Sights & Sounds is your weekly guide to the Bay Area arts scene. Photographer and archivist Mia Nakano is the Executive Director & Co-Founder of the Resilience Archives. She told KALW’s Jeneé Darden about three fantastic arts events happening around the Bay this weekend.
- Self Evident: Asian America’s Stories at Oakland Asian Cultural Center 5/18
- Binh Danh lectureatStanford University 5/20
- Present Tense: Task of Remembranceexhibition at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco (thru Dec.)
The new podcastSelf Evident: Asian America’s Stories is kicking off its first season by coming to the Center for Asian American Media's CAAM Fest stage for an evening of live storytelling and discussion. The show tackles topics such as questions about identity, cultural change and nationhood. Check out the show this Saturday evening at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.
"The launch of this podcast is a really crucial thing in that they really sourced and did a lot of research within the community to find some of the best and most diverse stories that are out there."
For the past six years, photographer Binh Danh has been traveling across the West, making scenic daguerreotypes in a mobile darkroom. Next week Danh will host alecture at Stanford University where he’ll discuss his recent series of daguerreotypes that celebrate the United States National Park system. His lecture is Monday, May 20th at the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Buildingon the Stanford University Campus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clL8UwOYg40
"I think having a perspective of this historic process brought forth by a Vietnamese photographer is very interesting to me because we're always looking at things through a western lens."
The group art exhibitionPresent Tense: Task of Remembrance is the latest iteration of the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco’s Present Tense series. This is the 10th anniversary of the exhibition and this year it explores the weight of history, the responsibility of remembering and the ways artists and their communities build and engage with memory. Present Tense: Task of Remembrance is running at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco thru December.
"One of the people (featured) is Tina Takemoto who has a film called Remembering Judo, and it's an experimental art film about the queer Japanese American experience in the incarceration camps."
You can catch the Resilience Archives' live showcase Performing Visible Resilience at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco on May 31st. See and hear original personal narratives from LGBTQ Asian Pacific American artists as part of the United States of Asian America Festival.
