Podcast appearances and mentions of indira allegra

305 The Anthem of Poetry   The arts have always been impactful and meaningful to humanity, however one stands above all the rest in this episode and that is poetry. Poetry conveys emotions and thoughts that are often difficult to put into words, making it one of the most important avenues for both emotional understanding and human connection.  In this episode Sarah Elkins and Maya Williams discuss the importance of poetry and how Maya's experiences and life paths shaped them into the artist they are.    Highlights You'll never know who you can teach or inspire. Find the communities that welcome and love you. Give yourself permission and encouragement to seek what you need and will work for you. Do the work, especially when it's hard. We are all full of contradictions, meaning it is even more important to hold true to our values.  Spite can be a great motivator, especially in succeeding and surviving.   Quotes “I remember telling my therapist, “Oh well, I know that not every space is perfect, right? So I just need to find the first thing that's available to me.” And then my therapist tells me, “You do not have to go to a house of worship that does not love you.”” “It makes me feel upset when someone says something like, “Oh I tried going to a therapist but I just felt worse afterwards so I stopped going.” and it's like that's part of the work! That's part of the work! I can understand not wanting to continue with a therapist if they said something bigoted or they didn't do their jobs, right? But they're doing their job and you feel worse afterwards, you need to give it more time.” “The most impactful friends in my life are the ones who tell me like it is.”   Dear Listeners it is now your turn, I'm curious to know if you have been interested in poetry. Have you ever found it interesting or intriguing or inspiring? And if you haven't, why did you stop looking for poetry that might actually inspire you? I challenge you to find a poem in the next two days that really resonates, a poem you can get into, dive into, maybe find some of your own healing in it. It could be from one of Maya Williams' books, it could be searching “Poems about,” and then putting your keyword in. Find your poem that can be your anthem for a little while, and when that gets tired find another to be your anthem for a little while, just as you would with song lyrics or a song. Don't forget to purchase a book of poetry from your local bookstore to support your local poets. And, as always, thank you for listening.    About Maya (From her website) Maya Williams (ey/em, they/them, and she/her) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who is currently an Ashley Bryan Fellow and the seventh Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine . ​ Maya's debut poetry collection, Judas & Suicide, is available through Game Over Books . And Maya's second poetry collection, Refused a Second Date, is available now through Harbor Editions.  ​ See the contact section on how to invite them to your next event as a workshop facilitator, performance feature, speaker, panelist, and/or honorary consensual virtual or air hugger. Maya's content covers suicide awareness, mental health, faith, entertainment media, grief, interpersonal relationships, intimate partner violence, and healing. ​ She graduated with a Bachelors in Social Work and a Bachelors of Art in English in May 2017. She graduated with a community practice-focused Masters in Social Work and Certificate in Applied Arts and Social Justice at the University of New England in May 2018. She graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts for Creative Writing with a Focus in Poetry at Randolph College in June 2022. ​ They have featured as a guest artist, panelist, and speaker in spaces such as The Mixed Remixed Festival in Los Angeles, California, The Interfaith Leadership Institute in Chicago, Illinois, Black Table Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, TEDxYouth at Cape Elizabeth High School, and The Kennedy Center's Arts Across America series. ​ Ey has competed locally and nationally in slam poetry since her freshman year at East Carolina University under the slam team Word of Mouth in Greenville, North Carolina. While with them, ey placed in the top 20 at the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) in 2015, and opened for folks such as Indira Allegra, Neil Hilborn, and Angela Davis. ​ They were a finalist of the Slam Free Or Die Qualifier Slam for their National Poetry Slam (NPS) 2018 team and a runner up of the Slam Free or Die Individual Slam Championship in 2018. ​ Maya has a Patreon you can donate to right here. Be sure to go to Maya's website by clicking here, as well as purchasing their book here, and checking out their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! Poets mentioned in this episode   Maya Angelou Anis Mojgani Kaveh Akbar Wanda Coleman Andrea Philips Mia Stuart Willis  About Sarah "Uncovering the right stories for the right audiences so executives, leaders, public speakers, and job seekers can clearly and actively demonstrate their character, values, and vision." In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I've realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don't realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they're sharing them with. My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home. The audiobook, Your Stories Don't Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available! Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana. Be sure to check out the Storytelling For Professionals Course as well to make sure you nail that next interview!

