APAture Live

Welcome!

Welcome to APAture Live, your liveblog for Kearny Street Workshop's Bay Area festival, APAture: A Window on Emerging Asian Pacific American Artists! This is the APAture event's first blog; it's also a liveblog, that is to say, I will be posting here live during the APAture events, describing the smell of the greasepaint and roar of the crowd. The comments section below is open; please use it! I'll be responding to comments and questions throughout the event. I'm planning on attending all or most APAture events, so keep an eye out for me. I'll be the one with the laptop!

Opening Reception/Visual Art

6:10 pm - Here I am, at Space 180, the office and gallery space that Kearny Street Workshop shares with LocusArts and used to share with Derek Chung's Tactile Pix, before Derek went off to New York to do grad school.

I get a certain bittersweet charge every time another APAture starts. I say "bittersweet charge" and not "nostalgia" because KSW has been such a geographically nomadic org for so long that every few years, APAture is run out of a different building. There's no longtime there there. KSW has been at Space 180 for about three years now, so they're building a history here. But that history largely isn't mine. I've been to shows at this space but I haven't actually done my own work here. In fact, this blog will be the first time ...

6:21 - So the internet went down for a second so I ran around like an idiot until Chris Brown (KSW board member) suggested I turn off my airport then turn it on again. Duh. Now I'm using Scribefire, so if it happens again, I won't lose anything.

6:35 - Just restarted the 'puter to clear out all the crap and was approached by Jason Mateo, carrying one child and monitoring another one running around. Yes, his own children. That's how long it's been since I've seen this spoken word artist. He doesn't look any different, and says he's still teaching at Youth Speaks, and working on writing for performance. His kids at Youth Speaks will be performing at Manilatown Heritage Foundation for APAture on Saturday.

6:41 - Lucy Kalyani Lin just came over--she insisted I use the "Kalyani" even though it's her middle name because "do you know how many Lucy Lins are on the internet on porn sites?" She's the lead curator of the APAture visual show this year (together with Lyman Yip and Jack Cho)--to check and see if I was writing good stuff. I told her she'd have to bribe me with regular glasses of wine. Told Ellen Oh the same thing. Ellen is KSW's new Executive Director; this is her first APAture, poor sucker!

I grabbed artist Christine Wong Yap as she was cruising past -- she'll be in the APAture ten-year retrospective later this fall/winter (as will I be.) She was one of the artists in KSW's 35 anniversary show Activist Imagination and has blogged at KSW's blog herself. Christine was originally known in the community as an "activist artist," making explicitly political work in printmaking and painting/muralism. She's remade herself as a conceptual artist and has work up at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as we speak, in the Galleon Trade gallery of Bay Area Now 5.

I also spoke briefly with game designer and skratch DJ Michael "MercuryBonez" Cheng, who was on the organizing committee for APAture 2000. He recently moved back to the Bay Area from ... Texas? He used to perform with the lamented Dhamaal. Now, I just don't know.

6:52 - The gallery looks different tonight. Slightly different. We're on the third (top) floor of a loft space and it looks like the attic up here. There's a fire escape, and warehouse windows, a wooden floor with paint drips everywhere (begging to be sanded and finished) and pipes and electrical conduits worn externally. Gordon Lee made two movable walls during the Activist Imagination show and they're being used to good effect, but somehow, there's something about the installation or the lighting that makes the space look a bit ... cleaner--more gallery-like--tonight. It's the versatility of the space, the potential versatility that hasn't been entirely tapped yet, that makes this space a prime candidate to hang nostalgia on. You can do things here. It's not just an office and meeting space like the last four spaces KSW has had.

6:59 - Ellen just called everyone to order to start the announcements and welcome part of the evening. You know the drill: "thank you for coming, this is APAture, thanks to Lucy Kalyani Lin, our curator, thanks to May Briosos, the APAture Coordinator, thanks to our sponsors, blah, blah, blah." Okay, I'll link to the sponsors here later. (ETA: go look at the postcard image for the sponsors, there's no listing that I can find.) Oh, and there are twenty artists in the show. She also gave a shout out to me, sitting here in the corner, bloggin'. And Sam Chanse, former KSW Artistic Director, thought she'd be a smartass and shout "death to blogger!" (I think.) WTF?

