Presenters

The Beehive Design Collective is a wildly- motivated, all-volunteer, art-activist collective dedicated to ìcross-pollinating the grassroots by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. We work anonymously as word-to-image translators of complex global stories, gathered through conversations with affected communities.

Since 2000, we have disseminated more than 60,000 posters throughout Americas, entirely by grassroots, hand-to-hand distribution! Our graphics tackle issues from globalization and the drug war to biotechnology and free trade policy.

A committed group of mostly women, we are working to create holistic, accessible, and educational images that inspire critical reflection and strategic action. www.beehivecollective.org

Micha Cárdenas is an artist/theorist whose transreal work mixes physical and networked spaces in order to explore emerging forms of queer relationality, biopolitics and DIY horizontal knowledge production. She is the Associate Director of Art and Technology for UCSD’s Sixth College in the Culture, Art and Technology program. She has been a lecturer in the Visual Arts department and Critical Gender Studies program at UCSD. She is an artist/researcher with the UCSD School of Medicine, CRCA and the b.a.n.g. lab at Calit2. Her recent publications include “I am Transreal”, in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation from Seal Press, Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs, with Barbara Fornssler, from Atropos Press and “Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study” in Code Drift from CTheory. Her collaboration with Elle Mehrmand, “Mixed Relations,” was the recipient of the UCIRA Emerging Fields Award for 2009. She has exhibited and performed in biennials, museums and galleries in cities around the world including Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Egypt, Ecuador, Spain, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Dublin, Ireland and many other places. Her work has been written about in publications including Art21, the Associated Press, the LA Times, CNN, BBC World, Wired and Rolling Stone Italy.

Performance artist/writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña resides in San Francisco where he is artistic director of La Pocha Nostra. His pioneering work in performance, video, installation, poetry, journalism, photography, cultural theory and radical pedagogy, explores cross-cultural issues, immigration, the politics of language, the politics of the body, “extreme culture” and new technologies. A MacArthur Fellow and American Book Award winner, he is a regular contributor to National Public Radio, a writer for newspapers and magazines in the US, Mexico, and

Europe and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU-MIT). He is an active member of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.

For twenty-five years, Gomez-Peña has contributed to the cultural debates of our times staging legendary performance art pieces such as, “Border Brujo” (1998), “The Couple in the Cage” (1992), “The Cruci-fiction Project” (1994), “Temple of Confessions” (1995), “The Mexterminator project” (1997-99), The Living Museum of Fetishized Identities (1999-2002) and the Mapa/Corpo series (2004-2007)

Gómez-Peña’s performance, installation and video work has been presented at over eight hundred venues across the US, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the UK,

Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Australia, Russia, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and Argentina. Most recently, he has presented work at Tate Modern (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), LACMA (Los Angeles), the House of World Cultures (Berlin), MACBA (Barcelona), The Chopo Museum (Mexico City), the Encuentro Hemisférico (Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Buenos Aires) and the Havana, Liverpool and Mercosur Biennales. His photo-performances are now in the permanent collection of Daros Foundation (Zurich) and Galeria Artificios (Gran Canaria).

Through his organization, La Pocha Nostra, Gómez-Peña has intensely focused on the notion of collaboration across national borders, race, gender and generations as an act of citizen diplomacy and as a means to create “ephemeral communities” of rebel artists. La Pocha Nostra is a transdisciplinary arts organization that provides a support network and forum for artists of various disciplines, generations and ethnic backgrounds. La Pocha is devoted to erasing the borders between art and politics, art practice and theory, artist and spectator.

Robby Herbst is an interdisciplinarian. Broadly he is interested in socio-political formations; behavioral architecture, languages of dissent and counter cultures. Exploration of these fields have lead him to visual art, writing, group work, independent media, public theory and event/exhibition organizing. Collective projects of note include the vast universe of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest (exhibitions, publishing, organizing), The October Surprise, The Llano Del Rio Collective and a collaboration of no name exploring psychedelia. He is a recipient of a Warhol Foundation Writers Grant for a project examining the phenomena of “Possibility” within relational art and activism. He has contributed to Alan Kaprow: Art As Life, Museum of Contemporary Art, LA; the 2008 California Biennial; Democracy in America: The National Campaign, Creative Time 2008; Fine Print: Alternative Media, P.S.1, New York; and Theater of Peace, NGBK, Berlin, Germany. Additionally he’s shown work with Southern Exposure (SF), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), The Art Gallery of Knoxville (TN), LACE (LA), David Patton Los Angeles and Machine Project (LA). He has organized exhibitions at The Craft and Folk Art Museum (LA), Park Projects (LA) and David Patton Los Angeles. He has lectured widely on art and politics. He currently teaches New Genres Art at the University of Southern California and Interdisciplinary Art in Goddard College’s MFA-IAProgram.