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee speaks with the creatives behind San Francisco Chinatown's 2nd Annual Contemporary Arts Festival – Under the Same Sun: Reimagining the Edges of Chinatown. This community event is produced by Edge on the Square, the same folx who produced last year's Neon was Never Brighter. Miko chats with curator Candace Huey and artists Connie Zheng and members of the Macro Waves Collective.   Under the Same Sun Transcripts [00:00:00] Opening: Asian Pacific expression. Unity and cultural coverage, music and calendar revisions influences Asian Pacific Islander. It's time to get on board. The Apex Express. Good evening. You're tuned in to Apex Express. [00:00:18] Jalena Keane-Lee: We're bringing you an Asian American Pacific Islander view from the Bay and around the world. [00:00:22] Miko Lee: I'm your host tonight, this is Miko Lee. And you get the pleasure of hearing about the amazing edge on the square second annual contemporary art festival. I speak with the curator, Candace Huey, along with some of the powerhouse artists that are behind the interactive events that are happening as part of this festival in San Francisco, Chinatown on September 30th. Also, I'm going to be there. From seven 30 to eight 30, Leading a panel discussion all about the intersections between arts and politics and ways that we can think about how to re-imagine the edges of social justice and equity. We hope that you'll join us and listen tonight to this episode with some artists talking about how we can all be change makers, shake things up, enjoy some art and go out in the Chinatown community in San Francisco so enjoy the episode. Welcome Candice Huey to Apex Express. [00:01:23] Candace Huey: Thank you, Miko. So excited to be back here with you again. [00:01:26] Miko Lee: We are here to talk about Edge on the Square's second annual Contemporary Art Festival. I loved last year's Neon Was Never Brighter. First, just start by telling us about Edge on the Square. [00:01:40] Candace Huey: Thank you, Miko. So edge on the square is a new arts and cultural hub located in the heart of San Francisco, Chinatown. It is a project by C Mac, and it is a place based cultural hub that celebrates, explores and supports leading and pioneering creative expressions at the intersection of community, art and multiracial democracy. [00:02:04] Miko Lee: Ooh, that's so many things and so many important things in this time of turmoil that we're living in. Last year's Neon Was Never Brighter was so fun, so much interactive art. Tell us about the theme for this year and how you came up with it. [00:02:19] Candace Huey: Thank you. So this year, we're excited to be back. It's going to be Saturday, September 30th from 5 p. m. to 10 p. m. We were really excited to gather some amazing local and international API artists. We worked this year with esteemed curators. I'm joined by. PJ. Polly Carpio Arena, Alejo and Sarah Wesson Chang to help inform the vision of the theme, which is under the same sun. Reimagining the edges of Chinatown. [00:02:54] Miko Lee: Oh, I love that title. I have been talking with some of the artists which we're going to hear from soon about how they take that theme and what does it mean to them? Can you tell us what it means for you to have this theme of under the same sun? And what are the edges of Chinatown? What does this theme mean? [00:03:12] Candace Huey: Sure. Happy to share about The theme of the festival under the same sun reimagining the edges of Chinatown for this year's Contemporary Art Festival, while this year's festival is really focused on the unity and solidarity of the API communities coming together during this tough time ongoing, we're still grappling with the after effects of the pandemic and we're still in the pandemic and we're still facing a lot of adversity from the ongoing anti Asian rhetoric. And compounded with this past year's moments of, you know, tragic tragedies in the Supreme Court with overturning of Roe versus Wade affirmative action and other discriminatory policy policies, not only affecting API communities, but other underserved communities of color. we felt that it was still really important to focus on unity on solidarity and coming together, but also thinking about how could we re imagined and redefine, both Boundaries and borders real and imagined that exists not only in Chinatown, but beyond between