Then Lucy: thank you, happy , thank you to may, ksw board, lyman, took so much work to prepare gallery, ellen, artists, hope you like the way the show came together, those who worked with her personally and trusted her enough to see how she envisioned the show; audience thanks for support; all artists have nametags green with blue collars, go up to them and talk about their work, can't encompass this herself so won't try; many intricacies, ask them where they'll be showing next.

Vid: board chair of KSW, doesn't usually use a mic; quick intro; thank everyone; artists, organizers; vips--funders, supporters, potentials; forget that folks who present here this is their first exposure to the world, ksw makes this possible; pitch for cash; please please please, thanks for coming and supporting in person; hope you'll come back and think about giving us an individual donation today here or online. if you're a funder, hook us up with a grant; to support this we really need your help.

Damn, no wonder everybody was excited about Vid when he came on board rather randomly. That was a good pitch. Short, to the point, included all the talking points. And he even came back to say "Bar is open!"

Jay Jao is in the hizzouse, documenting with photos. Jay is a digital photographer, who goes to all the APA events (and has for YEARS), taking photos of people and of the work at the events themselves. It's his service to the community, and his photos are awesome. Here's a link to his website, where he posts everything he shoots. I'm trying to be a text Jay Jao with this liveblog, documenting all these events with the proficiency and volume with which Jay documents our world.

7:13 - Bob Hanamura is here, talking to Sam. Bob is an interesting guy: an architect, designer, and artist, he was in an internment camp and studied in Chicago (I believe; I could have this all wrong) after the war. You can see him in the KSW publication Pursuing Wild Bamboo: Portraits of Asian American Artists. Bob is the only member of the older generation of KSW adherents who makes it out to (I swear) every event. He still curates shows and knows what's going in with da Youtt. I see him at every APAture.

Speaking of the "older generation" (we're talking about any generation older than those who started APAture, by the way. But those of us who started APAture are already a generation older than a lot of the artists showing in APAture. Just thought I'd point that out.), Nancy Hom is here and so is Genny Lim. Nancy joined KSW in 1974, two years after its founding, and has been active with the organization for about 33 years. She was the executive director from about 1995 to 2003, and it was on her watch that APAture was founded and established. Her presence at every subsequent APAture is like a secular benediction ;) Nancy's printmaking work will be shown at the Chinese Culture Center in collaboration with the De Young's Asian American Art show this fall.

Genny is part of the Bay Area's cultural treasure as well. A longtime poet and interdisciplinary collaborator. She was teaching at New College for a long time but when New College went under recently, she found herself out of a job. It's a terrible pity when our great poets have to scramble to support themselves. Here's someone (Nancy too) who has earned her place. Why don't we have a more socialist (yeah, I said it) government that supports artists?

7:20 - Just met Mimi Wong, newest member of the KSW Board. Had to explain who I was. Wow, it's been a long time since I've been down KSW way ;)

And then it's Min Jung Kim! Amazing! I haven't seen her since I spaced her wedding over a year ago. Min Jung is a longtime Bay Area APA fixture, a blogger with iistix, with minjungkim.com, and a writer for Koream Journal (which is in financial trouble, y'all. Go support.) I haven't seen her since she got married and now she's moving to Seattle. Boo! Min Jung is organizing an APAture event: "LAP-POP," a blogging event in which bloggers *gasp* perform live. "Kinda nice to have a digital media showcase as part of APAture." I agree ;) One complaint: MJ had to pay to get into this event though she's coordinating an event in this APAture. Typical of APAture. Organizing low budge.

7:50 - Rania Ho comes by. Wow. It really has been years. Rania was a member of the awesome sketch comedy group 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors for years, but now lives in Beijing with her husband (who is Chinese, that's why.) They run a gallery called Arrow Factory in the center of Beijing near the Confucius Temple. She's back in town because her sister just gave birth to twins; funny, because the last time I was in Beijing it was because my sister was giving birth (though not to twins.) We talked about her gallery--self-funded, not commercial, all new work; and the Beijing arts scene, which Rania said is somewhat tainted by commercialism. Promised to have brunch soon.

