Institute of the Arts and Sciences

Strange Weather Exhibition UCSC Alumni Reception
2022-04-22 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA, United States
Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation features contemporary art works which illuminate and reframe the boundaries of bodies and the environment. The artworks included in the exhibition span five decades, from 1970-2020, and are drawn together for how they creatively call attention to the impact and history of forced migrations, industrialization, global capitalism, and trauma on humans and the contemporary landscape.
Concurrent with Strange Weather, a capsule exhibition of the works of Glenn Ligon from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation will be on view at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery at UC Santa Cruz.
Artists Include: Carlos Almarez, Carlos Amorales, Leonardo Drew, Joe Feddersen, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, James Lavadour, Nicola Lopez, Hung Liu, Julie Mehretu, Wendy Red Star, Alison Saar, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, Charles Wilbert White, Kehinde Wiley, Terry Winters.

Costume Designer: Pamela Rodríguez-MonteroAssociate Costume Designer: Ella Schultz

Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission.

Visualizing Abolition with Rhodessa Jones and Sarah Crowell
2022-04-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California, 95064
Visualizing Abolition is organized by Professor Gina Dent, Feminist Studies and Dr. Rachel Nelson, Director, IAS, with support from the Mellon Foundation. The events feature artists, activists, and scholars united by their commitment to the vital struggle for prison abolition.

About the speakers

Rhodessa Jones’

Rhodessa Jones’ work in education, performance and activism has taken place in corrections and for educational institutions internationally. She conducted the Medea Project in South African prisons, working with incarcerated women and trained correctional personnel and local artists. In 2012, the U.S. Department of State, Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau named her as Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy. Jones is a recipient of many awards and honors including the US Artist Fellowship; the Pew Fellowship; SF Bay Guardian’s Lifetime Achievement Award; SF Foundation Community Leadership Award; Non-Profit Arts Excellence Award by the SF Business Arts Council; and an Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater. From 2018-2021, she was Frank H.T. Rhodes Chair at Cornell University. She was appointed as a Rhodes Professor “to strengthen the undergraduate experience by bringing individuals from every walk of life who represent excellence of achievement to the university.” As a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, Jones was invited to join August Wilson, Cornel West, Yo-Yo Ma, and Anna Deavere Smith as a “Montgomery Fellow”, fostering “the advancement of the academic realm of the College in ways that will significantly add to the quality and character of the institution.” Most recently, Jones was an Actress/Voice Talent for the character “Lulu” in Disney’s (Pixar) award-winning feature length animated film, SOUL.

Sarah Crowell

Sarah Crowell is a dancer and choreographer who has taught dance, theater, mindfulness and violence prevention for over 35 years. At the end of 2020 she left her position as the Artistic Director at Destiny Arts Center in Oakland where she served in different capacities including Executive Director for 30 years. She founded and co-directed the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, which was the subject of two documentary films, and won the National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award. Sarah has facilitated arts integration, violence prevention, cultural humility and team building professional development sessions with artists and educators since 2000, both locally and nationally. She is the recipient of many awards including the KPFA Peace award, the KQED Women’s History Local Hero award, and the National Guild for Community Arts Education Milestone award. She is a four-time finalist for a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater Education. Sarah believes that movement must be part of all movements for social change.

Surge Afrofuturism: Multimedia Music Performance with Hesterian Musicism
2022-05-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California, 95064
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged, but not required for entry.Parking is available in the Arts Lot #126. Purchase a permit or use ParkMobile.

Hesterian Musicism is the creative process through which Karlton Hester, composer, flautist and saxophonist, brings together musicians, visual artists and poets in collaborative synergy to create a sonically riveting and visually compelling immersive mulitdisciplinary arts experience. With participating musicians, poets, and artists drawing on past traditions to create stepping-stones to future creations, Hesterian Musicism provides an aesthetic environments in which new art forms can emerge through imaginative effort. Its philosophical basis involves an intrinsic freedom of expression, focused and disciplined spontaneity, and a structural basis that explores the creative components of diverse sources from the whole earth. Performances have taken in New York, California, South America, and Asia.

This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.

Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, the Ali Akbar Khan Classical Indian Music Endowment, the UCSC Music Department, the Center of South Asian Studies, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

About the Performers

Karlton E. Hester, Ph.D.

Karlton E. Hester, Ph.D. (composer/flutist/saxophonist), began his career as a composer and recording artist in Los Angeles where he worked as a studio musician and music educator. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center and is currently Director of “Jazz” Studies (and member of the Digital Arts and New Media faculty) at the University of California in Santa Cruz. As performer on both flute and saxophone, he is founding music director of the Fillmore Jazz Preservation Big Band (in San Francisco), director of Hesterian Musicism, and served as the Herbert Gussman Director of Jazz Studies at Cornell University from 1991-2001. Hester specializes in premeditated, spontaneous and electro-acoustic composition. His compositions span a wide range; from numerous solo cycles for various woodwinds to chamber configurations, music videos and electro-acoustic symphonic works written in an eclectic array of styles.