different communities of color and coming together and commenting on the fact that the critical work for social justice and equity is continuous and ongoing. [00:04:27] Miko Lee: Okay, so as an audience member, I get myself into Chinatown. I'm on that the square. What do I see? [00:04:35] Candace Huey: We're having multimedia, fun, exciting art installations and activations ranging from dance performances to music to nighttime projections to artwork, interactive installations. There's even a sound bath. That's going to be located inside 800 Grant Avenue by the artist collective Macro Waves. We're having a digital work by Indira Allegra, which is a digital tapestry, a collective new take on what is a memorial monument in the community sense, but basically edge on the square and this contemporary festival is thinking about how can we use art to come together And to heal and really think about potent regeneration and thinking about collective power. [00:05:24] Miko Lee: Ooh, collective power folks join up and come to edge on the square, second annual contemporary art festival, the end of this month, September 30th. And we're going to hear next from a bunch of different artists, including the macro waves and Connie Zhang. So stay tuned. [00:05:40] Candace Huey: Under the same sun, reimagining the edges of Chinatown is a free, open to the public, family friendly event, accessible to wheelchairs. We are expecting lots of fun, so come, enjoy yourselves, and be delighted. [00:05:56] Miko Lee: Candace Huey, thank you so much for joining us. And more than that, thank you so much for putting this artistry out into the community so that we can grow and heal and make changes together. [00:06:07] Candace Huey: Thank you, Miko. It's a truly an honor to speak with you and also to work with such talented artists and curators. [00:06:17] Jalena Keane-Lee: Next up, listen, to find my way by Rocky Rivera. MUSIC [00:09:45] Jalena Keane-Lee: That was find my way by Rocky Rivera [00:09:49] Miko Lee: Thank you, Connie Zheng, for coming on Apex Express. [00:09:57] Connie Zheng: Thank you, Miko. [00:09:59] Miko Lee: We are so excited to have you here. You are such a brilliant artist, scholar. You do so many different things. And I just love to hear a little bit more about who are your people and what legacy do you carry from them? [00:10:15] Connie Zheng: Thank you so much for this question. It's a really generous and expansive question .When I think about who my people are there's a broader community of Asian American API progressives, artists, activists intellectuals who I consider part of my community. There's also people whose legacy I'd love to carry. But who maybe I don't know personally. When I think about who my people are they're really people who are dedicated to creating better futures for all of us who are dedicated to collective thriving and liberation and change. There's a very literal answer to that question, which is my people are other Chinese Americans, but I think it's really important for me to think of a larger, more expansive community of people who are committed to the same sorts of Politics and goals for collective health and thriving and and freedom. [00:11:41] Miko Lee: Thank you for that. And speaking of that, you are going to be one of the many artists in Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative's second annual arts event. This year it's called Under the Same Sun, Reimagining Collective Liberation from the Edges of Chinatown. Can you tell me about what that theme title means to you? How do you interpret it? [00:12:03] Connie Zheng: Yeah. Thank you. So when, yeah, the first time the curators shared the framework of under the same sun for me, I was really excited about this idea of collective thriving and growing. Because we are literally all under the same sun. Maybe it shines differently for different people or we all respond to it differently. This is a cheesy answer, but we are all actually on the same planet and we're all responsible. That responsibility is distributed somewhat differently because of our how different people, use the resources and steward the land differently, but we are all responsible one way or another for , our collective future. For me, Under the Same Sun speaks to questions of responsibility, it speaks to questions of collective growth, and nourishment, and our ability to feel the same kind of joy or radiance, and the conditions that enable that radiance. [00:13:12] Miko Lee: What do you think from the edges of Chinatown means? [00:13:15] Connie Zheng: When I think about edges I think about borders and boundaries and how they're often very porous, and also how the edge is really where I some of the most visible forms of change happen. It's not usually from the center , I'm really interested in thresholds, and how no every edge is both the ending and beginning and that sort of space where beings and things and entities cross over to become something else is really fascinating for me, and so the edge of Chinatown there's the literal boundary