18 Mighty Mountain Warriors

With so much talent and competition running the dance scene, 69 Degrees breaks through by living up to their name and entertaining the crowds with hip hop, street jazz and house. They have performed at a variety of shows, competitions, community events and nightclubs. With an eclectic mix of dance experience, 69 Degrees is able to choreograph their own routines. Jon, Saville, Geoffrey, Joi, Jamie and Maureen are working to gain recognition all over the state and hope to inspire other young multicultural dancers.

Matthew Abaya (APAture film curator/coordinator) is a Filipino-Mestizo (Hapa) American Filmmaker who is not afraid of using weirdness to expose the true nature of human existence in his films. His films can be best described as a genera bend between horror and science fiction with the avant-absurd. His previous film works consist of "Embrace Madness" (cine-poetic horror flick) and "Earthworms" (a dark sci-fi comedy.) Matthew is studying at San Francisco State University in Asian American Studies with an emphasis in cinema, and is also the film and video curator for the Hapa Issues Forum's Annual Conference. He is currently editing a personal experimental work "HyperFlip" and beginning preproduction on "Duende" (surreal horror comedy of Philippine mythology).

Andrew Amorao AKA "Drew" (APAture performance curator) is one of the Community Coordinators of the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor at San Francisco State University. He is majoring in Asian American Studies and joined Kearny Street Workshop over the summer. He is also a performance artist, DJ, aquascaper, aspiring writer, and one of the emcees of APAture 2000.

Wendy Mui and Jade-blue Eclipse of "The Beginning" are emerging professional double trapeze artists who are bringing a unique slant to a traditional circus act. Wendy & Jade-blue's act is an excellent balance of strength and grace flavored with a sensual beauty.

Since the age of six, Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres has been practicing Chinese Brush Painting - an art form that lets her express herself through celebrating her cultural heritage. The subjects of her paintings cover a wide range, but today she explores more contemporary subject matter, and experiments with using non-traditional colors while still utilizing classical Chinese painting techniques. Recently, she has been working on a series of Animal portraits taken from photographs.

Abstract Nine (Cynthia Blancaflor) is a Filipina American musician, poet and filmmaker who seeks to share her visions of truth and self-knowledge through the stories in her films. She feels that whether rich or poor, young or old, black or white, Asian or Latina or any other category that seeks to define, yet confine us, only through universal themes like community, struggle, beauty, etc. can people harmoniously relate to one another. Abstract Nine Believes film is a powerful tool for social change.

Jenny Calixto
-is from Sunnyvale, CA
-is a recent graduate from UC Davis
-has been writing since 7th grade and has kept on writing because of the encouragement of others

Ha Le Cao has dabbled in online "journalism" since March 2000, though her first foray into the world of homepages occurred in college, when she created an online paean to Little Debbie snack cakes. She and Glenda Gin collaborated on an exploration of Academy Awards get-ups in late March/Early April. A follow-up examination of the MTV Movie Awards attire was aborted due to a general lack of will.

After stints with the garage/noise-rock trio The Clarendon Hills and Boston-based indiepop quartet Jumprope, Elbert Chang started the Chang Apothecary in an effort to create simple, affecting, pop music.

Rae Chang began her art career drawing monsters as a kid. Since then she's expanded her creative activities to include interviewing strippers for a video documentary, recalling memories through spray paint and string, and being mistaken for a mannequin during a collaborative performance piece. Her current work uses images of the body to explore the interplay of desire, need, guilt, and shame, and how these conflicting emotional experiences leave their marks on the self. In other words, she's still drawing monsters.

Jean Chen (APAture music curator; publicity coordinator)

Kevin Chen is a printmaker and sculptor, and has exhibited his work at Southern Exposure, California Museum of Art, ProArts in Oakland, Epicenter (R.I.P), Kismet Gallery (R.I.P.), and The Kitchen in New York. He is also the Program Director at Intersection for the Arts.

zum is an internationally recognized zine and label run by sibling team Yvonne & George Chen. They have been in action for a decade, offering music, interviews and reviews, personal observations, and cultural commentary.
www.zumonline.com

Michael Cheng (APAture music curator) has been DJing for six-odd years and has been developing his skratching and beat juggling techniques over the last two years. He studied classical violin and piano for eight years. Outside of music, he has just begun to explore the digital domains of art through video games. During he day he designs video games and hopes that you the reader will buy the game WDL: Walk Jets (shameless plug!) for the Playstation.

