Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Singing Pig!
Karaoke Fundraiser
It's the Year of the Pig, and KSW is throwing a karaoke party to celebrate and strengthen KSW. Come by and raise your voice, raise a glass, and raise some funds for our beloved multidisciplinary APA arts organization.
Important note to the mic-shy: singing is NOT required! But we will have other activity options available, including playing cards, board games, drink specials, and simply lounging. So stop by KSW's space180 and soak up some tunes and ambiance with us!
What: The Singing Pig! Karaoke Fundraiser
Date: Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
Time: 7pm - 1am
Location: KSW's space180, 180 capp street, @ 17th street, san francisco
Cost: $5 - 20 sliding scale
Saturday, February 24, 2007
APAture 2007 Retreat
Have you been pining away for KSW's APAtures of yore?
Wishing you could get whipped back into the excitement, the drama, the creativity of the annual Window on the Art of Asian Pacific Americans?
Or perhaps you've heard about APAture and want to learn more about it?
Photo credit: David Huang, poeticdream.com
What: KSW's APAture 2007 Retreat
Date: Saturday, February 24th
Time: 10am - 4pm
Location: KSW's space180, 180 capp street, @ 17th street, san francisco
Cost: free
More information: Please rsvp at sam@kearnystreet.org
The APAture retreat kicks off KSW's annual APAture season. APAture is an annual multidisciplinary arts expo & festival showcasing the work of emerging APA artists in the SF Bay Area. For the past 8 years now, APAture has presented over 100 artists each year at this (now) 10-day festival. The 9th annual APAture will take place in September 2007.
If you are AT ALL interested in planning APAture this year--regardless of what kind of experience (if any) you've had in the past working with KSW--the APAture Retreat is your chance to get involved and learn more about this event. Please RSVP.
Questions, comments, concerns? please contact Sam at 415.503.0520 or at sam@kearnystreet.org.
For more information on KSW-Next, please click here.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Fetish: the Culture of Fear & Desire
opening reception
a new visual exhibition produced by KSW
On Wednesday, February 28th, San Francisco-based arts organization Kearny Street Workshop presents the opening reception for a new visual exhibition, Fetish: the Culture of Fear & Desire, that runs February 28 – May 5, 2007. What is a fetish and what forms can it take? What kind of power does a fetish have, in terms of how we perceive our surroundings, and how we act in our environment? In the cultural context, fetishes are often based on projections and myths ascribed to The Other; fantasy and desire stemming from idealization or exotification. Desire can morph into fear and the development of stereotypes. Where does desire come from, and how do we desire? What are the consequences of this kind of desire? How can desire imprison us?
Featuring work by Noritaka Minami, Dorian Katz, Shizue Seigel, Matthew Abaya, Yun Bai, Derek Chung, Minette Mangahas, Truong Tran, and Erin Ng, this group exhibition seeks to ask and investigate these questions from surprising, challenging, and illuminating perspectives.
Event: Opening Reception for Fetish: the Culture of Fear & Desire
Date/Time:
Opening reception: Wednesday, February 28th , 2007; 7 - 9.30pm
Exhibition runs 2/28 – 3/5; gallery hours are Tues & Thurs, 2- 6pm, and Saturdays 12 – 4pm, or by appointment.
Location: KSW's space180, 180 capp street, @ 17th street, San Francisco
Cost: opening reception: $2 - 5 suggested donation; no one turned away for lack of funds.
Gallery hours: free
Info: contact KSW, 415.503.0520, info@kearnystreet.org, www.kearnystreet.org
About the artists
Matthew Abaya studied filmmaking in the Bay Area, while earning his degree in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. He screened his quirky surreal films at various film festivals nationwide. Abaya has also contributed a live video installation/performace with poet Barbara Jane Reyes’s “Olive Oil” His film “Embrace Madness” was nominated for the 1st AMMY 2000 awards for his short film. His last film vampire film “Bampinay” deals with fear and Asian fetishisms through Philippine folklore. He is currently working as an at risk youth video instructor while writing his first feature length film.
