Opening Reception: Friday, July 4, 5-8pm. Artist Remarks, 6pm. Tickets
Exhibition Run: July 4 – August 23, 2025. Tickets
On July 4th, 1975, Ant Farm, a Bay Area-based, radical art and architecture collective, drove a customized 1959 Cadillac Eldorado across the parking lot of the Cow Palace and into a pyramid of burning TV sets. The infamous performance (and subsequent video work) was named Media Burn, and its embers still radiate. It was Ant Farm’s desire to somehow jar loose the tightening grip mainstream media had on a mesmerized public through an aggressive, hyperbolic, and satiric art gesture.
This July 4th, Ant Farm commemorates its 50th anniversary of Media Burn with the opening of a new multifaceted exhibition at 500 Capp Street, curated by Steve Seid in collaboration with the artists. This celebratory exhibition includes a rich display of documentation surrounding the outrageous performance, including a wide array of Ant Farm souvenirs, press releases, architectural drawings of the site, and extensive documentation of the customized Cadillac, known as the Phantom Dream Car. Dozens of photographs, taken by local photographers, will adorn the walls of 500 Capp Street. The video work will be offered in a specially prepared screening area. Unique to 500 Capp Street’s exhibition will be a new installation by original Ant Farm members Chip Lord and Curtis Schreier that specifically highlights the Phantom Dream Car and its radical customization. There will be an opening reception with the artists on July 4, 2025, Friday, 5-8pm.
“The importance of Ant Farm’s audacious performance lingers to this day as a seminal example of Bay Area conceptualism, as the marker of a rarely seen collective ambition, and as a reminder of the usefulness of potent images in the contestation of power,” says Seid, who has written extensively about the work.
A final special feature will be the installation of Curtis Schreier’s letterpress, used to print many of the original Media Burn artifacts. At the opening reception on July 4 from 5-8pm, gallery attendees will be able to reproduce the original Media Burn logo as a souvenir.