Emergence 2021: Practical is Radical
June 7, 8, 9 online
Registration is $35 – $125 at
emergence-2021.eventbrite.com
Art Workers Week
June 1–11
Various events!
facebook.com/artworkersweek
Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco Bay Area and community partners present Emergence 2021: Practical is Radical. This year, we share tactics of adaptability and resilience and honor the arts and culture workers who embody the knowledge that that which is radical is also practical and that which is practical is often radical.
Join us for Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco Bay Area presents Emergence 2021: Practical is Radical. Learning from the wisdom of artists and activists—and casting off the oppressive and extractive practices we have been trained to replicate—Emergence 2021 aims to connect and share the tactics of survival and resilience that have proven most effective—and most practical—not only this last year, but for generations.
Emergence 2021: Practical is Radical
June 7, 8, 9 online
Registration is $35 – $125 at https://emergence-2021.eventbrite.com
+++ No one turned away for lack of funds. We got you!! Sliding-scale tickets are available by request via this short form: https://airtable.com/shrGswoXdDwZ6PMDN +++
Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco Bay Area and our community partners present Emergence 2021: Practical is Radical. This year, we share tactics of adaptability and resilience and honor the arts and culture workers who embody the knowledge that that which is radical is also practical and that which is practical is often radical.
Emergence—the annual convening of the EAP network—provides a collaborative platform for Bay Area arts & culture workers to connect, share ideas, and elevate their work and voices. For our eleventh year of convening, we explore how artists and organizations have adapted to new challenges, opportunities, and resources with discussions including wellness, mutual aid, and the emergence of new platforms and technologies that have transformed our practices. Through sharing sessions and workshops, we aim to combat narratives that art, culture, and equity are extra work, eccentric, or optional.
The radical wisdom and ways of our arts workers, culture bearers, and equity advocates are not only necessary, but completely practical.
Highlights
- Keynote and award of recognition with Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods
- Keynote performance by Midori with Jason Wyman
- Sessions on cultural competency, BIPOC women space-makers, wellness tactics for EDI workers and advocates, digital adaptability, creative resource-sharing, and joy
- Guest speakers including Midori, Chris Evans, Megan Leppla, Tricia Rainwater-Tutwiler, members of SOMArts Cultural Center, and more!
About Emergence
Emergence is the annual convening of the EAP network of arts & culture workers and provides a collaborative platform for the Bay Area workforce to connect, share ideas, and elevate their work and voices. EAP is committed to curating Emergence as a participatory experience that encourages deep connections and inquiries that are omnidirectional through generations, career levels, business models, and disciplines. Our goal is for you to leave with actionable next steps, as well as tangible tools and a strengthened network to support your work.
Art Workers Week
Emergence is at the heart of Art Workers Week, which honors the culture, labor, and value arts and culture workers contribute to our Bay Area ecosystem and the many networks, organizations, and collectives who hold space and provide us with resources and connection.
LOCATION
Keeping our community in mind, we pivot our traditionally in-person event toward a different kind of space, experimenting with ways we can connect in virtual and/or socially-distanced formats.
Several talks, events, publications, and workshops will be hosted on various platforms—mostly Zoom. See full schedule and registration for specific details.
With deep respect, EAP acknowledges that even in virtual space, our people, our work, and our network servers are on native lands and thank the indigenous people of the Bay Area who have stewarded this land throughout the generations.