8:05 - Ellen again, no longer a VIP announcements but the general one. Come to the events. Follow along online with moi. Please comment. If you just can't get enough of APAture we'll have retrospective from October 24 to January 23. Exhibition in gallery, perf, lit, music, panel. Info at the front. All sorts of programming year round. Stay with us. Thank yous. Twenty artists. (applause). Took a lot of work by volunteers and amazing support staff. May Briosos APAture coordinator, Lucy Kalyani Lin Visual Curator, Coordinating committee of 8 people. Thank sponsors.

Lucy: screaming over the noise of the crowd. (I'm shushing people.) Usual thanks. Board did all the gallery work. Thanks to Ellen. (Wow, there are a lot of people here now.) Artist green name tags. Talk to them. Some of the work here is priced to sell.

8:20 - And here comes Manami Kano, apature OG. Manami was part of the 17-person original APAture committee. I got to know her at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival (whose director, Chi-hui Yang, is also here tonight). She's a nonprofit hack, like me, like you, and was in New York for a while, going to grad school. (right?) She just moved back to the Bay Area and did NOT announce her return. She also complained. Manami's name was not on any list downstairs. Also, she's looking for a job. She's a highly trained nonprofit hack.

Former KSW Board member and graphic designer Choppy Oshiro was so taken with my French pedicure that she gave me a (half) foot massage. APAture OG and recently formered Chinese Culture Center executive director (writer and highly trained nonprofit hack) Sabina Chen also flitted by.

8:39 - APAture OG Robynn Takayama comes by, with big headphones around her neck and a mic tucked into her shirt. Robynn's a radio producer. I ask her for a quote and she gives me a big smile. "I feel old now that I'm a KSW 'alumni'. I would rather have been a 'KSW veteran'." Sabina would have preferred "APAture OG." Me too, obviously. Nancy's also an "alumni." (The lack of proper grammar, of course, horrifies me.) Nancy should be something better. Manang, maybe.

8:45 - Poet Pireeni Sundaralingam stops by, her fingers in her ears, to see what I'm doing. She can't stand the noise (there's a DJ playing now) so we don't really talk. Pireeni's another friend I met through KSW. She and her partner, violinist Colm O'Riain, formed a performance group many years ago called Dhaia Tribe--mostly spoken word performers, which is now defunct.

8:49 - Ebony McKinney from the SF Arts Commission stops by and embarrasses me for not remembering her. Amy Ho is dressed as a durian. No shit. A durian. I actually thought she was dressed as a hedgehog.

8:52 - Ebony likes Weston's piece. A three piece excerpt (?) of a series of paper drawing/collage. Very intricate, layered, the pieces that have windows ... (conversation goes on but I don't record it.)

8:54 - Artist Suzanne Husky takes Ebony's place. Suzanne's opening a show in the South Bay in early October. She made dolls of her friends for her last piece and put them in a miniature SF scene. I complain to her that my doll was wearing checks and I haven't worn checks since the eighties.

Lisa Leong, APAture Intern comes by. She lets us know the drinks are really strong tonight. I ask her for another white whine. K. Lo comes back. He fled when he saw me blogging before. K. Lo's quote: *a shrug*. Lisa comes back with a kamikaze shot. It tastes like lemonade.

9:32 - I'm very done with this. I'm about four drinks into the night and tired of trying to blog and talk to people at the same time. I just took a long break. It's hot in the gallery and noisy. The music is way too loud! I'll reflect on the show tomorrow. Goodnight.

New Blog Site Already!

Hey all,

So just a heads up: if you've linked to this blog, or want to, I'm at a new site. The old Wordpress site doesn't support Javascript (WTF?) so I can't collect data on where our traffic is coming from. So I had to switch to good ol' Typepad, which hosts my own blogs.

FYI: this APAture liveblogging thing arose out of a call for proposals for artist commissions from a grantmaker that shall remain nameless unless I get the grant. The project is twofold: I will be liveblogging APAture to creat a text documentation of the event, and I will be tracking traffic to see if people are interested in a text document, how people find out about the blog, and how they use the site. So I really need to be able to track traffic properly-like.