Yunxiang Gao

Yunxiang Gao is a composer, pianist, and pipa player from China. She graduated from Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Composition. In 2005, her multimedia piece “Yin” won second prize in the MUSICACOUSTICA festival, and in 2009, her pipa concerto “Qin Yong” was awarded third prize in Beijing International Music Festival and Academy. In 2012, she performed a pipa concerto for the“Pan-Asia” Festival at Stanford University. Her symphonic works “Picture of Borderland” and “Beijing Opera – Sheng, Dan, Jing, Chou” were performed by the UC Irvine orchestra and conducted by Professor Christopher Dobrian. She is currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts with an emphasis in World Music Composition at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Bill Johnson

Bill Johnson has been a trumpet player for over 40 years and spends his days (any many evenings) as the general manager of WRTI, Philadelphia’s classical music and jazz public radio station. He believes music is a powerful model for social change and that we all have an obligation to support music education as a means of teaching collaboration, listening, respect, concentration, and appreciation for the power of what working together can achieve. He serves on the board of Interdisciplinary Artists Aggregation and the leadership team for Jazz Philadelphia, a new project to create a sustainable jazz ecosystem.

Mandjou Kone

Mandjou Kone (griot/storyteller, kora, dancer, choreographer) was born and raised in West Africa in the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso. She was born into the Koné family, a well-known Griot Family. The Griots people of West Africa are world renown for their unique ability to record events carefully and accurately, passing history from one generation to the other. As a young girl Mandjou assisted her Griot father in keeping his band alive by singing, dancing and playing instruments like the Djembe, Bala, Dundun, Kora and Tama. She also danced and performed with the National Ballet of Burkina Faso. With her brother’s group ‘Surutukunu’ Mandjou toured Europe extensively as lead singer. Mandjou is a very popular dance educator and has been teaching and performing over the past eleven years throughout the US. In March 2003 in Santa Cruz, CA she was honored with the ‘Calabash Award’ for her excellence in the ethnic arts.

Eki’Shola

Eki’Shola is vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and board-certified internal medicine and lifestyle medicine physician,whose music has been called “half-time electronic soul for the mind” – Featured in PBS, NPR Tiny Desk Contest, KQED and Best of the Bay Editors’ Pick, Eki’Shola’s music transcends genre, as she seamlessly draws from jazz, electronica, and soul music to create a sonic landscape all her own. Her debut album, Final Beginning, was released in 2016. Her most recent release, Essential, 2020, features instrumentals, spoken word, and lyrics that share hope, inspired by periods of contemplation among movements of climate change, coronavirus pandemic, and Black Lives Matter advocacy.

David Smith

David Smith is a performer, composer and educator. Mr. Smith has earned both Bachelors and Masters degrees in Music. He has developed a unique fifths tuning with five strings for his primary instruments, the Double Bass and Electric Bass. Through technique and a penchant for elegant solutions, Mr. Smith aims to pattern music that moves our experience towards freedom.

Siwen Zhao

Siwen Zhao is a well-known Chinese dancer, actress and singer. She holds a B.A degree from Minzu University of China, majoring in dance performance. She caught attention through her solo dance in the closing ceremony of Athens Olympiad in 2004 and her solo dance “dream” in National Centre for the Performing Arts in 2005. She gained her fame through Expo 2010 Shanghai China and other commercial occasions. From 2008-2015, she starred in the movie remake of “White Snake” with Jack Li, then successfully entered the Chinese television field. From 2015 until now, she teaches at Mei Dao Art Education Center as a dance instructor with focuses on Chinese folk dances.

Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission. If you have a disability-related need, please contact the Arts Events Office at artsevents@ucsc.edu as soon as possible.

Surge Afrofuturism: "Not About Race Dance" Performance by GeraldCaselDance
2022-05-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California, 95064
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged, but not required for entry.Parking is available in the Arts Lot #126. Purchase a permit or use ParkMobile.
Dance artist and equity activator Gerald Casel will present Not About Race Dance, a collaborative, choreographic response to the racial politics of U.S. postmodern dance. Despite postmodernism’s popularity, its racial dynamics have gone largely unacknowledged. In Not About Race Dance, Casel and his collaborators occupy a space that has been historically defined by white artists to present a contrasting vision of where Black and Brown bodies belong. When the work premiered this past December, the Fjord Review said that the dancers were “intensely present and riveting…reclaiming the literal and sociological ‘white space’ of postmodern dancing in episodes that are vulnerable, cathartic, clever, and delivered with compelling rigor. Not About Race Dance features an all-BIPOC ensemble of five dancers that includes Styles Alexander, Gerald Casel, Audrey Johnson, Karla Quintero, and Cauveri Suresh, with an original score performed live by sound designer Tim Russell. Additional collaborators include Aron Altmark (lighting and media design) and Rebecca Chaleff (dramaturgy).
This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.
Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.
About GERALDCASELDANCE
Since 1998, GERALDCASELDANCE has been creating and presenting experimental dance that combines social practice with creative and collaborative explorations. Each dance provokes reflection and implants its imagery into the viewer’s psyche by combining movement and spatial composition with metaphor. Dropping hints of narrative while inviting space for contemplation, the dances deliver multiple levels of interpretation and meaning. GERALDCASELDANCE has been presented at KuanDu Arts Festival Taiwan, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dance New Amsterdam, Dance Theater Workshop (Fresh Tracks and SplitStream), Joyce SoHo, Dixon Place, Dancenow NYC, Aaron Davis Hall, 92nd Street Y, The Yard, Jacob’s Pillow (Inside/Out), Danceworks Milwaukee, ODC Theater and throughout Scotland following a company residency at Dancebase Edinburgh. Casel has been an artist in residence at ODC Theater, Movement Research, and has been awarded fellowships through the Hellman Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (Freedom Fellow), National Center for Choreography Akron, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and The Bogliasco Foundation. For more information about GERALDCASELDANCE visit geraldcasel.com.
Costume Consultant: Pamela Rodríguez-Montero
Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission.