Schedule
All times are Pacific Daylight Time. Check out more info at emergingsf.org/emergence-2021
★ = Includes Interactive Performance or Art-Making
✥ = ASL Interpreter
✢ = Closed Captioning
Mon, Jun 7
11:00AM–12:30PM : Opening Keynote and Award of Recognition with Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods ✥ ✢
1:30–3:30PM : Practical and Radical—Plenary Roundtable with guided visualization by Jason Wyman ★ ✥ ✢
4:00–5:00PM : Opening Happy Hour and toast to the inaugural Artist Adaptability Circle nominees ✢
Tue, Jun 8
11:00AM–12:30PM : Make Space, Take Space—WOC Wisdom in Creating Space for Wellness ✥ ✢
1:30–3:30PM : Wellness Tactics for EDI Work ✥ ✢
4–5:00PM : Snark Fest—A Cathartic Poster-Making Happy Hour ★ ✢
Wed, Jun 9
11:00AM–12:30PM : Adopt, Adapt, and Improve: Digital Adaptability in Arts Organizations ★ ✥ ✢
1:30–3:00PM : Overjoyed! with Marie Queerdo (and Keith) — Keynote Performance, followed by conversation Performance Art in the Age of COVID and Q&A with artists Midori & Jason Wyman ★ ✥ ✢
4–5:00PM : Closing Happy Hour ✢
PLUS… Networking spaces on our dedicated Discord Server, collective resource library, and more!
Speakers
Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods
Midori
Jason Wyman
Megan Leppla
Tricia Rainwater-Tutwiler
Chris Evans
Aimee Espiritu
Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen
Kevin Seaman
Rio Yañez
Carolina Quintanilla (SOMArts Cultural Center)
Devon Nandagiri (SOMArts Cultural Center)
Nia McAllister (Museum of the African Diaspora)
Keynotes
Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods
EAP Award of Recognition
In recognition of the many years Kanyon has worked with EAP to hold space and share platform for Native/Indigenous voices and support our efforts toward strong allyship, EAP honors the artist/activist and invites guest speakers to share their experience with her work. Following the offering of award Kanyon will lead a group discussion on cultural competency and recognition.
Kanyon Sayers-Roods is Costanoan Ohlone-Mutsun and Chumash; she also goes by her given Native name, “Coyote Woman”. She is proud of her heritage and her native name (though it comes with its own back story), and is very active in the Native Community. She is an Artist, Poet, Published Author, Activist, Student and Teacher. The daughter of Ann-Marie Sayers, she was raised in Indian Canyon, trust land of her family, which currently is one of the few spaces in Central California available for the Indigenous community for ceremony. Kanyon’s art has been featured at the De Young Museum, The Somarts Gallery, Gathering Tribes, Snag Magazine, and numerous Powwows and Indigenous Gatherings. She is a recent graduate of the Art Institute of California, Sunnyvale, obtaining her Associate and Bachelor of Science degrees in Web Design and Interactive Media. She is motivated to learn, teach, start conversations around decolonization and reinidgenization, permaculture and to continue doing what she loves, Art.
“I am Ohlone & Chumash – California Native Woman. I am a creative artist ever inspired by nature and the natural world, Catalyst of decolonizing conversations. Contemp/Traditional Artist, Native Representative, Consultant, Advocate of Truth in History, Multimedia Artist, “Coyote”, T.E.K educator, and much more – Let’s Talk”
OVERJOYED!
with Marie Queerdo (and Keith)
Keynote performance, followed by Performance Art in the Age of COVID, a conversation between Midori, Jason Wyman, and guests, with an open Q&A.
Feeling glum, miserable, flustered, rattled? Longing for weird, queer artists who are messy, sensational, and absurd? Wondering how performance art could bridge physical and virtual audiences? Just need to get out of the fucking house?
Well, then come on out to Emergence at SOMArts in person or online for Overjoyed! with Marie Queerdo (and Keith) for a one-night-only site-specific performance and panel discussion about joy, pleasure, and the painstaking journey to finally produce queer performance art amidst COVID.
San Francisco artists Midori and Jason Wyman were booked over a year ago to perform Overjoyed, a webinar-style spoof of a certain tidier, at an event produced by Toxic Waste Face at SOMArts Cultural Center. Then, COVID hit and canceled all performances. Now, Midori and Wyman have reimagined the piece with the help of Emerging Arts Professionals Network and SOMArts Cultural Center and are proud to finally present it a year later on the stage it was meant to be on.
After the performance, Midori and Wyman will host a panel discussion with SOMArts staff, Emerging Arts Professionals, and (hopefully) Toxic Waste Face to talk about curating and producing performance art in the age of COVID, and all of the joys, challenges, and accommodations necessary to ensure the safety and expression of artists and audiences alike.