on a map of where Chinatown as a neighborhood begins and ends, but also the community in Chinatown , it's not limited to those 9 or 10 or 11 blocks. It's much bigger than that. It's much more expansive and diffused than that. I think that slippage between where the sort of bureaucratic designation of a neighborhood and a community like that tension or flow is really interesting for me. [00:14:42] Miko Lee: Oh, I like this philosophical every end beginning. That's lovely. You were raised in China. So when did you first see San Francisco Chinatown? What was your first experience with that? [00:14:53] Connie Zheng: I think I first visited Chinatown in actually in college. So I was born in China, and I mostly grew up on the East Coast. I spent a lot of time in Boston Chinatown and before that I lived in a very predominantly white working class town in Pennsylvania. There were not very many Asian people. My parents would have to drive two hours every month to the nearest Chinese grocery store. Growing up for me Boston Chinatown was like a revelation and coming to San Francisco for the first time and going to Chinatown was like a shock. It was incredible . Walking through the neighborhoods or walking past the small vendors, The stalls, reminded me of being in Asia and it was really magical. I didn't know that existed outside of Asia. The more that I learned about San Francisco Chinatown, it's history why the architecture is the way that it is and how it was really like a safe haven for a lot of people. Specifically during Chinese exclusion. It's a place that is filled with so much significance and meaning, and it's really special to have been able to do work there over the past year and to continue doing work there. [00:16:25] Miko Lee: You've done a number of site specific interactive projects, can you tell us about the one that you will be doing as a part of the upcoming Under the Same Sun? [00:16:33] Connie Zheng: I will be making a modular outdoor garden installation called Nine Suns, and it's in reference to the Chinese myth of Houyi and the Ten Suns. In this story, there were once ten suns, in the days when gods roamed the earth. The ten suns would usually cross the sky one by one. One day all ten of the sun appeared in the sky at once and started burning the earth. This archer Shot down nine of the suns and left just the one that we have today. I'm really interested in trying to imagine a more gentle transformation of the nine suns who fall from the sky. In the standard myth the archer is like the hero but I've read like a number of sort of accounts that reference this myth that nuance the story a little bit by mentioning how like cruel and unkind this archer is. Especially since his wife is Chang'e, the moon goddess, who literally escaped from him I was really interested in reframing this myth and not having the emphasis be on this male archer who shoots down these nine sons, who Maybe we're just hanging out together and in this garden installation there will be nine circular planter tubs that are mounted on movable circular dollies. That are painted to look like the suns that were shot down by the archer. And [00:18:10] Miko Lee: so interest. That's very exciting. Wait, where will it be located? [00:18:15] Connie Zheng: I believe it will be located outside of CMAQ on Grant. I think the exact location is still being determined right now, but it'll be a street level installation. Each of the planters will be somewhere around 2 to 3 feet wide. There will be 9 of them and they will be arranged in a sort of wavy horizon line and each of the planters will have like Asian herbs. On the day of the festival, there'll be wavy line that's reminiscent of an undulating horizon. After the festival, the planters will be moved to Kaiming Head Start Preschool actually for use. For the school to use in their outdoor education program, which is really exciting. [00:19:04] Miko Lee: Oh, I love that. So you're making it, you're creating it for this one arts festival, but then it will have an ongoing life with young folks. [00:19:12] Connie Zheng: Exactly. Yeah. And that's really important. I think that was one of the most exciting things about this project. The planters, because they'll be installed on these circular platforms that have wheels on them, they'll be mobile and the idea is for them to be easily configured into different arrangements, depending on the school's needs. That feature was really exciting to me because it's inspired by The reality of very tight space in Chinatown and also in the interconnectedness of the community. I was like, really inspired by and struck by how so many residents of Chinatown are really mobile. They're tracing numerous orbits a day as they go to school, go to work, run errands, see friends and family, and just build these very rich lives with Lots of nodes of connection. The sort of connectivity is really important for me to think about here. I wanted these planters to be mobile, to be easily configured and modular and also to have a life outside of this one