Asher Hartman is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers on the exploration of the self in relation to Western histories and ideologies. Hartman’s work has been exhibited extensively including at The Hammer Museum, Whitney Biennial in collaboration with Curious Notch and Charles Long, the Beijing Open Performance Festival, The Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila), Recontres International (Paris/Berlin), MIX/NYC and Migrating Forms (New York), Images (Toronto) and in a number of Los Angeles venues including Machine Project, Monte Vista Projects, and Human Resources. Solo and collaborative exhibitions include “Annie Okay,” The Hammer Museum, “Bad Thing” and “Why Can’t We Be Together?” (with Amy Green) at Sea and Space Explorations, “The Murder of Becky” (with Curt LeMieux)

Born in Japan, Kosaka is an ordained Shingon Buddhist priest, as well as the Artistic Director of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center.  After graduating from the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1970, he continued to study in the fields of Esoteric Buddhist art.  He has been actively advocating Japanese culture and art at the JACCC since 1984.  http://jacc.org

Based in the Skid Row neighborhood, Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a non-profit arts organization that connects lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. The performance material, developed in LAPD’s workshops, articulates the performers inside understanding of how the prison system functions.

John Malpede founded LAPD in 1985. State of incarceration is directed by John Malpede and Henriette Brouwers and created by the company members. Project writers include: Riccarlo Porter, Austen Hines, Kevin Michael Key, Debra Anderson, Ronnie Walker, John Malpede.

Henriëtte Brouwers

The performance “State of Incarceration” is directed by Brouwers and John Malpede. She has worked with the Los Angeles Poverty Department since 2000. Born in the Netherlands, Brouwers has a degree from the Academy for Expression by Word and Gesture in her native country and studied corporeal mime with Etiènne Décroux and ‘theatre of the oppressed’ with Augusto Boal in Paris. She was invited to present her work in the US by the Theatre Project in Baltimore in 1993 and has since performed and taught at 7 Stages in Atlanta, UT of Knoxville, Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem and Highways in Santa Monica. Inspired by Mexican legends about women, Brouwers directed ‘Weeping Women and War’ at Pomona College, ‘Weeping Women on Skid Row’ and ‘La Llorona of Echo Park’ with LAPD. In 2003-4, Brouwers worked with John Malpede on the creation of RFK in EKY a community-based re-enactment of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 trip to investigate poverty in Appalachia.

Kevin Michael Key

Kevin is a performer and contributing writer on “State of Incarceration” . Kevin Michael Key is a law school graduate and has practiced as a defense attorney. He is active in the drug recovery community in downtown Los Angeles and in community advocacy groups. He works part-time for United Coalition East Prevention Project to mobilize the neighborhood toward creating drug free environment. He does community diabetes education with the JWHC clinic. Kevin Michael has worked with LAPD since 2003 and has traveled with LAPD for community residencies in New York, Charlotte, NC, Utrecht, The Netherlands and the Paris, France suburb of Gennevilliers.

John Malpede

The performance “State of Incarceration” is directed by John Malpede and Henriëtte Brouwers. John Malpede founded the Los Angeles Poverty Department in 1985. From1985 through 1989 John Malpede was a homeless outreach advocate for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. John has taught at UCLA Dept. Dance /World Arts and Cultures, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and The Amsterdam School for Advanced Research in Theater and Dance (DasArts). His individual artist fellowships include new genre grants from New York State Council on the Arts, NEA, and California Arts Council, a COLA fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, and a California Community Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. In 2004, he directed “RFK in EKY” a site-specific regional recreation of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 inquiry into poverty in Appalachia. As a 2008-9 fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies Malpede developed “Bright Futures” a performative critique of “financial engineers and engineering”.

