ABOUT THE APATURE FESTIVAL

Kearny Street Workshop's APATURE FESTIVAL is an annual multidisciplinary arts event presenting the work of emerging Asian Pacific American (APA) artists living and/or working in the San Francisco Bay Area. APAture's mission is to provide emerging artists with an early experience presenting their work at a large event; to build audiences for emerging artists; to strengthen the sense of community among our emerging artists; and to raise awareness of the existence of and diversity within the APA arts community. APAture values community-building, ethnic and artistic diversity, and collaboration across ethnic and disciplinary lines. Now in its eighth year, APAture includes a visual arts show, film screenings, workshops, panel discussions, literary readings, performances in spoken word, music, dance, theater, and other performance genres, and an area for zinesters and comic artists to display and sell their work.

APAture has presented over 400 emerging artists in all disciplines to approximately 1500 attendees per year, and is the second largest APA arts festival in northern California. Kearny Street Workshop's thirty-three year history and commitment to presenting and producing art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities is certain to energize the community in coming together for this one-of-a-kind festival. "APAture is ten days and nights brimming with talent, imagination, and energy," says Kearny Street Workshop's Artistic Director Samantha Chanse. "It's also the rare kind of event that actually builds real community among artists and attendees. The spirit of APAture stays with you for weeks and even months after the official end of the festival."

This year's diverse lineup includes side-splitting observations about family relationships; insightful examinations of cultural identity; brutal dissections of war and colonization; and works that explore the delicate balance between dream and reality.

Along with Kearny Street Workshop, partnering venues and organizations for this year's APAture festival include the Actors Center of San Francisco, CounterPULSE, Intersection for the Arts, The Lab, Locus Arts, Poetry Flash, The Make-Out Room, and the Victoria Theatre.

KSW's APAture 2006 is made possible by the generous support of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Potrero Nuevo Fund, Rainbow Grocery Cooperative, Grants for the Arts, and individual donors. Media sponsors include Hyphen Magazine and manja.org.

Graphic design by Derek Chung/Tactile Pictures, with illustration by Hellen Jo.


ABOUT SOME OF OUR ARTISTS

Founded in 2001, (A)EROMESTIZA creates dynamic live performances that incorporate complex sound, movement, and video components. (a)eromestiza's production, Dimension of Is, was co-created with SpaceSuperStar, and explores and builds upon the fluid concepts of gender, queerness, and "mestizaje" (the Spanish term to describe race mixture as a result of colonialism). Heather Cox Carducci (Graphic & Web Designer/Performer) works with SpaceSuperStar, a company that creates art and clothing for individuals and their journeys. emael (Performer) is an underground performance legend who recently resurfaced from an eight month tour of North American urbanity. Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa (Artistic Director/Performer) is a San Francisco-based interdisciplinary artist whose work has been presented around the world.

KATHY AOKI lives in the Silicon Valley where she is an assistant professor at Santa Clara University. Her studio is located in San Jose. Kathy's past awards include fellowships from Kala Art Institute and the MacDowell Colony. In 2004 she was awarded an artist's residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Her work can be found in major collections across the U.S., such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Harvard University Art Museums, and the New York Public Library.

ASIAN CRISIS is a musical ensemble that emerged in 1998 from workshops/jam sessions organized by the Oakland Asian Cultural Center (OACC). The goal was to create a group that promoted a pan-Asian/Asian Pacific American consciousness through instrumentation and repertoire. Asian Crisis ' sound is inspired by musical traditions of Asia, including China, India, Korea, the Philippines, as well as American musical forms such as jazz and R&B, resulting in a fresh take on Asian American music. The band is well known in the Bay Area and has been invited to play at many prestigious festivals and events.

LEDOH was born into the Ka-Ren culture indigenous to Burma and Northern Thailand. In Kyoto in 1989, Ledoh discovered Butoh via master performer Katsura Kan, with whom he performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to five-star reviews. Ledoh's site-specific solo collaborations with composers Reverend Markus Hawkins and Michael Kosacki have electrified audiences in and around San Francisco for over ten years. In 1998 Ledoh founded the Butoh performance collective Salt Farm.

JUSTIN CHIN is the author of three collections of poetry, Gutted, Harmless Medicine & Bite Hard (Manic D Press), and three collections of essays, Burden of Ashes (Alyson Press), Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes and Pranks (St. Martin's Press), & Attack of the Ma-Eating Lotus Blossoms (Suspect Thoughts Press). Harmless Medicine was a poetry finalist at the 2002 Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, the Publishing Triangle Awards, and the Asian American Literary Awards. Justin lives in San Francisco.

MADELEINE LIM is an award-winning independent filmmaker with over 18 years of experience as a producer, director, cinematographer, and editor. Founder and Executive Director of Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP), the Singapore-born filmmaker is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco, where she teaches Advanced Media Production. In 2005, Madeleine received the KQED-TV Local Hero Award in recognition of her leadership of QWOCMAP and dedicated service to queer women of color.

THIEN PHAM is a comic book and visual artist, as well as the founder of Global Hobo, a grassroots enterprise that promotes handmade and hard-to-find comics and also includes a small studio for silkscreening and book-making. Sumo is Thien's long-awaited graphic novel about sumo wrestling, which will be published in summer 2008, after a small print run of 500 handmade, hand-bound editions that will debut at APAture 2006.


ABOUT KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP

KEARNY STREET WORKSHOP (KSW) is the oldest multidisciplinary Asian Pacific American arts organization in the United States. Founded in 1972, KSW's mission is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities. Our vision is to achieve a more just society by connecting Asian Pacific American artists with community members to give voice to our cultural, historical and contemporary issues. http://www.kearnystreet.org