day event. [00:20:21] Miko Lee: So what is the walk away message that you want your audience, after coming to see this event, that's a reimagining of this folktale that many of us grew up with, what do you want people to know or to think about when they walk away from your exhibit? [00:20:37] Connie Zheng: It's really exciting for me when a project that I'm working on opens up different angles of thinking about a story that we've inherited. What happens to the fallen sons in this story is something that was really interesting for me and that I hope is interesting for others. The reimagining of these nine fallen suns as gardens is a really lovely thought for me I was really excited about the idea of each of these suns after they've been shot down from the sky, going off and nurturing their own earth, after they've Fall out of the sky, they like maybe roam through the solar system, and or the nebula, and [00:21:28] Miko Lee: They're just out there roaming around the universe. [00:21:31] Connie Zheng: Yeah, but then they find this maybe like a barren rock and then they nurture it into life. They start their own solar system, and so I think this idea of rejected things, creating new life or being the basis of a new ecosystem is something that's always been fascinating to me and I hope that the installation might encourage others to think about that as well the idea of, Things that are fallen, or thrown away, or considered useless as these nine sons were, things that were considered useless, actually being like, the source of new life. [00:22:09] Miko Lee: Rebirth. From the phoenix, they rebirthed. [00:22:13] Connie Zheng: Yeah, totally. I love that. [00:22:15] Miko Lee: Fun, fun. You do so many different types of mediums. You do film and drawing and writing, food events, maps, and plants, we were chatting earlier about mooncake design, and filmmaking, all these different mediums that you utilize. Can you talk a little bit about how the different mediums you use? impact the issue that you're exploring? Are you drawn to film because of this issue or does it just come to you organically? [00:22:43] Connie Zheng: I do like to come to materials organically. I think there's like a lot of unconscious intelligence that we have. If I have an idea for something, usually I'll try to sit on it for a while before I actually make the thing. There's some projects where the form and the material manifest themselves very quickly and early on. Sometimes it's just very obvious for example I recently finished a nine foot long map of Asian farmworker history in California, and I started making it while I was an artist in residence at the 41 Ross Space on Ross Alley. When I first started thinking about how to create this archive of Asian farmworker history in California, the map form was very obvious to me. I was like, oh, it definitely has to be a map. That was a project where I knew exactly what it would be once the idea, once the sort of like germ of the idea bloomed in my brain. [00:23:59] Miko Lee: Oh, I look forward to seeing that work. That's, is that up still? [00:24:03] Connie Zheng: Yeah. Yeah. It's up at the Berkeley Art Center right now, and it will be going To the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for the Bay Area now triennial in September. that show opens in October. [00:24:16] Miko Lee: Oh, great. So folks can have access to your work in multiple ways. [00:24:20] Miko Lee: I noticed in a lot of your work is addressing environmental awareness and climate change. Have you always woven your politics into your artistry? [00:24:29] Connie Zheng: Certainly not. I think figuring out how to weave my politics into my creative work has been an ongoing process with a lot of trial and error. Not all of my work displays my politics so visibly. I feel like a lot of my creative practice is really just like a series of experiments to figure out what my creative languages. My earliest work was very personal, and as I started to have more of an audience for my work, I was trying to, figure out what kind of dialogue I wanted to have with people. My first short film was, very angry like film essay that was focused on how racialized and class, a lot of American mainstream media rhetoric about pollution is. That was very much inspired by my experiences of my childhood in China and also growing up traveling back and forth between China and the U S and seeing how intensely polluted a lot of the places where my family lived were and then learning more about how that came to be a lot of the worst pollution around the world , can really be traced back to multinational corporations that are based out of the U. S. or North America and Europe. A lot of this terrible pollution is outsourced to countries of the global south, developing nations and also like poor communities, often communities of color in the United States. And the more I learned about this, the more sort of furious I got about it. My first film essay was this extremely finger pointing piece, and the reception for it was really interesting for