About geraldcaseldance

Since 1998, GERALDCASELDANCE has been creating and presenting experimental dance that combines social practice with creative and collaborative explorations. Each dance provokes reflection and implants its imagery into the viewer’s psyche by combining movement and spatial composition with metaphor. Dropping hints of narrative while inviting space for contemplation, the dances deliver multiple levels of interpretation and meaning. GERALDCASELDANCE has been presented at KuanDu Arts Festival Taiwan, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Movement Research at Judson Church, Dance New Amsterdam, Dance Theater Workshop (Fresh Tracks and SplitStream), Joyce SoHo, Dixon Place, Dancenow NYC, Aaron Davis Hall, 92nd Street Y, The Yard, Jacob’s Pillow (Inside/Out), Danceworks Milwaukee, ODC Theater and throughout Scotland following a company residency at Dancebase Edinburgh. Casel has been an artist in residence at ODC Theater, Movement Research, and has been awarded fellowships through the Hellman Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (Freedom Fellow), National Center for Choreography Akron, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and The Bogliasco Foundation. For more information about GERALDCASELDANCE visit geraldcasel.com.

Costume Consultant: Pamela Rodríguez-Montero

Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission.

Costume Designer: Pamela Rodríguez-MonteroAssociate Costume Designer: Ella Schultz

Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission.

Surge Afrofuturism: Festac '77 and Liberation w/ Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and Ntone Edjabe
2022-05-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA, United States
This event is free and open to the public.

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and Ntone Edjabe will discuss the recent publication of FESTAC ’77, an innovative book and mixtape which is the product of years of research helmed by Chimurenga—a magazine based in Cape Town, South Africa, and one of the most important cultural journals on the continent—in collaboration with Afterall, the London-based journal. Listen to the FESTAC ’77 mixtape here.

The 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture which took place in Lagos, Nigeria, otherwise known by the acronym FESTAC ’77, was considered one of the most important cultural events in the Black world in the 20th century. The aims of the cultural fiesta were ambitious: to represent the breadth of Black and African values and culture, to model mutual coexistence with the other cultures of the world, and to position Africa as the original homeland of African diaspora peoples. Through the recent book and mixtape, the editors of Chimeranga recirculate this vibrant past as platform and aesthetic paradigm through which to engage the liberatory possibilities of the future for Africa. As the editors of the book and the creators of the mixtape ask: “Can a past that the present has not yet caught up with be summoned to haunt the present as an alternative?”

This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.

Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

About the speakers

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi joined the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in July 2019 as the first The Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture. Previously, he was the Curator of African Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he organized Second Careers: Two Tributaries in African Art (2020) and co-organized Ama: The Gathering Place (2019). Prior to Cleveland, Nzewi was the Curator of African Art at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum. There his exhibitions included Inventory: New Works and Conversations around African Art (2016), and he spearheaded the acquisition of works by artists such as Kader Attia, Candice Brietz, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Julie Mehretu, and Obiora Udechukwu. At MoMA includes Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound, the first survey exhibition on the Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré in the United States. He is currently working on several projects at MoMA including a forthcoming monograph on the Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré. He leads the Museum’s Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) Africa group, which is MoMA’s internal research and exchange initiative devoted to art in a global context. Nzewi holds a PhD in art history from Emory University. As an artist, he has exhibited internationally and is represented in public and private collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, and Newark Museum, New Jersey. Recent publications include Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound (2022), Dak’Art: The Biennale of Dakar and the Making of Contemporary African Art (2020) and Second Careers: Two Tributaries in African Art (2019).

Ntone Edjabe

Ntone Edjabe is a Cameroonian writer, journalist, DJ and the founding editor of Chimurenga magazine (est. 2002), a Pan African publication of culture, art, and politics based in Cape Town. The title Chimurenga refers to the Shona word for struggle, as well as to a popular music genre in Zimbabwe. Edjabe’s practice as a DJ weds musical erudition and explicit political engagement centered on Africa’s place in the world. In 2004, he was facilitator of Time of the Writer, and in 2007 he participated in its 10th edition at the Centre for Creative Arts of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Edjabe is co-founder and member of the DJ collective Fong Kong Bantu Soundsystem. In 2009 he was Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence. Edjabe also started the Pan African Space Station (PASS), an Internet radio platform streamed live across the African world. In 2011, he won the Principal Award of the Prince Claus Awards and in 2014, he was a researcher-in-residence at KHOJ.

