Until Today: Spectres for the International Hotel
Jerome Reyes

Location: 868 Kearny at the International Hotel
Dates: Sept 3, 2010 to Dec 4, 2010, Wed-Sat 2-6pm
Opening Reception: Sept 2, 2010 7:30-10:00pm

Exhibition Curator: Julio César Morales

Until Today: Spectres for the International Hotel is a constellation of site-responsive spectres made in meditation of the I-Hotel’s charged socio-political history, its vernacular monuments and the everyday lives of the former and current residents. Converting what is now a senior community center in the heart of downtown San Francisco into a project space, this excavation of materials and phantoms engages in a series of situations, spatial projections, and live events to unfold throughout the duration of the exhibition. Provision of senior services will be held concurrently with the show's run, each informing the ongoing design of the project.

Until Today is an exhibition of events, sculpture, video, and architectural renderings that investigate I-Hotel sit(e)ings of (post)urban trauma, and reimaginings of land-use. Reyes' approach in the use of materials suggests possible architectural repair of the I-Hotel and as well as speculates on the significance of the I-Hotel struggle in translocalized imaginaries.

The I-Hotel, officially known as the International Hotel, was built in 1907 and served as a low-cost residential hotel located at the corner of Kearny and Jackson Streets in downtown San Francisco. The I-Hotel was also home to the hungry-i nightclub and the Mabuhay Restaurant, which later became the Mabuhay Gardens or “The Fab Mab” known as San Francisco’s Punk Rock palace. Targeted for demolition in the mid-1960s due to urban renewal efforts, the largely Filipino and Chinese American elderly residents of the hotel banded together with Bay Area activists to halt the evictions. However, the final residents were evicted on August 4, 1977 and the site remained empty until its 1981 demolition. After a long struggle, a new building opened in 2005, containing senior housing, a community center, and an archive of photography and ephemera commemorating the original I-Hotel.