Category: blog

Starting August 6, 2026 atasite.org began to fail miserably. What we thought would be a quick fix has turned into an archive project, with our key messages about us, our programs, and how to engage and support slowly coming back online while we learn about who we were in 2009, 2014, 2020, and yes, February 4, 2026. It seemed like we were restoring website navigation but indeed we were reviewing, kind of at 3 in the morning, the evolution of ATA programs from its 1986 origins as hands-on place to claim commercial media tools for non-commercial, and often subversive, purposes to it’s place today as a hub for culturally-aware, underground media and experimental art, and a supportive community for the exchange of non-conformist ideas

While the website spins back up, we continue to provide an accessible screening venue and gallery for the presentation of programmed and guest-curated screenings, exhibitions, performances, workshops and events.

To all of you who reached out to us to let us know we were throwing website errors, thank you. It’s good to know in a world of platform messaging that this site still serves an important purpose for our collective day-to-day.

You made it happen for ATA in November 2025, and we made every single of your dollars holler for eight months:

• Rent? Made it. We’re current.
• Back rent? Made a huge repayment of $60K in June.
• What’s left? $15K by August 1. This will leave ATA with a manageable last payment of $5,801.59 by October 1 that unlocks our landlord’s rent forgiveness of $27,810.00.

Now’s the time to throw down in any amount to help us come correct with the landlord. Please donate today and ensure that

• ATA’s programs continue to pop with new partnerships, new audiences, and beloved community. In our San Francisco Grants for the Arts application we just dropped in June we counted 123 programs since July 2025, 344 artists earning from our box office, and a wildlly conservative, yet fair estimate of 9,302 of you good people reached through the screening room and storefront galleries of 992 Valencia. Thanks to you ATA’s mission to be the place for the cultivation and promotion of culturally-aware, underground media and experimental art rings true.
• ATA’s radical collective, with no paid staff and operating with a stalwart principle of consensus, continues to connect with the expertise to turn 992 Valencia into a permanent cultural asset held by the people. We’re on it! Want to be part of it? Holler.

Curious why we’re coming back at you? We get it! Short answer: nothing is easy.

Long answer: ATA absorbed responsibility for rent and operating expenses during pandemic losses of artist studio sharing income and a forced, protracted closure to accommodate a still-uncompleted seismic retrofit project. Accompanied by significant downturns in institutional support starting in 2023, a reduction in programming, and escalating operating costs, ATA continued to program for the community at its peril. While the San Francisco arts eco-system continues to build back and new, ATA, like many arts organizations we love and respect, trails the growth and prosperity of other sectors. Despite the challenge, and at the request of community, ATA is committed to being itself, sustainably.

This is the moment! Please give!

image from Susan Wolf’s December 2025 Almost-Public / Semi-Exposed installation. photo by AP/SE co-curator and ATA Boardmember Ariel Zaccheo