Surge Afrofuturism: Nishat Khan, David Murray, and Hamid Drake in Concert
2022-05-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California, 95064
This event is free for UC Santa Cruz students and $40 for the public.Tickets and admission details to be announced.
This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.
Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, the Ali Akbar Khan Classical Indian Music Endowment, the UCSC Music Department, the Center of South Asian Studies, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

About the performers

Nishat Khan

Nishat Khan is an Indian sitar player from an illustrious musical family and the foremost sitar virtuoso of his generation. With the strike of a single, unmistakable note, the sound of Nishat Khan’s sitar instantly captivates and transforms one’s mood. Listeners are transported to another realm by sight and sound unlike any other. As the current torchbearer of the most recorded musical family in the world, seven generations of wisdom reside in his fingertips. While grounded in centuries of tradition, Nishat forges his own signature sound, unfolding with emotional contrasts and surprises at every turn. Nishat gave his first public concert at age 7 and has lived and toured all over the world continuously since age 13. His unique cosmopolitan perspective has inspired a great sensitivity and connection to musical philosophies of the world. As a composer and music producer he has collaborated with some of the world’s leading musicians such as Larry Coryell, Paco Peña, John McLaughlin, and Gregorian choir Vox Clamantis. In 2021 he premiered his composition for members of the Royal family, a sitar-cello duet with one of the world’s leading artists, Sheku Kanneh-Mason.

David Murray

David Murray is an American jazz saxophonist and composer who performs mostly on tenor and bass clarinet. He has recorded prolifically for many record labels since the mid-1970s. He was initially influenced by free jazz musicians such as Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp. He gradually evolved a more diverse style in his playing and compositions. Murray set himself apart from most tenor players of his generation by not taking John Coltrane as his model, choosing instead to incorporate elements of mainstream players Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Paul Gonsalves into his mature style. Despite this, he recorded a tribute to Coltrane, Octet Plays Trane, in 1999. He played a set with the Grateful Dead at a show on September 22, 1993, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. His 1996 tribute to the Grateful Dead, Dark Star, was also critically well received. Murray was a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet with Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett. He has recorded and performed with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer, Olu Dara, Tani Tabbal, Butch Morris, Donal Fox, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Sunny Murray (no relation), Ed Blackwell, Johnny Dyani, Fred Hopkins, and Steve McCall.

Hamid Drake

Hamid Drake is a drummer/ percussionist whose rhythmic expressions and interest in the roots of the music has led him to working with a wide roster of musicians and collaborators. Touring and recording all over the world, Hamid has played and /or recorded with Fred Anderson, Peter Brotzmann, Don Cherry, Marilyn Crispell, Pierre Dorge, Johnny Dyani, Hassan Hakmoun, Herbie Hancock, Joseph Jarman, George Lewis, bassist William Parker (in a large number of lineups), Michael Zerang, David Murray, Bill Laswell, Jamie Saft, Sabir Mateen, Joe McPhee, Jim Pepper, Dewey Redman, Adam Rudolph, Pharoah Sanders, Foday Musa Suso, John Tchicai, Dave Leibman, Irene Schweizer, Michel Portal, Iva Bittova, Nicole Mitchell, Zahra Glenda Baker, Amina Claudine Meyers, Josh Abrams, among others. Hamid won the Jazz Journalist Awaard in 2009 and the Downbeat Critics Poll in 2006, 2010, 2017, 2018, 2019 as best percussionist. In 2017 he was awarded the title of Chevalier Des Arts et des lettres.

Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission.

Afrofuturism Film Screening Featuring Films by Larry Achiampong and Nuotama Bodomo
2022-05-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California, 95064
Films featured:
Afronauts, Nuotama Bodomo , 2014
Afronauts, a 2014 short film by Ghanaian-born filmmaker Nuotama Frances Bodomo, follows a team of astronauts as they train for a mission to the moon. This video was inspired by the Zambian space program in the 1960s and follows then-17-year-old astronaut Matha Mwamba, the woman at the center of this historic mission. Led by schoolteacher and revolutionary Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy began as an unofficial program with aspirations to beat the Soviet Union and the United States to the moon.
Combining true events and fiction, Bodomo set the film on July 16, 1969, the same day as the Apollo 11 launch, and wove audio and video clips from its historic moon landing throughout the narrative. Though the Zambian mission did not send an astronaut to the moon, the program successfully asserted the ambitions of its country, which had become independent from the United Kingdom in 1964.
Set historically in the years following this independence, Afronauts draws many parallels with today, highlighting the persistent and unfounded underestimation of African nations, the continued fight for racial and gender equity, and the international competition for scientific advancements.
“Relic Traveller Series”, Larry Achiampong, 2017-2020 (Relic 0, Relic 1, Relic 2, Relic 3, Reliquary 4)
The “Relic Traveller Series” is a multi-disciplinary project by Larry Achiampong, which manifests in performance, audio, moving image and prose. Centred within themes related to Sanko-time, “Relic Traveller “takes place across various landscapes and locations; the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration.
This speculative project considers the social and political climate of current times; the rise of nationalism within the global West and tensions surrounding moments such as the United Kingdom’s leave ‘Brexit’ vote in 2016. Meanwhile, the African Union’s passport programme (also established in 2016) points toward the potential opening of boarders across a unified African continent in the future. With these instances, the Relic Traveller series imagines a future in which the global West devolves to point of decline, whilst the African Union ascends into prosperity, harmony, independence and, responsibility in shaping the future of the planet.
At this unspecified point in time amongst an ambitious set of new initiatives, the African Union create the ‘Relic Travellers’ Alliance’, a programme that equips Relic Travellers with space-travelling-technology for the sole purpose of venturing outside of the African Union to retrieve vocal information left by those whom had been historically oppressed as a result of political systems such as colonisation, capitalism and globalisation. These uncovered testimonies are collected and used as a basis for the African Union to responsibly govern the future informed by a bottom-up perspective.
This event is FREE and open to the public. Paid parking through the Parkmobile App is available in Lot 126, adjacent to Digital Arts Research Center. For additional information and disability or access needs please contact ias@ucsc.edu.
This event is part of “Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism,” an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions which brings together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.