Any resemblance to actual lifestyle guru is purely intentional.
Sessions
Opening Keynote: Award of Recognition & Cultural Competency Workshop with Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods
Monday, June 7, 11AM-12:30PM PDT (90-min session)
In recognition of the many years Kanyon has worked with EAP to hold space and share platform for Native/Indigenous voices and support our efforts toward strong allyship, EAP honors the artist/activist and invites guest speakers to share their experience with her work.
In the second half of the session, Kanyon will lead a discussion on cultural competency and recognition.
Practical and Radical—Plenary Roundtable with art-based guided visualization by Jason Wyman
Monday, June 7, 1:30-3:30PM PDT (2 hr session)
Join us for this plenary roundtable where ALL attendees will have a moment to get to know each other and participate in conversation around this year’s Emergence theme: Practical is Radical.
The session will open with Reorienting Space / Center Being by Jason Wyman
Looking to reorient your being within your physical space? Then, join queer artist Jason Wyman on a journey set to the vocals of Kafi-Ayanna Allah, a Black, Akan, Saponi, and Waccamaw artist and librarian, who is singing “Merry Golden Tree,” an Appalachian variation of a traditional Scottish ballad, “The Sweet Trinity.” When the journey is over, you may find yourself centered, or you might even, simply, find yourself.
Networking Breaks on Discord
12:30–1:30 & 3:00–4:00PM
Opening Happy Hour and toast to the inaugural Artist Adaptability Circle nominees
4:00–5:00PM
Make Space, Take Space—WOC Wisdom in Creating Space for Wellness
Tuesday, June 8, 11AM–12:30PM PDT (90-min session)
Centering the wisdom of Women of Color who make space for support, connection, and wellness, participants will hear their shared stories and participate in one of three collective circles:
- Megan Leppla & Tricia Rainwater-Tutwiler’s Women + Nonbinary Artists of Color Circle
- Midori’s “office hours”
- Chris Evans’s healing space for Black Women
In partnership with Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area
Wellness Tactics for EDI Work
Tuesday, June 8, 1:30-3:30PM PDT (2 hr session)
Who holds space for the space-holders? … Do you find yourself in constant conversations or heavily invested in shifting your spaces toward equity? Have you ever felt gaslit, isolated, fatigued when doing any kind of EDI work? Is anyone listening? We hear ya!
Join Aimee Espiritu (Espiritu Consulting) and Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen (Emerging Arts Professionals) to gather, share, and support each other. We will discuss our experiences, share tactics for coping and resilience, and map out tools and skills we might need to develop to keep going. This session is for equity advocates, workers, and all who find themselves in these spaces doing work—at any experience-level. By the end of the session, we hope you’ll feel seen, supported, and have made connections with people you can call! The session centers BIPOC experience and needs; allies are welcome and will focus on ways to mitigate damage and strengthen healthy collaboration.
In partnership with Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area and Espiritu Consulting
Networking Breaks on Discord
12:30–1:30 & 3:30–4:00PM
Snark Fest—A Cathartic Poster-Making Happy Hour
4:00–5:00PM
Adopt, Adapt, and Improve: Digital Adaptability in Arts Organizations
Wednesday, June 8, 11AM–12:30PM PDT (90-min)
What do you do when you run public programs and the public is ordered to stay at home?! While many arts organizations saw SIP as a roadblock and put a pause on their work, these folks transformed the shift into an opportunity for evolution—to reach new audiences, build new tools, and meet needs of community.
Join us for a conversation about finding digital models for creative public engagement and grounding solutions in your values.
- Carolina Quintanilla (SOMArts Cultural Center)
- Devon Nandagiri (SOMArts Cultural Center)
- Nia McAllister (Museum of the African Diaspora)
- Moderated by Rio Yañez
And if that’s not enough, the session opens with InterFace, an interactive Zoom-adapted video project by Midori:
Step onto the virtual stage with the artist and every participant, to collectively dance and paint simultaneously – to create a existential sigil of the moment. A secular ritual of bringing joyous chaos into a moment’s ordered delight. Erasing the line between the artist an audience, forming a temporary creative unit.