me. I noticed that the people who responded to it most tended to be like other Asian diasporic people or Asian Americans I received a lot of feedback from That it was didactic. At first that made me really angry to hear that it was didactic, mostly from white viewers and then I think that changed, , and then, , Got me thinking about , what kind of conversation do I want to have? How do I want people to respond to a work? I don't necessarily mean is that going to piss them off or not? I realized that it felt uninviting for people and it felt uninviting for the exact, people I wanted to have that conversation with. I wouldn't say like I've completely changed the way that I work. My writing tends to be much more pointed and my visual work I try to move through a spectrum of Different strategies and ways of weaving my politics into the creative work. Sometimes with certain projects, I want to be more inviting and to plant the seeds of that politics in people, and sometimes it's more like an open conversation, and sometimes it's a little more direct. For the last several years, I've really been experimenting with different strategies and approaches to bring my politics into the work and also to try to make it depending on the context, as inviting as possible without hiding what my politics are. [00:28:32] Miko Lee: Thank you for that. What are you interested in exploring at this Under the Same Sun event? Will you have a chance to walk around and see some of the other artwork, or are you staying with your exhibit? [00:28:43] Connie Zheng: I hope I'll be able to walk around and see other artwork. [00:28:46] Miko Lee: And what is it for yourself? How would you like to walk away from the festival? [00:28:51] Connie Zheng: I would love to have conversations with people about what the festival means to them and what questions it's opening for them and how they see, the installation what inspires in them, what questions it opens for them, I'm really humbled when people bring any real presence to my work, and it's not something I take for granted. I think really just engaging thoughtfully with a creative work that you see is it requires an act of like generosity. Would just be very excited to have conversations with people. [00:29:38] Miko Lee: Well, Connie Zhang, thank you for spending so much time with me. I appreciate you, look forward to seeing your artwork. [00:29:44] Connie Zheng: Thank you. Yeah this has been really lovely and thank you for your time and your attention. [00:29:50] Jalena Keane-Lee: Next up, listen to turn you by Rocky Rivera. MUSIC [00:29:53] Jalena Keane-Lee: That was turn you by Rocky Rivera. [00:32:53] Miko Lee: You're tuned into APEX express on 94.1 K PFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley and online@kpfa.org. Welcome to Apex Express Macro Waves. I'm so excited to talk with you all. You are a locally based creative collective and you create interactive pieces that are around conceptual art, new media, and design. Welcome Robin Bird David, Dominic Cheng, and Jeffrey Yip to Apex Express. [00:33:25] Dominic Cheng: Thanks for having us. [00:33:26] Robin Birdd David: Glad to be here. [00:33:29] Miko Lee: Can I just start with each of you, because we have three different important voices. Can I start with each of you telling me who you are, who are your people, and what legacy do you carry from them? [00:33:45] Robin Birdd David: My name is Robin Bird David. I go by she, they, and that's a big question. I don't think we've ever been asked that question. I think it's an important one. Specifically there's five of us technically in the collective. There's three of us today, who are working on our current project that's coming up with CMAC and Edge on the Square. The collective also includes Tina Kashiwagi and Anam Awan but they are not here today. Specifically with us three, we're all born and raised in the Bay Area, Asian American second generation. So I think that holds an important aspect of the communities we serve. We've been doing a lot of work around stories of different generations of migration, the diaspora particularly with Filipino American, Chinese American we've done work around Japanese American stories, intergenerational stories. So I'll leave it there and pass it along to Dominic. [00:34:50] Dominic Cheng: For the most part. We represent our collective, which is mostly Asian American and Pan Asian artists. All of us come from different backgrounds of art practice. we really strive to collaborate and share our skills and our different experiences and really tried to build upon work that isn't necessarily representative of one single individual. And it's more centered around our collective experience and so as My collective mate Robin had mentioned we do a lot of work that's really introspective and looking at our ancestry as Asians in America or Asian Americans in America. We really try to focus a lot on exploring intergenerational experiences and issues, a lot of trauma and healing that we try to integrate with a lot of the work that we're