Surge Afrofuturism: Pamela-Z and Friends in Concert
2022-05-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz, California, 95062, United States
A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrete sounds. Join us May 14, 2022 at 7 p.m. for a live music performance by this world-renowned musician, joined also by Alex Wand, Seth Glickman, Odeya Nini, Archie Carey, Brock Stuessi, Kyle Bruckmann, Vanessa Ruotolo, and William Winant for a uniquely collaborative concert.
This event is free and open to the public, with admission offered on a first come, first serve basis. Registration is encouraged, but not required for entry. See information about visiting the Rio Theatre, Covid protocols, and parking.
Pamela Z and Friend’s performance is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural initiative on Afrofuturism. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions in May 2022 will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation. The event is sponsored by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences for the 2021-2022 Media and Society Lecture Series, Kresge College.
Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

About the speakers

Pamela Z

Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan – performing in international festivals and venues including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center (NY); La Biennale di Venezia; San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox, the Japan Interlink Festival; Other Minds (San Francisco); and Pina Bausch Tanztheater’s Festival (Wuppertal, Germany). Her large-scale, performance works have been presented at venues like the Kitchen in New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Theater Artaud (Z Space) in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as at theaters in Washington D.C. and Budapest. Her one-act opera Wunderkabinet, inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck,) premiered at The LAB in San Francisco, and was presented at REDCAT in LA and Open Ears Festival in Canada. She has shown work in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum (New York); Savvy Contemporary (Berlin); the Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs NY); the Dakar Biennale (Sénégal); Krannert Art Museum (IL), and the Kitchen (NY). Ms. Z has received commissions from chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Bang On A Can All Stars; Ethel, Del Sol Quartet, California E.A.R. Unit; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; and Empyrean Ensemble. She is he recipient of many honors and awards including the Rome Prize, the United States Artists fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; the Creative Capital Fund; the MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music Award; an Ars Electronica honorable mention; and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. For more information visit: www.pamelaz.com

Kyle Bruckmann

Kyle Bruckmann is an oboist and electronic musician who tramples genre boundaries in widely ranging work as a composer/performer, educator, and New Music specialist. His creative output – extending from conservatory-trained foundations into gray areas encompassing free jazz, post-punk rock, and the noise underground – can be heard on more than 100 recordings from labels such as New World, Hat Art, Carrier, New Focus, Entr’acte, Not Two, Clean Feed, Another Timbre, 482Music and Sick Room. He has performed and/or recorded with Creative Music progenitors Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton and George Lewis, and worked as a sideman for bandleaders such as Lisa Mezzacappa, Guillermo Gregorio, Andrew Raffo Dewar and Myra Melford. Current ensemble affiliations include Splinter Reeds, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Eco Ensemble, Quinteto Latino, sfSound, and the Stockton Symphony; the most significant projects he has led or collaboratively founded include Degradient, EKG, Lozenge, and Wrack. He is Assistant Professor of Practice in Oboe and Contemporary Music at University of the Pacific, and also teaches at UC Santa Cruz, Davis and Berkeley.

Alex Wand

Alex Wand is a composer interested in folk music, ecology, social practice art, tuning systems, field recording, and dance/multimedia collaborations. His music has been described as having “melody lines that can circle through one’s head for days after listening, begging to be rewound and re-listened and timbres and layers that are supremely joyful and poignant and at times absolutely laid bare in their sincerity” (New Classic LA). He performs with groups such as Desert Magic and the Grammy Award-winning Partch Ensemble, and his music can be heard on MicroFest Records, Bridge Records, Hungry Badger, and Frog Peak Music (A Composers’ Collective). He studied music at the University of Michigan and at California Institute of the Arts, and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in music composition at UC Santa Cruz.

Odeya Nini

Odeya Nini is a Los Angeles based experimental vocalist and contemporary composer. At the locus of her interest is performance practices, textural harmony, gesture, tonal animation, and the illumination of minute sounds, in works spanning chamber music to vocal pieces and collages of musique concrète. Odeya’s work has been presented at venues and festivals across the US and internationally, such as The Broad, REDCAT, Joyce Soho, MONA and Art Basel Miami, from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, Australia, Mongolia, Madagascar and Vietnam. She also leads sound healing meditations and workshops exploring the healing qualities of embodying the voice.

Archie Carey

Archie Carey is a bassoonist and composer living in Los Angeles. Archie has presented his own work at REDCAT, The Portland Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, SOMArts, and many other spaces and places throughout the US, Germany, Vietnam, Israel, and Iceland. His work as a composer aims to magnify sound, pitch, timbre, and environment to make the subtlest details a point of focus, creating a meditative space for both listener and performer. Archie is a founding member of wild Up, and The Joshua Trio, and has performed regularly with The Dogstar Orchestra, The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, and other adventurous music groups in and around Los Angeles.

