M.U.V.E.

(a)eromestiza presents M.U.V.E.
in association with the National Queer Arts Festival, the 7th United States of Asian America Festival, and the QUELACO Festival

Friday and Saturday, June 11-12, 2004. 8pm
SomArts Cultural Center
934 Brannan St, SF

Tickets: $12-25 sliding scale at the door

Photo: Peter Samuels
www.petersamuels.com

Experience a journey through visual sounds, speaking in tongues, performing in fashion, and creating communicine. M.U.V.E. (movement uninhibited violating everything) is an experiment in performance, music, fashion, and video. M.U.V.E. is an interrogation of bodies, identities, ethnicities, sexualities, communities and interracialities. Using various mediums, participating artists will explore movement as a subversive act in themes of migration, activism, empowerment, and gender, among others.

Collaborating Artists and Project Coordinators Heather Cox Carducci and Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa will present a performance piece, using movement, creative fitness to exercise their rights, and dialogues. Ixta Lagos’ storytelling touches on themes of immigration, fear of the Other, and real and imagined reactions to absurd questions concerning her origins and place in the world. In a performative video piece, Jenifer Wofford finds many social functions and interactions for a flip flop attached to a bamboo stick, a hybrid object which finds its home throughout the “developing world.” Eliza Barrios’ video installation engages audience members through visual displacement. Local composer melissa dougherty explores the relationship between sound and movement in an interactive and theatrical installation. The experimental fashion show will feature racially ambiguous and androgynous models and designs by local designer and cultural worker, Marilyn Yu whose clothing is sculptural, three-dimensional and radioactive.

M.U.V.E. is (a)eromestiza’s fourth annual co-production with the National Queer Arts Festival, the United States of Asian America and the QUELACO Festival. Founded in 2001 by Artistic Director/Interdisciplinary Artist, Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa, (a)eromestiza is dedicated to presenting cutting-edge performance, sound and video based work by artists who challenge stereotypical notions of identity and community. (a)eromestiza’s productions articulate a new vision of a diverse community that is not conceived in binary terms (i.e., black/white, male/female, gay/straight); The organization’s vision, “(a)eromestizaje,” is a contemporary, aerodynamic, ethereal and sex positive interpretation of “mestizaje,” the Spanish word used to describe the essence of Latin American and Filipino culture, which evolved over many generations of colonialism as a result of the processes of slavery and labor migration that led to the “mixture” of Spanish Catholicism, indigenous native, African, Asian cultures.

ARTIST BIOS

Artistic Director Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa is a San Francisco-based interdisciplinary performance artist, videomaker, cultural activist, curator and percussionist of Filipino and Colombian descent. She has participated in creative collaborations with artists such as Pearl Ubungen, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Elia Arce and Afia Walking Tree. Her work in performance and video has been presented nationally and internationally. She has served as the Artistic Director of the (a)eromestiza project’s three previous productions: (a)eromestiza, Cosmic Blood, and The Size of Her Rage. Her writing has been published by Social Justice Journal, shellac, artistmanifesto.com, Antithesis Journal: Sex 2000 and an anthology entitled Postcolonial and Queer Theories: Intersections and Essays. Awards include grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art (2000-2001), the San Francisco Art Commission Cultural Equity Grants Program and the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize. She has performed throughout the United States as well as in Spain, Peru, and Canada. Website: www.devilbunny.org.

Composer melissa dougherty is of mixed-race African American, Irish and Native American ancestry. She began playing music early in life: guitar at age five, classical piano at age seven, bands and 4-track recordings as a teenager. In 1997, she graduated from Whittier College with a degree in English and Religious Studies, a minor in Art History and also studied jazz guitar on scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She has released one CD of original material and is currently finishing her second, Tunes From A Room. melissa has performed all over the Bay Area and California as a solo artist; she also teaches guitar and works independently as a multi-instrumentalist/sound designer/touring musician for choreographers and performance artists in the Bay Area. For more information, visit: www.melissadougherty.com.

