Yesler Terrace residents have a community meeting every month, and every month, artist DK Pan attends it and documents for an ongoing project.
Yesler Terrace residents have a community meeting every month, and every month, artist DK Pan attends it and documents for an ongoing project. VIDEO STILL

In this week's paper, I write about artists who have been commissioned by Seattle Housing Authority to work on the land where the historically significant low-income housing project Yesler Terrace is being dismantled and turned into a mixed-income project termed just "Yesler."

Other artists have made independent projects about Yesler Terrace, none as great as 2015's short film Hagereseb by Zia Mohajerjasbi, watchable online for free.

DK Pan's documentation of Yesler Terrace today is another form of filmmaking entirely. He's gathering scenes as they happen, and figuring out where they will land, and what form they will take.

But in the meantime, these documents are revelatory small films online. Once a month, when the longtime residents at Yesler Terrace have their community meetings, Pan attends and records the whole thing. Probably very few people will ever watch this. But it is important that it be captured. You only have to watch 10 minutes of the October meeting (or, really, 5 minutes starting at about 5:00 in) to understand viscerally the meaning of Yesler Terrace (hang in there for a few minutes; everything takes longer because the exchanges must be translated into multiple languages).

"The buildings, the high-rise, are not for us," one man says, at around 5:00.

Then there is this.