TO CELEBRATE THEIR organization's 40th anniversary, the curators at Intersection for the Arts invited 11 artists to create work exploring the relationship between architecture and memory, while paying particular attention to the institution's continued commitment to cultivating critical perspectives on social and political issues. For Stories in the Walls, Su-Chen Hung installed speakers directly into the gallery's walls that quietly play interviews with past and present members of Intersection's audience and staff, along with other archival material from the past four decades. The walls literally speak, but the low volume of the recordings requires viewers to listen actively to what they have to say. For Hung, history does not present itself directly but requires our interest and effort to unearth its truths. However, we contribute to history (and so are responsible for it) whether we actively engage in its conflicts or passively acquiesce to external forces. To demonstrate the point, Hung has also installed a tape recorder in the wall that documents and plays viewers' comments and conversations as further contributions to Intersection. Carolyn Ryder Cooley draws upon the gallery's prior function as storage space for a furniture shop by hanging a chair and window frames in the building's back stairwell and projecting a silent, black-and-white video on the wall. The past (re)appears in Cooley's installation as a psychological site, weighted with memory and loss, which continues to haunt the present despite its physical disappearance. And Stephanie Johnson has constructed an installation with photographs of Intersection's three different San Francisco sites printed onto distinct large canvas sheets opening onto one another like a Russian nesting doll. A camera installed in the ceiling records images of people entering the gallery and projects them onto the entrance of Intersection's original North Beach location, depicted at the center of the piece. Seeing oneself in Johnson's piece, it becomes immediately (and uncannily) clear that one has entered into not only a physical space but also one held open by a community's commitment to a common project over the course of four decades. The show also includes work by Conrad Atkinson, Claudia Bernardi, Kush, Julio Morales, Jos Sances, Tracey Snelling, Geddes Ulinsskas, and Stephanie Wong. Wed.-Sat., noon-5 p.m.; Tues. by appt., 446 Valencia, SF. (415) 626-2787. (Clark Buckner)