October 13, 2016 at Red Bay Coffee in Oakland.
INTERSECTIONS: ALICE STREET addresses issues of gentrification, displacement, and cultural resiliency, against the background of Oakland’s rapidly-shifting economics and demographics. The evening opens with a dance performance by Carla Services’ Dance-A-Vision dancers, followed by a special sneak preview of Spencer Wilkinson’s upcoming documentary “Alice Street Short,” an in-depth look at culture keepers from two disparate communities connected through a mural which becomes a symbol of resilience in the fight against displacement, as the corner of Alice and 14th Sts. becomes ground zero for gentrification. The program continues with a panel discussion moderated by Eric Arnold (CRP/Oakulture) and featuring director Wilkinson, visual artist Desi Mundo, Chinatown historian Roy Chan, affordable housing activist Lailan Huen, Diamano Coura Artistic Director Naomi Diouf, and Alice Arts Center co-founder and professor Dr. Halifu Osumare. A community Q&A concludes the program, which takes place October 13, 7 pm, at Red Bay Coffee.
TEN TO GET IN: FALL SOCIAL is a community celebration of food, dance, and dominoes hosted by the Domino Players Association (DPA). Founded in Oakland in 2009, the DPA is a community dominoes league, an experiment in camaraderie, competition, and group process, and what one league member described as “a unique example of adult community building, sustenance, and renewal.” Ten to Get In, the DPA’s seasonal public offering, is a chance for players of all skill levels to gather across multiple tables, and for new players to learn the game in a welcoming, supportive environment. Whether you want to play or nah, come join for the good vibes and the table talk. PLUS: tasty morsels from our friends at GentriFried Chicken.
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ALICE STREET PANEL BIOS
NAOMI GEDO DIOUF, an expert in West African dance, history, costume, song and culture, began learning Liberian dances at the age of five from her mother and grandmother in Liberia. She also trained at the Kendeja Cultural Center for Indigenous Performers, studying not only with Liberian dancers but with prominent dancers and musicians from many other West African nations. Her apprenticeship under Constance Taul of the Paris Ballet led her to research dance forms from around the world. She is now the artistic director of Diamano Coura West African Dance Company in Oakland, California, and she has choreographed works for many other professional companies including a consultancy on the classical/African fusion choreography and music Lamberena. She is an advocate of arts-in-education and has taught West African dance in schools throughout California and abroad.
PROF HALIFU OSUMARE – recently retired as Professor of African American and African Studies (AAS) at University of California, Davis. She was the Director of AAS from 2011-2014, has been a dancer, choreographer, arts administrator, and scholar of black popular culture for over thirty years. She has accomplished many of these roles not only in the U.S., but also in Africa in the countries of Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, and Kenya. Her teaching and writing spans the traditional African to the contemporary African American, to which her 2007 book, The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves, testifies. Her current book, The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop, was published in September 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan, and launched in Ghana and London in October 2012.
ROY CHAN is an urban planner and community oral historian. His work merges information technology and place-based storytelling to innovate how we plan our neighborhoods in more civically engaged and culturally relevant ways. Since 2007, Roy has been directing the Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project, which has already gathered over a hundred place-based stories to engage the community about social change issues and related local history. In collaboration with the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, the Asian Branch Library, and neighborhood groups, the project integrates oral history, ethnographic research, and cultural mapping as an intergenerational approach for community learning and action. Roy is currently a Senior Planner at the Chinatown Community Development Center and leads its local Creative Placemaking initiative, connecting arts/culture/storytelling with community development in San Francisco Chinatown.
LAILAN HUEN Huen is the Community Development and Organizing Manager for National CAPACD, a coalition of over 100 organizations empowering Asian American and Pacific Islander neighborhoods across the country. An organizer working to build people power through leadership development, civic engagement, strategic communications, and grassroots coalition-building, she served in the California State Assembly focusing on affordable housing, foreclosure prevention, public education, and community development. Born and raised in Oakland, Lailan holds a Bachelors in Asian American and Urban Studies from Columbia University and a Masters in Media Studies from The New School. Her great-grandfather came to be a part of the founding of Oakland Chinatown after the San Francisco 1906 earthquake, working as a butcher there, and her grandfather was a union worker at the Hotel Leamington in Downtown Oakland. Both of her grandmothers were garment workers in Oakland Chinatown. She is proud to be giving back to her hometown through organizing the Oakland Chinatown Public Art Project, and developing an East Bay Sustainable Housing Network of intentional, cooperative, affordable and activated living spaces for those with the least access to quality housing. She is also a member of the Block by Block Organizing Network, made up of neighborhood leaders from across Oakland working to engage residents in the political processes and decisions that affect our daily lives.
DESI MUNDO is the founder of the Community Rejuvenation Project. Over the past three years, under his direction, CRP has produced more than 100 murals, primarily in the Bay Area as well as Chicago, Albuquerque, and Bologna, Italy. As an artist, he collaborated with influential aerosol artists such as ZORE, P.H.A.S.E.2, VULCAN, and RAVEN. Desi also has a long history as an educator and youth worker in K-12 schools, such as Oakland Unity High School, ARISE, Calvin Simmons, and OASIS in Oakland for the past 13 years. He has been recognized with a “Best of the Bay” Award by the East Bay Express for his monthly youth art series, the “Weekend Wake-Up.” Desi has a long history of community organizing and public art advocacy. He received the “Rising Leaders Fellowship from the Youth Leadership Institute in 2005. He has worked with numerous non-profit and community organizations, such as Urban Tilth, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, and United Roots forming lasting partnerships and powerful alliances. Desi has organized and painted murals that can be found all over the Bay Area, as well as in Chicago, Santa Fe, Montana and South Dakota. He is the founder of the Community Rejuvenation Project. He facilitates an after-school mural taller called the Arrow-Soul Council. Desi is also a prolific community organizer and founder of the Weekend Wake-Up, free all-ages, community events, which won “Best All-Ages Event ” in the East Bay Express in 2006.
SPENCER WILKINSON is an Oakland-based documentary film director. He is the founder of Endangered Ideas, a production company focused on documentary films and community media. He directed the award-winning documentary films “Youth Rhythms/Ritmos dos Meninos” and “Pass Me the Map: Stories from the front line of multi-national development in Central America.”
Spencer Wilkinson is the Director of “Alice Street“, a feature documentary film about Oakland artists who take on a massive mural in the city’s downtown, only to find themselves at the center of the debate over gentrification and cultural resiliency. He coordinated a team of cinematographers, translators and editors to conduct over 50 interviews with community leaders, artists and residents in downtown Oakland over three years to bring this pressing story to the big screen.
He is also currently directing the feature documentary film, “One Voice: The Story of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir”. A portfolio of his work can be found athttp://vimeo.com/endangeredideas.
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At the MATATU Festival of Stories, we are curating film, literature, and performance art that engages and, when necessary, problematizes “the group.”
As a fiscally sponsored project of Intersection for the Arts, MATATU is a production house that features arthouse film and performance. Most of the stories are rare to find, sourced from the continent of Africa and the Caribbean, and written by, directed by, and/or feature marginalized perspectives.
The future is bright. You’re invited. Let’s ride.
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