Heather Cox Carducci is an Italian American fashion designer and MUVEr. She has presented her work at various fashion events in The Bay Area, including Platform, Mockumentary, Gift, and Love Affair. Heather has commissioned with curators Altruity, Feel Good Entertainment, and Plado Media. She has worked as a stylist and designer for independent publications such as Fish Wrap and Hyphen: Asian America Unabridged, and as (a)eromestiza’s costume designer. Her advocacy work includes San Francisco non-profits the Queer Cultural Center, the Harvey Milk Institute, Proyecto ContraSIDA, SF Pride Committee, and the Gay & Lesbian Historical Society. For more information, visit her site at www.spacesuperstar.com.

Writer/ Storyteller Ixta Ingrid Lagos is a Salvadorean immigrant who came to the US at age 16. She graduated from UCLA where she studied applied mathematics and took a variety of classes in Chicano studies and Spanish literature. She later taught mathematics in different public high schools in south-central Los Angeles and wrote several successful grants that brought technology into her classroom. She moved to the Bay Area in the late nineties where she studied creative writing with Maiana Minahal and performed in “waiting for their words” at Bindlestiff Theater.

Eliza Barrios’ work ranges from installation, to performance, to film/video. Her installation works have been exhibited nationally and video works have screened at various film festivals and new media conferences internationally. Her collaborative affiliations are with The MailOrder Brides/M.O.B. Barrios explores and questions the various tangible and intangible elements that ‘make up’ a person — their subjectivity, their motivations — their ‘internal belief system.’ Through various mediums, Barrios orchestrates environments/encounters that visually and metaphorically exist at the periphery and seek to reveal the many layers of ‘the system’ at work.

Jenifer K. Wofford’s work reflects intercultural exchange and discourse. She questions the way in which perpetual outsiders, immigrants, blurred borders, and synthetic nationalism shape our sense of relationality and identity outside of dominant contexts, constructs, environments. For seven years, she has been one-third of an artist team (Mail Order Brides/”M.O.B.”: they are all Filipina/American, hence the tongue-in-cheek name). Their work has ranged from photography and video to installation and performance. For ten years, she has also been an educator, presently teaching fine arts/art history in an Excelsior district public high school, which she believes, has sharpened her ability to share and practice art-making and art history. She has also pursued solo and group art residencies and projects, and residencies in New York, North Carolina and France.

Jenny Hacker has been designing and making custom clothing for the past several years. She does haute couture for individual clients and her designs are carried locally at the store RAG. Jenny’s approach to design is to let the materials influence the structure. Her inspiration is the properties and sensuality of the fabric, and her designs stem from what the fabric tells her. Her work has been featured in Paper magazine. She holds an MFA from California College of Arts. Jenny magazine. Contact: www.hackerdesign.com.
Marilyn Yu is an insidious cultural worker undermining the society of the United States, living and working in San Francisco. She makes three-dimensional things, costumes, clothing (www.plutoniumclothing.com), and cartoons, among other things. As a member of the SF art community, Marilyn is a co-founder of Locus, a board member of Kearny Street Workshop,
and an employee at the Galería de la Raza.

(a)eromestiza,QUELACO, the National Queer Arts and 7th United States of Asian America festivals are supported in part by the Consortium of Cultural Centers and the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission – Cultural Equity Grants Program, SomArts Cultural Center, the Astraea Foundation, the Horizons Foundation and the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

The United States of Asian America Arts Festival runs April 29-June 12, 2004.For tickets and more information, please telephone (415) 864-4126 or visit www.apiculturalcenter.org.

Marilyn Yu
Marilyn Yu is an insidious cultural worker undermining the society of the United States, living and working in San Francisco. She makes three-dimensional costumes, clothing (www.plutoniumclothing.com), and cartoons, among other things. As a member of the SF art community, Marilyn is a co-founder of Locus, a board member of Kearny Street Workshop, and an employee at the Galería de la Raza. www.plutoniumclothing.com

emael
emael was born among los angeles, emael has lived and worked in the bay area for close to 14 years. with degrees from the haas school of business and the san francisco art institute, he seeks to change contemporary views of purpose, beauty and love making. with a forthcoming book and the third year anniversary of performance art direct, he sets his sight on connecting people with art on a daily basis. all professional inquiries may be directed to: [email protected] blessings.