Riccarlo Porter

Riccarlo Porter is a writer, performer on “State of Incarceration”. As an ensemble member of LAPD he has traveled with the company to Chicago, Washington D.C and Houston. He is one of the contributing writer / performer in our current production “State of Incarceration”. He also produces numerous arts events around LosAngeles.
“State of Incarceration” is a collaborative creation of Los Angeles Poverty Department. Artist collaborators: ie, written, improvised and performed by: Debra Anderson, Anthony Taylor, Riccarlo Porter, Ronnie Walker, Austin Hines, Kevin Michael Key, Daniel Meza, Mandie Davis (a.k.a. Sista Mary), Jimmy Johnson, Vera Soares, Linda Harris, Celestine Williams, Jennifer Cambell, Ari Kadin, Adrian Turnage, Charles Jackson. Directed by: John Malpede, Henriette Brouwers.

http://lapovertydept.org/

Luis Ituarte was born in Tijuana, Baja California México (1943). He studied high school in a Jesuit college (Franco-Español) in Mexico City. Later he went to U.N.A.M.’s (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico) Law School and San Carlos Art School. He was involved in the 1968 student movement (Tlaltelolco), which resulted in his exile to Central America. He resumed his studies in both law and art at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, where he worked with Mexican muralist José Chávez Morado and the Cultural Department of the University. In 1974 Ituarte immigrated to Canada and settled in Victoria, British Columbia, where he attended the Victoria College of the Arts and became a strong voice in support of the arts. He was a founding member of “Alley Art”, a street art coalition. Ituarte in collaboration with the Greater Victoria Art Gallery, started the program “Artists at City Hall” which he coordinated for five years with monthly exhibits.

In 1988 Ituarte moved to Los Angeles California, where he worked as: Director of Cultural Activities for The Olvera Street Merchants Association; art teacher at Plaza de la Raza, and The Junior Arts Center in Hollywood; Programs Coordinator and curator at the “Lankershim Art Center” and Director of “Art in the Park” with the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. In addition, he has been a producing artist and designer, art curator and judge of many exhibits. He is a founding member of the “Graffiti Arts Coalition”, and “Urbanos L.A.” He is a member of “El Foro Cultural Ciudadano” (FOCUC) a Tijuana Cultural Think Tank, and member of “Public Address,” an arts organization in San Diego CA.

Luis worked as an Art Instructor at the Barnsdall Arts Center, the Junior Arts Center, and served as Coordinator of “Bajo el Mismo Sol,” cultural exchange project between Baja California, Mexico and Los Angeles, California. Ituarte retired from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department September 2009 and serves as Director of Border Council of Arts and Culture/Consejo Fronterizo de Arte y Cultura (COFAC) www.cofac101.org and Co-founder/Director of La Casa del Tunel: Art Center www.lacadadeltunelartcenter.org in Tijuana Mexico. He consultants with organizations on both sides of the border.

www.luisituarte.com

As artist and human beings we recognize that through exchange of ideas and art we connect to each other. We are affecting each other from the moment we meet and are constantly using each other to find questions and answers.

By working closely with other artists we learn to let our bodies be means of an artistic process in dance and actively make a change in someone’s life by contributing to their dream or vision.  By actively participating with other bodies and minds we are seeing what is crucial to a successful process and development of an idea.  Simply just being there as a means of support and reliability is a way of harvesting and using each other in a healthy way.

We are concerned with the world and the state it is in.  We are asking ourselves: How do I feel about the world I live in?  How do I contribute to my community, society and beyond with my actions?  And we wish to inspire others to ask themselves the same thing.  Our work allows people to question the nature of their historical and social situation.  The goal is to inspire action.

Sharon Sekhon is the Founder of the Studio for Southern California History, a nonprofit resource center located in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. The Studio’s mission is to critically chronicle and disseminate the region’s social history in order to foster sense of place. Sekhon received her PhD from USC in History in 2001 and then a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the University’s Annenberg Center for Communication. In addition to her work at the Studio, she is interested in the intersection of Southern California history and public discourse—particularly in late 19th and early 20th century film, literature and nonfiction texts.

Websites:
A People’s Guide to LA.
The Holiday Bowl History Project.
The Evergreen Cemetery History Project.
The Studio for Southern California History