A graduate of UC Berkeley Engineering department, Alan K. Chi is 23, single and Chinese. He is a mechanical engineer designer who believes the integration of forms, functionality, and aesthetics is of the utmost importance in design. He believes that introspection, emotions and being true to oneself are the keys in life, along with a singular personality, being who you are at all times, without faces. Outside of 9-5 he smiles and laughs a lot, does art and writes, enjoys motorcycling and breaking hearts on the side.

Jim Choi (APAture gallery coordinator; visual curator): What makes you think I actually exist? It's a cutthroat world so why not buy a gun? All that really matters is that we love one another. Badda bing, badda boom.

The Chun Han Avengers play music. They are young Asian Pacific Americans. They wanna rock all nite long ya yaya! Til the break of dawn! Yay APEA, represent, worldwide wesssside!
www.chunasty.com

Wei Ming Dariotis (APAture performance curator; volunteer coordinator) paints watercolors, makes collages big and small, designs jewelry, and creates one of a kind hand-painted scarves--she is interested in "usable" art. She is also a creative writer of poetry, plays, scripts for videos, and a hapa vampire novel. Her main form of performance art is her regular gig as an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

Jay Ruben Dayrit is from Kolonia, Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. He has a BA in Theatre Studies from Yale University and an MA in English, Creative Writing, from San Francisco State University. His work has appeared in Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, His2: Brilliant New Fiction by Gay Men (winner of the 1997 Lambda Literary Award), Nexus and The Minnesota Review. He was a 1997 Artist-In-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

Combining word, movement, theatre, multi-media, kulintang, hip hop, blues, jazz and martial arts, Anita de Asis brings talented artists together to make people's art for people's power. She believes art and culture are tools for social change and weapons against oppression. Although she has opened for and toured with well-known groups like The Roots, Dead Prez and Spearhead, her favorite places to perform are on buses, BART platforms and street corners.

Brian Komei Dempster's poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Asian Pacific American Journal. He has received residencies to the Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale Foundation, Villa Montalvo, and Ucross Foundation. He is currently editing a collection of creative writing produced by members of his Internment Camp Autobiography Writing Class to be published by Kearny Street Workshop in Winter 2001.

Diskarte Namin is a new San Francisco-based band that uses a unique blend of rock, hip-hop, and downtempo funk to get across conscious visions of social change. All members of the band are Filipino-American activists who come together to make music that contributes to movements that uplift communities of color.

David Ewell is a Bay Area musician, who started playing bass in Berkeley schools. He plays different styles of improvisational music with many well known Bay Area musicians, including drummers E.W. Wainwright and Eddie Marshall, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, guitarists Calvin Keys, John Schott, Brian Kane and Bruce Foreman, saxophonists Bob Kenmotsu, John Handy, David Boyce, Eric Crystal, Sonny Simmons, Kenny Brooks, and Howard Wiley and pianist Mark Levine. He also plays with Vivendo de Pao and Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, and has recorded with the 2Live Crew.

Jem Fanvu was born in 1978 in San Francisco, California. She loves lychee ice cream and sleepovers. Her favorite authors are Michelle Serros and Shel Silverstein. She is currently at work on her first book of poems and prose.

The GAPA Dance Company is a community-based dance group founded in 1990 to provide a nurturing artistic environment for queer Asian & Pacific Islander dancers and choreographers. The GAPA Dance Company is co-gender and has appeared at numerous community events, as well as its own repertory shows. Their dance repertoire features a varied number of dance styles, including hip-hop, modern, traditional ethnic, and fusion.

Michael L. Gadd: Born 9/13/81, currently attending San Francisco State University, DJing for 2 years, broadcasting major.

Stuart Gaffney's work deals with his queer Eurasian identity and experience. Stuart has a BA in English language and literature from Yale University and has studied film and video at San Francisco State University, City College of San Francisco, the Film Arts Foundation, and at the Bay Area Video Coalition. He has been making experimental film and video since 1994, and his work has shown widely in the Bay Area as well as at festivals in the US, Europe and the Pacific Rim.