In partnership with SOMArts Cultural Center
OVERJOYED! with Marie Queerdo (and Keith)
Keynote Performance & Conversation
Wednesday, June 9, 1:30-3:00PM PDT (90-min session)
Feeling glum, miserable, flustered, rattled? Longing for weird, queer artists who are messy, sensational, and absurd? Wondering how performance art could bridge physical and virtual audiences?
Well, then come on out to Emergence at SOMArts in person* or online for Overjoyed! with Marie Queerdo (and Keith) for a one-day-only site-specific performance and conversation about joy, pleasure, and the painstaking journey to finally produce queer performance art amidst COVID.
San Francisco artists Midori and Jason Wyman were booked over a year ago to perform Overjoyed, a webinar-style spoof of a certain tidier, at an event produced by Toxic Waste Face at SOMArts Cultural Center. Then, COVID hit and canceled all performances. Now, Midori and Wyman have reimagined the piece with the help of Emerging Arts Professionals and SOMArts Cultural Center and are proud to finally present it a year later on the stage it was meant to be on.
After the performance, Midori will be in conversation with Wyman and guests (hopefully Toxic Waste Face) to talk about curating and producing performance art in the age of COVID, and all of the joys, challenges, and accommodations necessary to ensure the safety and expression of artists and audiences alike.
In partnership with SOMArts Cultural Center & Society of the Smokey Mirror
Networking Breaks on Discord
12:30–1:30 & 3:00–4:00PM
Closing Happy Hour with Midori & Jason
4:00–5:00PM
Resources & Reading
Networking Platform
Visit our Discord server
Here you will find links, tools, articles, and resources related to Emergence 2021—including info from and about our sessions. Continue the conversation in our session channels. Meet new people in the Community Hangouts voice and video channel. Decompress together in the video Lounge.
New to Discord? So were we! Here’s a good intro video: https://youtu.be/TJ13BA3-NR4
And here’s an equally good, though much dryer, info video: https://youtu.be/OIqyPJQAgT4
Emergence 2021 Community Library & Archive
Visit our shared library and Emergence archive at bit.ly/EM2021Library
Here you will find links, tools, articles, and resources related to Emergence 2021—including info from and about our sessions, speakers, and content. This is a Community Library, and we’d love to include your notes, images, and links in the library. To contribute, please email action@emergingsf.org with “EM202 Library” in the subject.
Speaker Bios
Aimee Espiritu
Aimee Espiritu, M. Ed. launched Espiritu Consulting in October 2017 rooted in her satiable quality to connect things. This process has been a lifelong pursuit of insight to bring people closer to something: to each other, to a place, a history, to the future, and to purpose. Raised academically in Industrial Design, she gained the means to solve problems with a product design lens. During her years in public education, she began grasping the principle of bringing people into the center of inquiry. Ultimately, her drive to use creativity as a tool for re-imagining how organizations and people can enhance their social impact has fortified her design acumen of human-centered interaction. Aimee’s consulting practice lives at the intersection of arts and culture organizations, racial equity, strategy and thought-partnership.
Chris Evans
Chris Evans is an interdisciplinary artist trained in music and dance who creates immersive, interactive work with the goal of cultivating sacred spaces for communal listening, healing, and transformation. While much of her work is with and for Black women in Oakland, she bridges many communities. She directs Reconstruction Study Project and the Reconstructing Imagination Residency, co-founded Idora Park Project Space, and is a member of House/Full of Black Women and Black and White Projects collectives. She is a certified Pilates Instructor, Yamuna Body Rolling practitioner, and Level 2 Talawa Technique practitioner, and founder of Deep Breath Pilates.
Photo by Sibila Savage
Gregg Castro
Gregg (t’rowt’raahl Salinan, Rumsien-Ramaytush Ohlone), has worked to preserve his Ohlone and Salinan heritage for three decades. Gregg is the Society for California Archaeology’s Native American Programs Committee Chairperson. Gregg is a Facilitator for the annual California Indian Conference, a 30+ year annual gathering about California Indigenous culture. He is a Founder/Advisor to the California Indian History Curriculum Coalition, based at CSU-Sacramento. He is “Principal Cultural Consultant” to the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, advising within their San Francisco Peninsula homelands. Gregg is a writer-activist within the California indigenous community.
