If you happen to catch a glimpse of Salesforce Tower just after midnight this month — and from dusk until dawn during Pride Week — you will see the giant head of drag queen Peaches Christ, and a video of her silhouette dancing.
While video artist and curator Jim Campbell, who is in charge of the work we see nightly atop the tower, has worked with queer artists for Pride Month before, this is the first drag collaboration we're seeing on the Salesforce Tower's LED crown.
Campbell invited Peaches Christ, who performs under that name but also makes campy horror films under his given name, Joshua Grannell, to create a video loop that will be appearing between midnight and 1 am throughout the month, and then all night during Pride week.
"Never in my wildest dreams as a wee queer attending my first big Pride celebrations in DC & NYC in the early 90’s did I believe that I’d someday get an opportunity like this to celebrate PRIDE in 2024," Peaches says in an Instagram post. "For the installation, I set out to recapture my feelings of those early Pride celebrations I attended where things were celebratory, transgressive, beautiful and political all at the same time. I wanted to turn the Salesforce Tower into an inferno of drag, disco, and the glittery fight for equality. You can both dance AND demand!"
The video loop, as you can see below, shows the silhouettes dancing, as well as Peaches' own mug, blinking and looking ready to speak, or lip sync. As the Chronicle's Tony Bravo puts it, "like the Great and Powerful Oz about to issue a proclamation." Or like "the world’s largest Felix the Cat clock."
"It’s completely surreal seeing myself up there, especially the image of eyes looking around the city," Peaches tells the Chronicle.
Previous special guest artists have had their work featured in that post-midnight hour, or for limited runs, like San Francisco artist Therese Lahaie, who had a piece called "Lightbirds" in April 2023 on the tower's crown that was meant as a call to action for protecting seabird habitats and the impact of warming oceans on birds.
The tower's crown is covered in 11,000 RGBW LEDs that play video after sunset, 1,000 feet above downtown San Francisco. Campbell has been creating works and curating others for the display since it first turned on in 2018.