'The Haunt' takes over Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

A Halloween hangout is taking over Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The haunt has drinks, art installations, dancing, tarot readings, and more. It's all coming Halloween weekend. For more, we're joined by Aaron Wojak. He's a local artist and one of the creators of this experience. Thanks for being here this morning. Thanks for having me. Tell us about the Halloween haunt. This is the second year you've done it, but what are people going to experience if they go check it out? The haunt at YBCA is part haunted house experience, part kind of social IRL experience. The larger part of it is a kind of an open world of art installations made by working artists from the area. And then the other half is what you'll initially enter into. It has a DJ, a bar, tarot readers, and an information booth where you can learn more about Bat Witch Ghost. But there's art installations that are Halloween-themed, and there's a specific theme this year, techno-fantasy. How did you guys come up with that? What was the inspiration? The idea was to kind of shift, because last year, Forest of the Eye was our theme. But I wanted to kind of get out of the rickety, spooky, haunted house look and get more, do something new. So I went with a more futuristic theme, and also, you know, there's a lot going on in the world that we can work with there. Yeah, there's a lot of real-life fears about technology, so it's very apropos. Yeah, so it's a rich subject. What is your favorite? Give us a highlight of your favorite exhibit on that theme in this year's Haunt. There's a coffin-shaped waiting room where you'll be interacting with some live actors. There are many live actors, scare actors throughout. and there's a lot of projection you're going to see a lot of video it's there's going to be we're incorporating a lot of e-waste which is easy to find we try to use as much recycled and salvaged materials as we can in order to be environmental how difficult is that using things that we often think of as trash or something to be discarded and incorporating it into a spooky art installation? It's not too hard at all. It's just kind of a shift of mindset to look to the garbage can for your materials. It's a lot of cardboard, honestly, from television boxes and bicycle boxes. There's also a lot of foam packaging this year because it looks kind of futuristic. Yeah, that's true. And yeah, and again, there's a lot of cables that I'll be making things out of. All right. Yeah, you're with Bat Witch Ghost. It's an artist collective. Tell us about that organization and how it's involved in creating these displays. Yeah, Batwitch Ghost is a grassroots arts organization built on the foundation of the American Haunted House. Our mission is to provide paid opportunities for working artists in the Bay Area. And we started this about three years ago, and we had a really fun event. Our first one was just in the garage and kind of alleyway level of our apartment building, and it got a good write-up, and YBCA saw it and invited us to partner with them, and this is our second year partnering with YBCA. So the idea behind all of this really started with you and other artists saying, hey, let's do some sort of art-inspired haunted house in our home. Yeah, I saw the haunted house as a great platform for art making, And I just wanted to create a new opportunity for people and working artists in the Bay Area to come together and experience the magic of art. Yeah, from your apartment basement to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, tell us when and where people can catch The Haunt. Yes, it is open Thursday, the 29th is opening night. It'll also be open for an afternoon and an evening show on the 30th and, of course, the 31st, Halloween. And is it for adults only or is it family friendly or both? It's both. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely kind of adults geared. I want it to be fun for myself and my peers, but I also want you to be able to bring your family. So the daytime show on Friday, it might be slightly tuned down, but honestly, I think it's a pretty good time. There's no gore. It's more fun than a heart attack scary. Yeah. Yeah. I like to say more psychedelic than psychotic. Okay. that seems very San Francisco right exactly Erin Wojak thanks so much for coming in and telling us about this and you are the creator of the Bat Witch Ghost Artist Collective one of the artists involved with the installations at the haunt at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and that's at the end of the month the 29th through the 31st correct all right you can check it out Thank you.