producing. And that's what brings us here today to the project that we are creating as part of the Under the Sun Festival. [00:35:57] Miko Lee: So Jeffrey, who are your people and what legacy do you carry from them? [00:36:06] Jeffrey Yip: When I think of my people, I think of family. How I identify in general is for my upbringing, for my family and all the arguments I've had all the kind of love that was shown to me. I think as you get older, you start to have chosen family, right? Macrowaves we consider ourselves a family and I consider them my chosen family. Our broader community folks, there's so many people, there's so much love , in the Bay Area and specific being the creative kind of scene. Our legacy is we all have something to share in this world, right? As a collective, we've learned that we all bring something special to the table. We highlight our kind of like strengths. We do what we can to help each other. As a collective, we also do that in the broader kind of communities. It's like we, we have something to share. We mentioned this before, is like a collaboration and bring people on board and get to know people, build community, and like grassroots kind of way. [00:37:08] Miko Lee: So thank you for that. [00:37:12] Robin Birdd David: The reason why Macwaves got together in the first place was because we were really craving a place for people of color. Queer folks to come together to have a safe space to create artwork together. That was really removed from the competitive nature that is often in art spaces, as we know, like art within capitalism and within the society, it builds this structure of you're competing for grants or for residencies. The people that we want to serve and the people that we build with are other artists, queer people of color artists to really create a space where we can build and share resources and skills to create work together rather than to be competing. So that's something that we emphasize in our work. I think the Bay Area holds a special place as a place where a lot of revolution has happened, a lot of community building has happened in the Bay Area for people of color, for marginalized communities. I think that is a legacy we hope to carry as we continue to do this collective work. [00:38:16] Miko Lee: That's so great. Can you talk a little bit more about how you came to be, how your collective came into fruition? [00:38:23] Robin Birdd David: Yeah, that's a good question. Jeffrey and I attended San Francisco State together and we met in a cybernetics new media art class. We were craving a space that wasn't so white focus and wasn't so white wall focus. My background is in painting and Jeff was in the program for new media. We felt that there was this divide of either like the fine arts world, which was a very like white wall space. Then there was the art and technology spaces, which also felt white. There was just a specific type of artists and community that came along with both those spaces and us being people of color, Asian, and growing up in the Bay area. I felt like I didn't necessarily belong in those spaces at the time. We decided why don't we do our own thing? So we started doing these one day events, art experiences parties where we would do like installations and have like DJs and performers and chefs come and we would do this whole experience where like different senses were activated. That's how we started and it just formed naturally. [00:39:35] Miko Lee: So it started out Robin, you, and Jeffrey, and then you've grown to add more people? [00:39:40] Robin Birdd David: Yes, we started in the ideating phases, and then we brought in other folks, like Dominic, to come help and create these one day experiences. Then from there, the folks who were collaborating with us, we naturally formed into a collective. [00:39:56] Miko Lee: Does each artist play a specific role? How do you interact with each other? [00:40:01] Dominic Cheng: I think one of the things that we've felt really special about being in a collective is that we bring different strengths, but it doesn't necessarily dictate like what we can and cannot do in the collective. There's a lot of responsibilities with a lot of the organization, a lot of the finances, but then there's also the responsibility of developing concepts and like refining what approach we want to take towards making installation or an experience. I think organically we have developed concepts for our projects collectively. Some folks tend to take lead on some ideas and others follow and provide support, which is always I think something that has been really uplifting for us is to not really. Think about it from like an individualized perspective where one singular artist needs to do every single thing on their own. That really opened up a lot of opportunities for us as creatives and artists to think beyond what we individually can create and really honing in on the resources and the creative like experiences and techniques that other folks bring to the table. [00:41:14] Miko Lee: So macro waves focuses