Based out of Berkeley, Hardboiled is an Asian Pacific American newsmagazine. Covering a wide variety of political, social, and cultural issues, we're working towards opening the eyes of a complacent Asian Pacific America.
www.hardboiled.org

Mark Hellar is a dancer who has danced with Berkeley-based Butoh Company Harupin Ha. He has also studied intensively with Yumiko Yoshioka, Katsura Kan, Yuri Nagaoka, Setsuko Yamada, Anzu Furukawa and Keith Henessy.

Gennifer Hirano: Performance artist, sex worker interested in portraying hypersexual, hyperethnic work for the masses to ponder.

As a visual artist, D. Maia Huang creates mixed media oil paintings and creations, resonating with the visions of her inner world and personal transformation. Inspired by ancient symbols of communication, Ms. Huang's artistic expression generates a communal rhythm, flowing through the treasures of all cultures. Over the years, Ms. Huang has developed a diverse body of work shown at a number of local and regional venues, including PROARTS Gallery, Cafe Galeria, City Art Gallery, The Smithfield Gallery and Artship Foundation's Windows on the Waterfront. As a recipient of the Ann Basuino Fine Arts Scholarship and the Governor's Art Award, Ms. Huang works as a respected professional in the Bay Area.

Malisa Humphrey was born in Berkeley and raised in Oakland. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1996. She currently paints and lives in Oakland.

Diana Ip is always working to overcome her fear of writing, and as she writes, she slowly uncovers the sources of her fear, her hesitation. She's exploring the ways in which the stifling experiences of being a non-native English speaker affect identity, membership, voice and class.

Summi Kaipa lives in San Francisco, where she edits Interlope, a journal of innovative Asian American poetics. Kaipa's critical and creative work has appeared in In These Times, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Rain Taxi, St. Marks Poetry Project Newsletter, Chain, Rhizome, Kenning, and Fourteen Hills Review. Leroy published her first chapbook, The Epics, in December 1999.

Manami Kano (APAture visual curator) left broadcast television producing and life in Japan to return to photography, writing and to her roots in the API community. After stints at the NAATA and the Lesbian and Gay film festival, she currently coordinates arts and cultural programming at the Japanese Consulate. Her articles and photographs have appeared in various publications in the US and Japan.

Maneesh Kenia, a.k.a. Maneesh the Twister has been involved in the local music scene for around 5 years, having worked for a local record label, DJing at KUSF 90.3FM, and putting on live show events under the moniker of Spacecake. Currently he DJs at Stir-Fri-Day happy hour on Friday evenings at 111 Minna, is a member of the Goldie Award Winning Dub Mission Crew, and original founding member of the Azaad Colective, fusing live Asian instrumentation with DJing. Azaad benefit parties also provide a social service by donating over 90% of the proceeds for every event to different non-profit organizations.

Julia Kim was born June 25,1976 in SF. She graduated with a BFA in Textile design from Rhode Island School of Design. She currently works as a designer at Deepa Textiles and is coordinating a non-profit art org/space called Locus.

Sung & Kaoru Kim are husband and wife filmmakers, who've completed several shorts including "Two New Dogs" (1997), as well as music videos by local bands: Korea Girl (1999), Ee (2000), Chinkees (2000). Currently working on first feature entitled "Book of Rules".

Annie Koh (APAture lit. curator; tables coordinator) is a cheesivore commonly found in coastal regions on either side of the continent. Preferred habitat appears to be meetings for pan-Asian arts organizations such as Kearny Street Workshop, locus 1640 post, and Ohana open mic. traces of her passage have been spotted online, in the San Francisco examiner, in her own zine "for motion discomfort" and in an upcoming anthology from seal press. www.crankygirls.com

The Korean Youth Cultural Center's (KYCC) history dates back to December 1987, when a group of first generation Korean Americans formed to work towards the self-determination of the Korean American community through cultural arts activities. Since then, it has been their goal to promote and preserve Korean traditional arts and nourish pride in Korean native culture. In the eleven years that have passed, KYCC has maintained excellence in serving the community by 1) offering regular classes in Korean drumming, mask dance, drawing, history and language 2) performing in high visibility venues such as the SF Forty-Niner season opening ceremony and the World Korean Percussion competition in Seoul where KYCC placed third and 3) producing and helping to organize our own annual cultural festivals as well as networking with other organizations such as the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.
Artistic Director: Jongsuk Lee
President: Donna Lee Kwon
www.kycc.net

Calvin C. Lai has been playing digeridoo for five years. Ever since then he's tried to incorporate various other styles within his playing by learning other instruments. Throughout this time he's become more and more serious about forging his own style on this unique instrument.