If you'd like to help me out in this project, please post a feed to this blog on your blog or website for the duration of APAture (Sept 18-27, 2008). Here's the feed URL:

http://clairelight.typepad.com/apaturelive/atom.xml

Monday Thoughts

So I've been liveblogging APAture for four days now and I have some thoughts:

1. No more extensive notetaking. As the film night fiasco has proven, if I can't clean up the post and put in links in a hour or less, it's not worth it. The whole point of live-blogging is that I don't have to go in afterwards and spend the rest of my life making it purty.
2. People seem to like my bitchy opinions. So more opinions, bitchy if at all possible. (Of course, people only like bitchy opinions if they're turned on someone else. So bitchy opinions on everyone ELSE, please.)
3. I need to be enjoying myself more, so maybe record less. For example, I had a nice, long conversation with Dino Ignacio when I got to LAP-POP yesterday, of which I didn't record a single word. I hadn't seen him for a year or two. Dino's somebody I used to see at every event, especially the endless APAture fundraisers that used to happen every month the summer before APAture at somebody's house (often Dino's). He is probably the nicest guy in the community, and definitely one of the most fun. He's also a filmmaker, animator, game designer, and music video maker extraordinaire. All for the love, of course, although he tells me he's been making a living at some of this lately. Awesome. ... See? I can't help myself. I have to record everything.
4. More quality time with my cat.

In conclusion: shorter posts? We'll see.

Also, I've CREATED A SURVEY. Very short. Please take it and help me to figure out if this live blog was at all a good idea. Thanks!

APAture: The Long Overdue Context Post

I should have posted this first, but I had to throw the blog and accessories together in such a hurry that I didn't get around to it before the festival started, and once the festival started ... well, I've been running around, ya know.

Let's get some background on APAture:

KSW is actually, at this point, a 36-year-old organization that arose during the heyday of the Asian American Movement. (Here's a brief history of the org.) The short version: founded in the ground floor of an itinerant worker hotel on the border of Chinatown and Manilatown, KSW originated as a collective of Filipino and Chinese American Baby Boomer artists who were coming back to their communities to teach kids and elders drawing, painting, printmaking, poetry, martial arts, and other things.

The hotel location became politicized in the seventies when the I-Hotel became the last piece of Manilatown real estate to hold on in the face of financial district take-over. The building was cleared and torn down in 1977, and KSW became a nomadic organization, with spaces in Chinatown and North Beach, and eventually in SOMA. In 1981 KSW started the Asian American Jazz Festival, as well as a poetry book publishing program. The Jazz Festival was a success, but by the time KSW reached SOMA in the early nineties, it was hemorraghing organizers, volunteers, and other programs.

In the mid-nineties, KSW's only major program was Jazz Festival. Nancy Hom (who moved to SF from New York in 1974 and has been with KSW ever since) came on as E.D. in 1995 and started trying to establish other projects, including a series of writing and printmaking classes, and continuing book publications. This was problematic because most of KSW's longtime artist/organizers had stepped back from active involvement in the org, and there was no programming that attracted younger folks.

Nancy's previous two assistants--Amy Yuen in 1997 and Jean Chen in 1998--had thought up and established (respectively) a next generation group to try to give the Gen X volunteers pulled in through the Jazz Festival something to do at KSW, besides work for free. Jean especially had set up a series of salons/jam sessions where young folks came together and showed their stuff and hung out. When I took over as Nancy's assistant in early 1999, Nancy handed the next generation program to me and I started programming monthly meetings/salons.

After the 1998 Jazz Festival, the Festival entity (defunct after 2006) and KSW parted ways for good, and KSW suddenly found itself with a $30k surplus and a huge hole in its schedule. Jean, a zinester herself, had been to a Youth Expo at the downtown jail (I think) which featured tables with zines and comix. She had noticed that significant numbers of comix artists and zinesters were APA, and suggested to Nancy that KSW produce an APA-specific zine and comix expo. Nancy expressed this to me as an APA "Youth Expo," without limiting the genres, and naturally that got turned immediately into a Youth Arts Festival (not just in my head). Nancy's thought was that this could be a major event that could replace the Jazz Festival in 1999.

After a little back and forth, Nancy said, "Well, should we do it?" and I said, "Yes." It was pretty much just like that. So, in March or April, we brought it to the next-generation salon group (which was quickly dubbed "KSW-Next"), which included Robynn Takayama, Jean Chen, Sabina Chen, Dan Wu, Doug Hirai, and a few others, and said, "What do you think?" Within half an hour we had a festival, set for October 2. Most of the meeting was scheduling the day around a committee member's wedding.