Brock Stuessi

Brock Stuessi is a musician and aspiring archivist currently residing in Los Angeles. His current music projects are Neap, a duo formation with saxophonist Kurtis Shaffer exploring improvisation, trance, and ambient forms, and solo work for guitar, synthesizer and voice. In addition to music making, Brock also runs the Hungry Badger record label and press where he releases music and songbooks with friends. He holds a BA in Music from Northwestern University, an MA in Ethnomusicology from UC Santa Cruz, and is currently working on his MS in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Vanessa Ruotolo

Vanessa Ruotolo serves as a lecturer in music, in cello, at the University of California-Santa Cruz. She received her musical training from the New England Conservatory, Boston University (B.M.) and San Francisco Conservatory of Music (M.M).She is concurrently affiliated with Santa Rosa Symphony, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra, Skywalker Sound Orchestra & Shorenstein Hays Nederlander. As founding member of The Rhythm Sisters, a String Quartet dedicated to outreach, Vanessa has scripted and performed educational shows for thousands of children and families throughout California. Vanessa has recorded with New World and Other Minds Records. She enjoys playing a wide variety of music, having performed with numerous Broadway shows in San Francisco and on U.S. tours, recorded for several motion pictures and popular video games with Skywalker Sound Orchestra and shared the stage with popular musicians including Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z, Donna Summer, Ray Charles and Andrea Bocelli, to name a few.

Seth Glickman

Seth Glickman is a composer, multi-instrumentalist performer, and creator of music-related technologies. His orchestral and chamber works have premiered in Paris, New York, and Pittsburgh, PA. His scores for the acclaimed documentary film, Haenyeo, and award-winning game, Rosenstrasse, highlight the variety in his collaborations. His Music Everywhere augmented reality piano experience was featured at the NIME conference, and won the grand prize in Microsoft and Unity’s HoloLens Developer Competition. Seth received his master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and is currently a DMA composition student at UC Santa Cruz.

William Winant

William Winant is a Grammy nominated percussionist whoi has performed with some of the most innovative and creative musicians of our time, including John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Keith Jarrett, Anthony Braxton, James Tenney, Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Steve Reich and Musicians, Yo-Yo Ma, Frederic Rzewski, Ursula Oppens, Joan LaBarbara, Annea Lockwood, Joelle Leandre, Oingo Boingo, Mr. Bungle, Sonic Youth, and the Kronos String Quartet. ​​He has made over 200 recordings, covering a wide variety of genres. His recording of Lou Harrison’s “La Koro Sutro” (which he produced for New Albion Records) was the New York Times Critic’s Choice for best contemporary recording of 1988. In 1999 he produced a recording of music by 20th-century avant-garde composers with the influential rock band Sonic Youth; “Goodbye 20th-Century” (SYR4), was hailed by both The Los Angeles Times and New York’s Village Voice as one of the best compendiums of this type of music ever recorded. In 2016, Winant was awarded a large unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in recognition for his groundbreaking work as a contemporary percussionist. He is principal percussionist with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. In 2014 he received a Grammy nomination for his recording of John Cage’s historic solo work, 27′ 10.554″ for a percussionist, on Micro Fest Records. ​​He performs frequently with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and is a member of the faculty at UC Santa Cruz.

Vanessa Ruotolo

Nidhi Mahajan (Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz) Nidhi Mahajan is currently working on a book project “Moorings: The Dhow Trade, Sovereignty and Capitalism in the Indian Ocean” that focuses on trade networks, illegality/legality, vernacular capitalism, shipping and state power across the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa. She has also curated exhibitions in Kenya, India and recently participated in the 2019 Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

Seth Glickman

David Haussler, Ph.D. (Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Distinguished Professor, Biomolecular Engineering, University of California; Santa Cruz Scientific Director, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, University of California, Santa Cruz; Scientific Co-Director, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences) develops statistical, algorithmic and experimental methods to explore molecular function and evolution in the human genome, integrating comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function, and regulation. He develops and shares infrastructure to support both basic research and medicine. In the 1990s, he pioneered the use in genomics of hidden Markov models, stochastic context-free grammars, neural networks and discriminative kernel methods, building some of the most successful computational methods to find genes in genome sequences and align them to detect evolutionary changes. As collaborators on the international Human Genome Project, his team created the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence and posted it on the Internet on July 7, 2000. They subsequently developed the UCSC Genome Browser, a web-based tool that is used extensively in biomedical research and serves virtually all large-scale vertebrate genomics projects including NHGRI’s ENCODE project and the NCI’s Cancer Genomics Atlas Project, where he served on the steering committee. More recently they developed the BRCA-exchange, which, with >20,000 variants of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, is the largest public data network for BRCA variants in the world and the Treehouse Childhood Cancer Project to enable international comparison of childhood cancer genomes with a special emphasis on pediatric brain cancer. His experimental research focuses on the molecular evolution of DNA, RNA, and protein sequences with a special emphasis on neurodevelopment and immunology. His lab uses CRISPR, cortical organoid, single cell RNA-seq and other technologies to functionally characterize neurodevelopmental genes that were specifically altered in human evolution. His team develops and shares infrastructure to support both research in and the clinical application of precision medicine.