Largesse is the pop music project of Stanley Lam and a rotating roster of musicians. Largesse songs focus on songcraft and verbal subtlety (and sometimes absence) developed from eight years of wandering and gathering.

slam.isfuckingbrilliant.com

Born January 6, 1978 in Oakland, CA, Breandain N.W. Langlois is currently living in Berkeley. He graduated from Berkeley High and Laney and is currently a student at SF State. He has traveled and done volunteer work in the Dominican Republic and Oxaca, Mexico. He traveled solo through Central America and worked with local artists in Nicaragua. He is also a musician and a songwriter.

William Law enjoys writing short stories drawn from the people, places and values that are close to him - values such as family, places such as Hong Kong, and people such as his grandmother, who lives in Southern California.

Angela Leonino's work focuses on her personal experiences with race, the past, her body, and her sexuality. Lady Sunbeam is a fun exploration into a young woman's remembrance of masturbation, girlhood sexual fantasies and Duran Duran. Her first film half/half has enjoyed a long life in various festivals and currently she is working on a film in collaboration with her best friend entitled Faerytale.

Claire Light (APAture coordinator) writes stuff that isn't strictly true. She is Office & Program Manager at Kearny Street Workshop and coordinated this whole mess. She hopes you're having a good time.

Pang Hui Lim will be completing her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. This will be the second year she has shown work at APAture.

Chishan Lin immigrated to the United States from Taiwan when she was nine years old. She received her BA from University of California at Berkeley in 1998. Currently, she is attending the Graduate Film Program at UCLA.

Meeta K. Malhi works at the Tides Foundation. She writes fiction and poetry that focuses on the second generation experience of South Asians in America. She also works exploring issues of cultural identity, domestic violence, and spirituality.

Ernest Mark (APAture visual curator) explores various artistic disciplines in rotation, this includes music, writing, and visual arts. He is happy to be the designer of this year's APAture poster and to present work in the visual arts gallery.

Neela Moorty has been learning Bharata Natyam (the classical dance of South India) for the last 12 years from her guru, Smt. Viji Prakash of Los Angeles. Neela has performed in major dance productions with the Shakti Dance Company, given many sort solo performances around the nation and earlier this month, gave a solo benefit performance at the Cowell Theater, Fort Mason to raise money for a child development initiative in India. She is 22 years old, graduated from Yale University last year and is currently a management consultant for CSC Healthcare in San Francisco.

Delia Tomino Nakayama has been writing songs and singing since 1987. She started performing at open mikes around the Bay Area (and elsewhere) in 1997. She studied with Sergei Seleznioff in the Belcanto style. Music is a source of beauty and healing in her life that she enjoys sharing with others.

RL Navarrete has been involved in local Filipino American Television since the early 1990s, and graduated from the SF State University Film Program in 1994. Since then he has been involved in various local video documentary projects other than his own. He is currently planning a documentary about API s in drug recovery.
rexnavarrete.com

Tomoko Negishi originally came to the States from Japan to study psychology and journalism, so her art usually tends to have socio/psychological component. One of her goals is to use her art for the purpose of pan-Asianism. She believes art can be/should be accessible to anybody because art is a great tool to discover yourself and the society in which you live.

Mimi Nguyen is a PhD student in comparative ethnic studies at UC Berkeley and a freelance writer. She is a regular columnist for Punk Planet and a contributor to Maximumrocknroll, holding forth on feminism, geopolitics, queer studies and post-colonial theory. She was introduced to zines in 1990 by punk rock and riotgrrrl and has been producing zines ever since. Slander is the latest incarnation. She also edits a compilation zine called Race Riot and occasionally updates her website at http://www.worsethanqueer.com.

Tan Hoang Nguyen is a Vietnamese American video artist whose work interrogates forms of desire in queer Asian male identities. His short experimental videos--including "7 Steps to Sticky Heaven," "Maybe Never (but I'm counting the days)," and "Forever Bottom!"--have screened in film festivals in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia.