Yun Bai was born in Beijing, China and migrated with her parents to the United States at age five. Although she grew up in a traditional Chinese setting, she was also heavily influenced by Southern American culture, due to her Southern upbringing. Consistent themes found in Yun’s work include explorations in identity, social stimulus/experiments, a fascination with science, a feminine comment, sarcasm/mockery, and sometimes, influence from urban culture. She graduated from Agnes Scott College, a private women’s college in Atlanta, Georgia in 2001. She has shown both nationally and internationally, and has been reviewed by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, ART PAPERS Magazine, Pittsburgh Pulp, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh City Paper, Creative Loafing Atlanta, Art Asia Pacific, LA Weekly (Top 10 Emerging Artists 2006) and was recently included in New American Paintings Pacific Edition, No. 67. Yun also creates artwork under the alter ego, “Yunny Bunny”. Yun’s favorite past time is laying on the nude each with a coconut rum pina colada slurpee. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Derek Chung is a photographer, painter and co-founder of Tactile Pictures, an eleven-year old digital design studio in San Francisco. At Tactile, he created the Tactile12000 MP3 DJ software, featured in
Print Magazine's Digital Design Annual. He helped create the Global Arcade web site in 1998 at an artist residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. In 2000, he helped produce the Whirled Bank
website to critically analyze the role of the World Bank in global poverty. Derek has been a visual art curator for KSW's APAture and space180 gallery since 2003, and was a member of the screening
committee for the 2006 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. He is also a drummer for the Hei Gu Percussion Ensemble, and is studying kung fu at the Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy.
Dorian Katz has had two solo exhibits at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts and been included in group shows at Spaces Gallery, Live Worms, ProArts, Fresh Meat @ ODC Theater and SOMART in the Bay Area and A.I.R. Gallery in New York. Her illustrations have been featured in Instant City, Tikkun, Other and Morbid Curiosity magazines. Dorian has curated art exhibits for LVA: Lesbians in the Visual Arts, The Exiles and the National Queer Arts Festival. She is a member and performer with the erotica writing collective, Dirty Ink.
Jeffrey Lei (collaborating artist with Matthew Abaya) is a Bay Area comedian and the director of the short film “Take-Out” and “Dick Ho: Asian Male Porn Star”. His rise to obscurity began when he abandoned his struggles in engineering school to pursue a film degree at San Francisco State University. Jeffrey has directed two independent films and acted in others and can be seen telling bad jokes at your local coffee house. His acting credits include a very small miniscule role alongside Maggie Cheung in “Sausalito”, directed by Andrew Lau, and can also be spotted carrying Chinese take-out for five seconds in Will Smith’s latest tear fest, “Pursuit of Happyness”.
Minette Lee Mangahas has trained as an apprentice in traditional East Asian calligraphic brushwork for seven years with eminent Japanese calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi. In 2004, she emerged with One, a series of calligraphic and conceptual interpretations of the Chinese character for the number one. In 2006, she exhibited works from her book Runaway Moon. Illustrated without words in sumi-e (ink painting), it tells the story of a horse who thinks she is being chased by the moon. A metaphoric tale about fear and freedom, the twenty-two paintings were set to music and movement, and performed by the Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble to sold-out shows at the SomArts Cultural Center in November 2006. Her calligraphy was most recently featured on the cover of the recently released video game "Red Steel" (Ubisoft 2006). An educator and curator, as well as an artist, she has worked internationally with refugee communities in South Asia since the 1990’s, and has spoken at national symposiums and conferences about mentorship and community arts. She worked as a Guest Artist and Associate Director for VALA (Visual Arts/ Language Arts) before developing the mentorship, student grants, and community student fellows programs at the California College of the Arts Center for Art and Public Life. In addition to her work in the visual arts, Minette is also engaged in the performing arts.
Noritaka Minami was b orn in 1981, in Osaka, Japan. He received his
B.A. in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkely, in 2004. He lLives, works and makes art in San Francisco.
Erin Ng is a printmaker/drawer who received her BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley in 2005. She has done illustration work internationally, producing a series of book covers for Tamil publications from the
literature department of the French Institute of Pondicherry, India. Her work explores issues of identity, race, gender, Orientalism, desire, and culture-clash with imagery inspired by traditional ink brush painting, cartoons, textile motifs, Japanese woodblock prints, and the growing visual vocabulary built upon everything else in the world around her. As her prints have begun to trickle from paper to fabric, she is anxious to embark upon graduate study in textile design in the fall.
Riyako, (collaborating artist with Matthew Abaya) originally from Kanagawa, Japan, is studying abroad in the San Francisco Bay. She recently completed a Burlesque Workshop and performance at the John Simm Center for the Arts. Riyako is interested in performing her burlesque moves at future events as well as making erotic art.