Surge Afrofuturism: Searching for Freedom with the Afronauts
2022-05-16 12:00 - 13:30 | Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA, United States
This event is free and open to the public.
In 1964, Edward Makuka Nkoloso, a member of the Zambian resistance movement and the founder of the Zambia National Academy of Science, began to train the first African crew to travel to the moon. Although space travel was not realized, the Zambian Space Program has since captured the imagination of contemporary artists and filmmakers on the African continent and beyond. Nuotamo Bodoomo, Larry Achiampong and Aaron Samuel Mulenga will talk about how imaginings of space travel are utilized in their disparate practices. The discussion will center on the politics and possibilities the artists and filmmakers find in the creative transcendence of space and time.
This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.
Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

About the speakers

Larry Achiampong

Larry Achiampong is a British Ghanaian artist whose work includes moving image; sculptural installation; photographic and painted collage; audio and visual archives; live performance; spoken word; recorded sound bytes and composed scores. Achiampong has exhibited, performed and presented projects within the UK and abroad including Tate Britain/Modern, London; The Institute For Creative Arts, Cape Town; The British Film Institute, London; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation, Accra; Logan Center Exhibitions, Chicago; Prospect New Orleans, New Orleans; Diaspora Pavilion – 57th Venice Biennale, Venice; and Somerset House, London.

Nuotama Frances Bodomo

Nuotama Frances Bodomo is a nomadic filmmaker of Dagaaba origin currently based in Tamale, Ghana. She earned a BA in Film Studies at Columbia University and an MFA in Film Production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her award-winning short films Boneshaker (2013), Afronauts (2014), and Everybody Dies! (2016) have played at festivals including Sundance, the Berlinale, BlackStar, Telluride, Rotterdam, SXSW, and New Directors/New Films. Afronauts has participated in several group exhibitions, including the Whitney Museum’s Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016, the 2018 Venice Biennale’s Dimensions of Citizenship, & the 4th Edition of the Lubumbashi Biennale in 2015. She has also served as staff writer & director on the Peabody Award-winning first season of Random Acts of Flyness (HBO) and co-founded the New Negress Film Society. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2014 and is a 2019 United States Artists Fellow in Film. Her work is currently streaming on Netflix and the Criterion Channel.

Aaron Samuel Mulenga

Aaron Samuel Mulenga, is a multimedia artist from Zambia whose visual practice is inspired by concepts of ancestry and legacy, with a current focus on Zambia’s space program and the Afronauts. His practice includes sculptural forms, installation, performance and collage. Mulenga is currently a PhD student in Visual Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Mulenga has exhibited at the Iziko Museum, Cape Town, the Zambia National Art Gallery, and the 2021 FNB Art Fair, Johannesburg in collaboration with Modzi Arts Gallery. Mulenga is scheduled to participate at this year’s Congo Biennial in Kinshasa.

Abolition. Feminism. Now. W/ Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie
2022-05-21 19:00 - 21:00 | UCSC Quarry Amphitheater, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, California, 95064, United States
This event is free and open to the public. The first 100 students to register will receive a free copy of Abolition. Feminism. Now (student ID required).
As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment—halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist—usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color—organizing that continue to cultivate abolition but a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence. Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based organizing, Abolition. Feminism. Now. surfaces necessary historical genealogies, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective and flourishing present and futures. Abolition. Feminism. Now. is available for purchase online or in person at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
This conversation is sponsored by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, The Humanities Institute, Feminist Studies, and Bookshop Santa Cruz as part of the Andrew W. Mellon funded Visualizing Abolition initiative UC Santa Cruz.

About the speakers

Angela Y. Davis

Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, is a renowned activist and scholar. The author of numerous monographs, including most recently, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, 2015, for decades Davis has been for decades at the forefront of research and activism on prison abolition and the related intersections of race, gender, and class.

Gina Dent

Gina Dent is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, and Legal Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz. The editor of Black Popular Culture, and a prison abolition activist for more than 25 years, Dent is also the director of UC Santa Cruz’s groundbreaking public scholarship initiative, Visualizing Abolition, an art and education project aimed at shifting the social attachment to prisons.

Erica R. Meiners

Erica R. Meiners is Professor of Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern Illinois University and author most recently of For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State, 2016. Meiners has collaboratively started and works alongside a range of ongoing mobilizations for liberation, particularly movements that involve access to free public education for all, including people during and after incarceration, and other queer abolitionist struggles.

Beth E. Richie

Beth E. Richie is Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, and Professor of Black studies and criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Richie’s most recent publication, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation, 2012 demonstrates the emphasis of both her scholarly and activist work on how race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors.

Surge Afrofuturism: Dance Performance & Film Screening w/ Raissa Simpson & Maurya Kerr / Tinypistol
2022-05-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California, 95064
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged, but not required for entry.Parking is available in the Arts Lot #126. Purchase a permit or use ParkMobile.
Performed in site-specific locations and onstage, Raissa Simpson will be performing an excerpt of EMME YA: Expedition, which applies a conceptual underpinning of Afro-technoculture through movement and media. This ongoing exploration includes various frameworks to reimagine paths of survival that are born out of moments of collective trauma and the reclamation of Afrofuturism as a creative metaphor for healing.
Additionally, Maurya Kerr/ tinypistol will be sharing Saint Leroi, a short film about a Black avenging angel come down from on high. By reinstating Blackness as arbiter of justice and punisher of wrong amidst the ceaseless anti-Black apocalypse of America, Saint Leroi challenges who is allowed judgement, destruction, rapture, and rebirth. While a trenchant indictment of the blood-stained hands of all those—past and present—who know what they’ve done, Saint Leroi is ultimately an expression of belonging, utter grief, radical love, the afro-future, and the afro-now.
This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.
Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

About the speakers

Raissa Simpson

Raissa Simpson is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar and director of PUSH Dance Company in San Francisco. After receiving her BFA from the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase, Simpson had an extensive performance career in the San Francisco Bay Area dancing with Robert Moses’ Kin and Joanna Haigood’s Zaccho Dance Theatre. Hailed by Dance Spirit Magazine as “Reflective Contemporary Choreography,” she has been presented at Ferst Center at Georgia Tech, Sacramento State, Joyce SoHo, San Francisco State, Washington Ensemble Theater, Evolve Dance Festival/NY, Los Angeles Theater Center, Black Choreographers Festival, Renberg Theater and many more.