Amelia Leafaitulam Niumeitolu is a filmmaker whose work lately is concentrated on the Polynesian community for Polynesians to retell their stories for and by them. She eats, drinks, dreams and works toward this day.

Hiromi Oda: Born in Sendai City, Japan. Participated in Kearny Street Workshop's group photography show "From Sojourners to Skateboarders: Chinatown in Transition" April-May, 2000 at the San Francisco Art Commission Chinatown Community Arts Program. Will have a show with her photography partner, "A Year in the Life of Chinatown" at Chinatown Community Arts Program in Fall 2001.

Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa, also known as the Devil Bunny in Bondage, is a performance artist, cultural activist and percussionist. She is originally from Miami, Florida and received her BA from Brown University. She has been living and working in San Francisco for non-profit arts organizations and HIV prevention service agencies such as Proyecto Contra SIDA Por Vida, New Langton Arts, and currently at Galerêa de la Raza. She has performed in London, Providence, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Philippines and has published her writing in various journals and anthologies. She is a recipient of one of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art 2000-2001 grants.

Jeffrey A. Ow is a cranky UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies graduate student procrastinating in his oral exam studies & dissertation on Angel Island by haphazardly writing about his various fetishes and rants on Flower Drum Song Fetish!
flowerdrumsong.com

Jungsam Park went to Rhode Island School of Design and transferred to Art Center College of Design, majoring in transportation design. He had a solo exhibition at SAL Gallery in Korea (Seoul) and participated in a group exhibition at Seoul Art Center.

Priscilla Park is a native of Chicago, which she regrettably left last year, due to the freaky frigid winters. She holds an MFA in Dance, UC-Irvine. Since her recent arrival in SF, her choreographic works have been presented at ODC Theater, Eighth Street Studios, Studio Valencia's Performance Salon, and at Venue 9. She has performed for and/or collaborated with ALATCO, Urban Junctions Dance Chicago, Joel Hall Dance Performance Workshops, Greg Winston's Underground, Choreographers' Collective, and most recently with Keith Hennessey. As a choreographer, she hopes to provoke, innovate, and offer some ironic perspectives.

Rhett Valino Pascual is an immigrant from the Philippines. His goal is to show the beauty, passion and the grace of the Filipino culture through his photography. He has been practicing his art for the last four years.

Thien Pham is an art student studying illustration, but his comic is his love. "People always ask what it's about, I really don't know. I guess its about life, where we are, where we're going, and the little things that happen along the way. That's the best way I can put it."

Michael Premsrirat is a writer and occasional performer with The 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, a modestly successful Asian Pacific Islander American sketch comedy group. The 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors have produced a number of feature presentations in the Bay Area, and have toured nationally and internationally. Other Bay Area theater work includes a stint as Marketing Director for Asian American Theater Company.

Barbara J. Pulmano Reyes has seen her work published in "Babaylan" (Aunt Lute, 2000), "Turnings: Writing on Women's Transformations" (Women's Studies at Old Dominion University, 2000), "Liwanag II" (1993), "Maganda" and "Filipinas". She can also be heard on the CD "Infliptration". Her poems will be featured in the forthcoming anthologies "Going Home to a Landscape" and "Invasion". Barbara is a graduate of UCB in Ethnic Studies.

Tony Robles is a native San Franciscan. Has been writing bad poetry for close to 10 years now. The only reason he's being invited to APAture is that he's Al Robles' nephew. When he's not riding on the coat-tail of his esteemed uncle, he enjoys eating Chinese food and watching the fights.

Shawna Ryan is originally from Sacramento. She currently attends the Creative Writing Program at UC Davis and is at work on a novel about the Sacramento Delta Chinese-American community of Locke.

Ikuko Sato studies photography and film/video/performance at the California College of Arts and Crafts. She also handcrafts little books out of fun, love and stuff. She is currently working on an experimental documentary about the 1903 unionization and strike of Japanese and Mexican sugarbeet laborers in Oxnard, CA.

Dipali Shah is a singer/songwriter who has been influenced by hip-hop, R&B, and Indian classical music. She is currently working at a recording studio in San Francisco and is pursuing a singing career.

The Skyflakes are a five-piece alternapop band from San Francisco. Their sound mixes influences from Britpop to post-grunge, and early electronica. They describe themselves as "something familiar, only lamer." See them often at Bindlestiff Studio in SF.

