APAture Panel and Workshops

SomArts, San Francisco, CA

Panel Discussion
Blood or Water? APA Pan-Ethnicity in the Arts, Tuesday, September 26, 7 PM

Workshops
Saturday, September 30; 2-7 PM

THE PANEL

Moderator: Jaime Cortez Panelists: Chaya Bhuvaneswar Chris Brown Jason Jong Greg Morozumi Dennis Somera Chi-hui Yang

Panel Discussion: Blood or Water? APA Pan-Ethnicity in the Arts

APAture both celebrates and examines the creative and social processes of our communities' young artists. As an introduction and a thoughtful counterpoint to the high energy of our Saturday expo, the APAture curators present a panel discussion focusing on a major theme concerning artists in our communities. APAture 2000 chooses the pan-ethnic nature of the APA arts community as a focus this year.

Background

Asian Pacific America is a constructed community -- but one that seems to have achieved, in the last thirty years, a kind of cohesion. The APA arts community seems to draw from this cohesion to form a distinct communal entity.

• Through what modes has this cohesion been achieved? To what extent have pan-ethnic and ethnic-focused community arts organizations facilitated the construction of this "pan-ethnicity"?
• To what extent and in which circumstances does the APA arts community function as a single community or identity?
• What is the difference between a "pan-ethnicity" and an ethnicity? What effect might these differences have on how we understand ourselves to be Asian Pacific American artists?
• What hierarchies remain between APA ethnicities within our arts organizations?

Focus

How do art and culture contribute to an understanding of these issues? To what extent are artistic and cultural projects/organizations related to the development of APA pan-ethnicity?

• How do APA artists use their cultural background in their artwork? Are traditional cultural forms still alive among artists in our generation or have they devolved into stereotypes to use or break?
• Do APA artists connect better with the traditional artistic forms of their own ethnicities, or do they feel entitled to the forms of all APA ethnicities (e.g.: A Nikkei artist using Chinese dragon images, A Chinese American playing the sitar, etc.)?
• Who collaborates across APA ethnicities, why and how? Is there some sort of artistic and cultural sense made by uniting different traditional Asian ethnic art forms? Or is it a shotgun marriage, with politics holding the weapon?
• To what extent does form contribute to the work? Does work discussing an APA identity require forms from APA traditions? Is work by an APA artist presented in a community context necessarily "APA art" even if it follows no traditional forms nor deals with community issues?

see schedule

 

Workshops

2:45 - 3:45 PM

Speak from the Heart: Effective Public Speaking
Public Speaking Workshop
Facilitated by Christopher Wong

Surveys have shown that some people fear public speaking more than death. Especially as Asian Americans, our stereotypical image is that we are docile, quiet and obedient. Effective public speaking helps you stand up with confidence so you can speak from your heart and influence those around you. Christopher Wong will teach the basics of effective public speaking in this interactive workshop.

4:00 - 5:30 PM

Byte Me! Fetishes, Rants & New APA Voices Online
Open Panel Discussion
Moderated by Annie Koh (www.crankygirls.com)

Panelists: Ha Le Cao (How Now Brown Cow), Mimi Nguyen (worsethanqueer.com), Jeff Ow (flowerdrumsong.com), Phillina Sun (Musings of an Orangepeeler), Kristina Wong (bigbadchinesemama.com), and others. Asian Americans are currently the most wired ethnicity and the number of Asian Americans establishing personal-public zines or journals grows every day. What does this mean for a community ignored in American history books, and tokenized in the media, and fetishized in mainstream imagination? Specifically, How does the internet build an audience for a multiplicity of Asian American voices and avoid the Joy Luck Club syndrome? ("Oh, now I understand your kind!")

5:30 - 7:00 PM

The Next Movement
Performance Workshop
Facilitated by Anita de Asis

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. In this very interactive workshop participants of all artistic levels and backgrounds will discuss and then use spoken word, movement and dance to create a performance piece that deals with the legacy of resistance in the Asian Pacific Islander communities. This piece will then be performed on the spot at APAture!

see schedule