Maurya Kerr

Maurya Kerr is a bay area-based artist, poet, educator, and the artistic director of tinypistol. Much of her artistic work, across disciplines, is focused on Black and brown people reclaiming their birthright to both wonderment and the quotidian. Maurya was a member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet for twelve years, an ODC artist-in-residence from 2015 to 2018, and holds an MFA from Hollins University. Her poetry is anthologized in “The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry” and was recently chosen by Jericho Brown as a runner-up in Southern Humanities Review’s 2021 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Maurya is currently a UC Berkeley ARC (Arts Research Center) Poetry & the Senses Fellow.

Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission. If you have a disability-related need, please contact the Arts Events Office at artsevents@ucsc.edu as soon as possible.

Making an Exoneree
2022-05-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA, United States
“Reasonable Doubts: Making an Exoneree” is taught by Professor Sharon Daniel, UCSC Film and Digital Media, in collaboration with Professor of Government and Law at Georgetown Marc Howard and his childhood friend, Adjunct Professor Marty Tankleff, who was himself wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for almost 18 years before being exonerated. Howard and Tankleff developed Georgetown’s Making an Exonoree course in 2018, and its students have already won the release of three men and made significant progress in the legal prospects of several others.
For the current 2022 class, the original crimes and convictions of five people have been re-investigated, and students have painstakingly documented the main issues, challenges, injustices, and stories involved in each case, producing short documentary films, interactive documentaries, and social media campaigns designed to provide humanizing portraits of the incarcerated people’s lives and complicated legal cases. For more on “Making an Exoneree,” read a recent news article here.
“Reasonable Doubts: Making an Exoneree” is supported by the Institute of the Arts and Science’s Visualizing Abolition public scholarship initiative, organized by Professor Gina Dent, Feminist Studies and Dr. Rachel Nelson, Director, IAS, with support from the Mellon Foundation.

About the speakers

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Surge Afrofuturism: Multimedia Dance Performance with Oysterknife: Gabriele Christian and Chibueze Crouch
2022-05-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, California, 95064
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged, but not required for entry.Parking is available in the Arts Lot #126. Purchase a permit or use ParkMobile.
OYSTERKNIFE will perform the final work in their triptych, m | ou | f. The performative work aims to reclaim Black iconicity from the maw of consumer celebrity culture. Having explored the legacies of shame, violence and faith for blaQ communities in their prior projects mouth full of sea and mouth//full, their latest collaboration is a meditation on hypervisibility, opacity, sexuality, and the desire of & for queer(ed) Black stars. Using drag, ritual masquerade, original music, video and choreography, OYSTERKNIFE opens a portal to an era of voices which carved a route for their queer Afro-now and beyond.
This event is part of Surge: Explorations in Afrofuturism, a multidimensional and transcultural month-long festival on Afrofuturism spearheaded by composer/performer Karlton Hester, choreographer Gerald Casel, and artist Aaron Samuel Mulenga. Afrofuturism is a global artistic and social movement, intent on imagining a world where African-descended peoples and cultures can live and flourish. For Surge, an extended program of music and dance performances, film screenings, and discussions will bring together artists and thinkers to creatively engage Afrofuturist strategies for liberation and the restructuring of society free of racism.
Surge is made possible by generous support from the Nion McEvoy Family Trust, the National Endowment from the Arts, UCHRI, UCSC Academic Senate, Rowland and Pat Rebele, Porter College, and annual donors to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.

About the speakers

OYSTERKNIFE

OYSTERKNIFE—derived from a line from Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels to Be A Colored Me” —was born out of a longtime creative friendship between Chibueze Crouch and Gabriele Christian. Drawing from our shared desire to subvert our theatrical upbringings that often neglected our complex Black + Queer (BlaQ) experiences, we’ve forged an interdisciplinary artistic approach that reinserts our narratives into American and Afro-Diasporic cultural movements.

Chibueze Crouch

Chibueze Crouch is a Nigerian-American interdisciplinary artist & curator based on Huichin, Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone territory (Oakland, CA). She works across ritual theater, text, song, movement and video to create participatory, experimental, intimate performances in collaboration with her chi and communities. Chibueze’s work explores themes of ancestral longing, Igbo cosmology, Afro-Diasporic masquerade and queer identity.

Gabriele Christian

Gabriele Christian, born in Harlem (Wappinger Lenape land) and based in Oakland (Chochenyo Ohlone land) is a conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folks experimenting with somatic practices, language, performance composition, and community arts facilitation to locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernaculars, and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity.

Costume Designer: Pamela Rodríguez-MonteroAssociate Costume Designer: Ella Schultz

Please familiarize yourself in advance with the full COVID-19 protocols required for admission.