Kevin Sun was born in the Philippines, grew up in Baltimore, MD, studied in New York, and relocated to the Bay Area in late 1992. SHRIVELLY LIVES is his only film, but he hopes to film more black comedies that bridge the gap between Wong Kar Wai and Chiau Sing Chi, Destiny's Child and Ghostface Killah, Faye Wong and the Mekons, etc. He also thinks Mary J. Blige is the greatest recording artist of the nineties.

Phillina Sun is currently working on a zine consisting of the writings on the orangepeeler webpage, to be coupled with artwork. Her past work consists of poetry and a visual autobiography--a closet.
orangepeeler.diaryland.com

Robynn *nonogirl* Takayama (APAture music curator; promotions coordinator) has been a proponent of independent publishing for the past five years. Her zine STATIC, on workplace sabotage, scams and pranks, was voted in ZINEGUIDE's top 10 by labels, bands and zinesters. She organized the first WEBZINE CONFERENCE celebrating independent content online in 1998. Most recently, she has taken her writing and audio skills to the web with her project, Nonogirl Radio (www.nonogirl.com).

Suz Takeda: Performance artist, actor, writer. Most recently performed solo work: Game of Life at Oakland Asian Cultural Center.

Peter Tamaribuchi is a theater artist, youth worker and creative writing teacher. He is the founder and coordinator of the Richmond Youth Project Theater/performance project which helps Southeast Asian incarcerated youth tell their stories through playwriting and hip hop. Their plays and raps have been presented at UC Berkeley and Oakland Asian Cultural Center. He is also a playwright, director and performer. His latest play, "Half Lives", was produced at Stanford University and in San Francisco.

Teatro ng Tanan (TnT) are: Wernher Goff, Ryan Morales, Michael Premsrirat, Oliver Saria, Allan Silva, Dennis Somera, AlexTorres, Darrell Kundargi, Dan Weil, Olivia Malabuyo, Rene Acosta.

Te-Shun Tseng will do anything to create an innovative form for cinema. He is currently a film student at SFSU.

Seiichi Tsukamoto makes experimental movies.

Jerry Waki is a Staff Writer for Nichi Bei Times, a Japanese American daily newspaper in San Francisco.

Michael Wilson (Producer, Writer, Director, & Editor) is currently a Master in Fine Arts candidate and graduate student instructor at San Francisco State University. He was the Assistant Director and Grant Writer for the Japanese American Film and Lecture Series, Issei, Nisei, Sansei for Seattle's 1992 Asian American Heritage Month. Though his name conceals his heritage, his artistic works (Brown and Ghosts) explore the emotional history of his Japanese-American family.

Christopher Wong is a second generation Asian American born and raised in New York City,. He's new to the Bay Area having just moved here 3 months ago. He came out here to focus on finishing his first book, which he will self-publish and promote. He is a leader/writer/entrepreneur/professional speaker.

A native San Franciscan, Kristina Sheryl Wong discovered her alter ego, the "Big Bad Chinese Mama," after dozens of disgruntling experiences at UCLA. Though a novice to HTML, she embarked on a journey to crush "sick white men" into dust through her graduation project, a mock mail-order bride website/porn site spoof of which she is the proud madame. www.bigbadchinesemama.com is her first attempt at web design, and 30,000+ visitors later, she is anxiously cranking out more and more pages and is happy to bring together fans (and Klansmen) in social dialogue!
bigbadchinesemama.com

Dan Wu is a non-professional bowler, chef, Jeopardy Teen Champion, pistol sharpshooter and Simpsons trivia buff. His magazine Oriental Whatever has been peeling yellowface off America since 1998. Dan Wu likes beef jerky.

Bernice Yeung (APAture lit. curator; tables coordinator) occasionally produces option8, a pseudo-political pop culture zine, when she is not over-eating, over-imbibing, or stressing about work.

Jean Yi is a photographer and installation artist based in San Jose. For her, video shorts provide an immediate process by which to investigate the political and personal.

Marilyn Yu (APAture visual curator) graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in December 1996. She has been living in San Francisco ever since, making sculpture and trying to support her art-making habit with her clothing line, plutonium.

zum is an internationally recognized zine and label run by sibling team Yvonne and George Chen. They have been in action for a decade, offering music, interviews and reviews, personal observations, and cultural commentary.