Over the course of that spring and summer we met twice a month at venues all over the city. We collected further committee members: Jimi Choi, Ernest Mark, Manami Kano, Annie Koh, Ritsu Yoneyama, Matt Abaya, Russell Gonzaga, Dennis Somera, Jeff Chan, Leon Lee, Wei Ming Dariotis, and Val Chow. (Was Annie Cheng with us that first year, too?) We designed a logo (Matt Abaya designed the first logo), and t-shirts (three of them) which we hand-screened ourselves under Leland Wong's guidance. We voted in "APAture: A Window on the Art of Young Asian Pacific Americans" over any number of "-asian/-ation" puns. "APAture" was my idea, born out of desperation, after Nancy suggested "Art Attack."

That first year we decided that this festival was about us but our definition of "us" was expansive: everyone on the committee, their friends and colleagues, and anybody else in the community that wanted in. We all agreed that we wanted all the organizers to show their work and that APAture was that kind of event. We all knew at least a handful of APA artists in our own genres, and when we collected them together, we were surprised at how many they made up. But in addition to that, we got around 50 submissions as well. (We were active in grabbing anybody who looked Asian and young and handing them a submission form. Wei Ming and I would go prowling for Asian-y looking people.  All. Summer. Long.)

We ended up with 72 acts or artists, and 100 individual people presenting their work at the first APAture. We were surprised, and unprepared. We figured we'd be happy with an audience of 300, ecstatic with an audience of 500. We got 700, with no formal press or media attention: all word of mouth. We packed out CELLspace. We were surprised and unprepared. It was like that scene in Pitch Black where the drunk guy fires up his lighter in the middle of the completely dark plain, and it lights up monsters' faces all around him that he didn't know were there. Only in this case, it wasn't aliens' faces, but our folks' faces that suddenly appeared. And it wasn't just that people showed up. The atmosphere of the event was electric. Everyone was looking around with this look on their faces that said I didn't know we had this. It was awesome.

We were dazed afterwards -- not just with exhaustion (there was a film night, a panel, and then a 14-hour day, that was the whole festival/expo), but also with having done something we never suspected we'd do. We thought we were putting on an event, but we'd accidentally grounded two wires and had the energy of the entire city pass through our bodies for a second. Remember, this was 1999, high-dot-com-boom-time, and the city was absolutely crawling with GenX APAs, all arts and creative writing minors working 12-hour days with nothing to do on weekends. It wasn't just APAture that exploded right around then. Ask Chi-hui what happened; ask LocusArts or AECA; ask OACC. (On second thought, don't ask OACC.)

The next APAture we took to SomArts--we had avoided SomArts the first time around because we'd thought it would be too big and we didn't want to rattle around in there like peas. We knew we needed the size the second year, which grew by 50% in audience, submissions, festival size, and committee size. After APAture 2, which was as poorly organized and amateurish as APAture 1, but bigger, I was so burnt out I decided not to coordinate the festival myself anymore. Nancy concurred; all the people the first two APAtures had attracted to KSW (we had an artist database of 500 and an active volunteer database of 300) had helped us to expand our programming by about 500% or more, and the program manager (me) was really needed to, well, manage the programs.

Also, all over SF--all over California, really--Baby Boomer established orgs were suffering from loss of founders and longtime activists. Generational transfer was a huge issue; youth programming was a huge issue. Inspired, I was given to understand, in part by APAture and similar programs in other organizations, the California Arts Council (the pre-Schwarzenegger, properly funded CAC, that is, the one that had Cali as the second best arts funded state in the Union) created a grant especially for youth arts programs. APAture got one from the first round, and we used the money to hire a festival coordinator.

APAture 3 was coordinated by Andrew Amorao (Dru, where are you?). Sam Chanse also appeared on the committee for the first time that year, having just moved (back) to the Bay Area and joined the Locus organizers. Sam coordinated APAture 4, and joined the KSW staff permanently afterwards. When I left the staff early 2003, Sam took over as program manager, then program director, and eventually artistic director of KSW. The next five years of APAture (and KSW) were led and guided by Sam. (I was not involved, so I can't tell you any details. Ask Sam.)

Every year since the first, APAture grew length-wise. It started out as a one-day expo (with a separate film/video night), and added a "quiet" performance night, then a gallery opening night, then additional, separate genre nights until the festival lasted two weeks and was segregated by genre, except for the performance disciplines.

