artists and activists together with residents fearing displacement to consider utopian aspirations and plot alternative futures for the city. The resulting exhibition, Streetopia, was a massive anti-gentrification art fair that took place in venues throughout the city, featuring daily free talks, performances, skillshares and a free community kitchen out of the gallery. This book brings together all of the art and ephemera from the now-infamous show, featuring work by Swoon, Barry McGee, Emory Douglas, Monica Canilao, Rigo 23, Xara Thustra, Ryder Cooley and many more. Essays and interviews with key participants consider the effectiveness of Streetopia's projects while offering a deeper rumination on the continuing search for community in today's increasingly homogenous and gentrified cities. 

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