Jason Wyman
Jason Wyman is many things. Today, they are an artist transforming grief and pain through play and joy. Wyman is writing a book about creating and sustaining an intergenerational, cross-territorial praxis. They are currently obsessed with queer cosmologies, antifascist multiracial student and veteran organizing in the wake of World War 2, and dismantling all white institutions, including all museums! Jason dreams for days when their trans siblings can simply make cat videos instead of fighting for survival. You can find their writings, digital drawings, zines, videos, what-have-yous at www.queerlycomplex.com and their artist website at www.jasonwyman.com.
Megan Alma Leppla
Megan Alma Leppla (they / she) is a queer Latinx social practice artist and educator whose work seeks to build community through the exploration of intersectional identities. Leppla received a Masters of Arts in Art Education from the Maryland Institute College of Art. They have shown work nationally and internationally through solo exhibitions, group shows, and artist residencies. They have served as an arts facilitator and educator, working with schools, community organizations and institutions since 2008. Alma currently serves as the Latinx Teaching Artist Fellow for Root Division in San Francisco.
- meganleppla.com
- @meganleppla
Midori
Born an abomination, she travels between worlds seeking the other monsters – for we are many – searching for comfortable nightmares to nestle into. Caressing the shapes of emotion and textures of memory, she feasts on repulsion, desire and beauty. She’ll trick you into weaving layers of you into the fabric of the world. Midori ( 美登里 ）is a multidisciplinary social practice artist. A Tokyo native and long-time San Franciscan, known for her durational and interactive performances and engaged installations. Using powerful metaphors drawn from tactile experience and ancient mythology, Midori creates environments for viewers to bring and to process their own narratives.
- www.planetmidori.com
- IG / Twitter / FB: @planetmidori
Nia McAllister
Nia McAllister is a Bay Area born poet, writer, environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement. Nia received her B.A. in Environmental Analysis: Race, Class, Gender, and the Environment from Pomona College. As the Public Programs Manager at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), Nia facilitates participatory spaces for creative expression and literary dialogue. She leads the museum’s literary events and is the host and founder of the Museum’s Open Mic series. Through all her work, she is committed to creating platforms for amplifying the work of Black artists on a global scale.
Rio Yanez
From the moment he was conceived in an artist’s studio, Rio Yañez’ fate as an artist and curator was sealed. Born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District, Yañez is a curator, photographer, and graphic artist. As a curator he was a frequent collaborator with his father, Rene Yañez, and the pair developed exhibits and programming together for 13 years. Yañez’ carries on his father’s tradition of curating the annual Dia de los Muertos exhibit at SOMArts alongside his collaborator Carolina Quintanilla. As a visual artist his solo exhibits include Pocho Adventure Club and Bubblegum Crisis. Yañez is also a founding member of The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, the world’s most dangerous tortilla art collective.
- rioyanez.com
Tricia Rainwater-Tutwiler
Tricia Rainwater-Tutwiler (she/her) is an Indigiqueer Multimedia artist who resides in San Francisco. She has dedicated her art practice to the idea of healing through looking inward. Tricia’s work in self-portraiture is both a look at her own inner struggles as well as an archive for generations of Indigiqueer people to come. Some of Tricia’s most recent work in SOMArts Día de Muertos show explores resilience with Indigenous people during the Covid 19 pandemic by conducting interviews on Zoom and being in conversation about what resilience means to them as individuals. Tricia’s work aims to center and bring awareness to those left out of narratives in the art world.
- www.triciarainwaterart.com
- @triciarainwaterart
So many great speakers
More to come! Check back for more info about our many fantastic speakers and facilitators this year!
Community Partners
Since 1979, SOMArts leverages the power of art as a tool for social change through multi-disciplinary events and exhibitions.
