KSW's APAture Raises Awareness of Young APA Artists

Featured Artists, Opera, and Fire Fountain Highlight This Year's Festival

By Claire Light

You almost know the drill by now: the increased bustle down at Kearny Street Workshop, the sudden spate of house party fundraisers, the whisper of increasingly frantic three-hour meetings, the artists running around wondering "Am I in?", the adrenaline starting to pump, the coordinator's face seen everywhere. The word is starting to infiltrate the conversation of every Kearny Street Workshopper under 35: APAture, APAture, APAture.

APAture: A Window on the Art of Young Asian Pacific Americans is organized by Kearny Street Workshop's KSW-Next program. KSW-Next is the three-year-old arm of KSW dedicated to offering Bay Area Asian Pacific Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 a space to find their feet as artists and community members. KSW-Next meets monthly in salons and workshops to network, socialize, and experiment with community-building.

Once a year, for the past three years, KSW-Nexters have gone through our community with a fine-tooth comb finding the freshest, most committed, most potential-riddled young artists and thrown them up on stage, screen and wall during one action-packed week. The purpose is to show us to ourselves - show our working young artists to our community - in all our trials, potential, diversity and creativity. What emerges is a vivid picture of what the next generation of community arts leaders will use to transform our daily lives.

The past two APAtures have included several events: a gallery opening, a panel discussion, a film and video screening, a performance evening, and a 12-hour main event packed with pretty much all of the above, plus workshops, demonstrations, audience participatory activities, raffles, shockers, etc. This year, our third year, APAture will take place over the course of two weeks, beginning with a gallery reception and ending with the main event. Unlike the past two APAtures, however, this year's event will feature exclusively artists who have come to us through our submissions process. (In past years we have accepted submissions as well as invited artists who did not submit work.)

Another new facet to the event is the Featured Artist Program, in which we recognize one artist of particular merit in each discipline we represent. What else should you expect at this year's APAture? A fire fountain for starters, a trapeze act, an opera singer, a visit to Asia through Asian American eyes, loads of poetry, zines, comics, DJs, and art, the GAPA dance company, a CD listening station, music videos you won't find on MTV, a documentary on import car racing, and a great deal more.

APAture's mission is to provide young artists with an early experience presenting their work at a large event; to build audiences for young, emerging artists; to strengthen the sense of community among our young artists; and to raise awareness of the existence of and diversity within the Asian Pacific American arts community.

If you'd like to volunteer to help produce and staff the event (you'll get a free t-shirt, free food, free admission, of course, and your very own thank-you party), please contact APAture Festival Coordinator Andrew Amorao at Kearny Street Workshop, info@kearnystreet.org, 415.503.0520.