Also, as I think I've mentioned before, APAture started out as a specifically young-adult-oriented event, so the participants were restricted to age 18-35. But within three years of the first APAture, the entire KSW board was under 40. Within five years of the first APAture, the entire staff was under 40. Within two years of APAture, we had to (try to) institute a specifically intergenerational program, to try to keep the founding generation of KSW from wandering away. We didn't exactly have much success with that. I imagine that's part of the reason that the APAture committee did away with the age limitation a couple of years ago.

Let me just say something about that at this point: the age limitation was something along the lines of an attempt at perpetual revolution. It was supposed to encourage artists and organizers to move on after a few years, preventing anyone or group from trying to take over the festival and make it their personal thing. But it was also supposed to keep fresh young folks coming into KSW and feeling empowered by having the opportunity to organize their own event. It was supposed to turn out new, trained API organizers into the community every few years.

But it's occurred to me during this APAture that APAture itself--the idea, the structure, the type of event it is--is very much a product of my generation, in the same way that the original KSW--including the Jazz Festival--was a product of its generation. Maybe we don't need to perpetuate APAture, because when the next distinct generation comes to adulthood, they'll want to do something completely different.

Or maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just change APAture into something else. Whatever. We have a few years before intergenerational transfer becomes a problem again, but since we have APAture here, and have to do something with it, thinking about these issues, at least, will always be on the table.

That's part of the point of this liveblog, by the way. I don't intend to do this again next year (although I'd be happy to help out anyone who wants to do an APAture Liveblog next year!) but using the proliferation of cheap, easy web communications technologies to update APAture and make it impactful on the web might go a ways towards renewing APAture and perpetuating the revolution.

Maybe APAture just needs to be a word that hovers over the perpetual change of youth-oriented programming at KSW. At the moment, I'm still part of the generation that is active in this shared endeavor, but soon I won't be. And maybe this contribution will fall by the wayside, as many of the APAture practices we established ten years ago did. That would be cool, actually.

Aaannnd ... We're Done!

Hey everybody!

Thank you all so much for reading APAture Live these past two weeks! I've been tracking where you all came from in webstats, but it would help KSW (and me) to refine that information and understand how (or whether) to bring you a blog in future years if you would take this very brief survey. Talk back! Tell us what you liked and what you didn't like! Be honest!

It's certainly been an interesting challenge for me. Detractors of the bitchy/critical tone of this blog might think that I was bitchy on purpose. But the fact is that this is no more or less than what came out. I did very little editing as I went along, and what I did was tone down the bitchiness a little. Nothing more. I don't know exactly what that says about my personality, but this is how I write on the fly ... and perhaps how I experience art.

Of course, this is only the top layer of how I experience art. Good art is something that engages you at several levels, only a few of which are conscious levels. Please keep that in mind here: this blog addresses only the most superficial, immediate level of response. That can be useful to artists to hear, but it's not the last word on what I think of the work, much less on what is really happening between the artist and her/his whole audience.

If you're interested: I've found from the data I've collected so far that most of the blog readers are APAture attendees, using the blog to round out their APAture experience, compare notes, or find out what happened at an event they couldn't attend. There have been a few people who couldn't make it to APAture who read the blog instead, but they seemed to all be folks who had been to APAture in previous years. If you had a different experience, please speak up! We'd like to know what folks who have never been to the event and are only experiencing it online think of this blog.

And finally, I may have some closing thoughts about APAture 10 in the upcoming week, as I digest what I've seen. But I'm planning on ending the blog (I'll leave it up) and closing the stats after a week, so you don't really need to check back in after October 4.

Thanks again for participating and please take the survey and talk back! See you all next year at APAture 11!

-- Claire

Closing Blog

Hi Everyone!

Just a note to let you know that I'm closing this blog. The blog itself will remain up indefinitely ... although I may in the future export it to a static webpage, and kill the blog format entirely.

I've closed comments on all the posts; since this is a closed blog, it would be better for discussion to happen elsewhere. This is mainly for my benefit: I don't want to have to monitor comments on a closed blog.

I'm also closing the audience survey. Thank you to those who took the survey. Your feedback was very helpful!

Thanks all for participating in APAture and the blog and I'll see you next year, although probably not in this form!

--claire