around future ancestry intergenerational experiences and collective healing. How does this relate to the Under the same sun, reimagining collective liberation from the edges of Chinatown, which is the theme of this year's second annual festival. [00:41:33] Dominic Cheng: We have been a collective since 2015. A lot of the work that we have been doing has been centered around storytelling and exploring our ancestry through a lot of experiences that we've encountered between us and our parents or us and our grandparents or others. Us and folks that are probably not an ancestor quite just yet. We have always been fascinated in utilizing that area as like a point of adventure as a place for us to explore ideas outside of conventional storytelling. We have been creating works specifically looking at how trauma has been passed along through cultures of just brushing things under the rug, or how those types of experiences can really build up a like a hard shell for folks to really break through and to heal. We've also been doing work that has been exploring some of the experiences that we all share like today especially through the pandemic [00:42:38] Miko Lee: How does the theme of Under the Same Sun make you feel and what does it inspire in you all as a collective? [00:42:46] Robin Birdd David: So MacroWave's coming together in the first place. Is really reimagining art practice like collective work. In this case collective care, which is what our project focuses on. We're really interested in including other communities in our work. We did a project called alternate realm in SF Chinatown, where we interviewed shop owners during the pandemic when a lot of the restaurants and businesses were closed down and we're only doing takeout. And so we saw an area where we could. Utilize our work to help small businesses out. And so we interviewed these small these business owners about their experiences around alters and specifically Qingming And we asked them how did their rest or their business restaurant shop start and what are your alters that you have at home. Through these interviews, we collaborate with other artists outside of the collective to create augmented reality alters that became a walking tour that communities can experience through their cell phones or iPads. And so really just like bringing. outside communities that are not necessarily in the art scene to experience what other people are doing in the community and how do we bridge the gap between different generations of people and continue this legacy of storytelling and to learn more about in this particular project, more about like our Asian community and the diaspora and how they were able to start a business in the first place. [00:44:27] Miko Lee: I really appreciated those short videos about Qingming and just getting to hear from a shopkeeper's perspective about what the things they're burning for their ancestors. I think about that a lot when I'm doing Qingming with my family. So I appreciate that there's this video that's there on the internet will just last, but then you had this temporary piece with where you would go and scan a QR code. Is that right? [00:44:53] Dominic Cheng: Yeah, part of this. That project really involved us really capturing the stories of these local businesses who are not just only struggling financially and economically to survive, but they were also like experiencing heightened like violence in their communities and xenophobia. And this was like during a time where we felt that. It was important for us to open up this project as a platform for other creatives, other artists who identify as Asians to create a digital offering, like a digital art altar offering to each business in response to the stories that they were hearing [00:45:33] Miko Lee: Jeffrey, can you talk about the piece that you're going to be showing at the exhibit coming up for under the same sun? [00:45:43] Jeffrey Yip: Yeah it's a huge project and we've been conceptualizing for about two years now. It's Actually a culmination of the work that we have been doing. In 2000, I think 17 or 16, we started creating like healing spaces. One of which was like Protectural Voyager, which showed at SoMa Arts. It was this geodesic dome and there was like healing feedback sensors attached to it. There was like one that could read your brain. A brain wave reader and what was a heart wave reader. We're inviting folks to meditate inside this dome and when they we're at a calmer state, then the visuals will be more meditative and encourage meditation. We've created a number of these kind of like healing spaces and exhibitions. Collective futures is the one that we're going to be showing at this festival this year. Idea is around community care, collective care and also questioning the idea of self care and self care is important and we all need self care and sometimes that can get caught up in Western individualism and I think it is important to have that delineation and emphasize the the collective care because because you can't do everything by ourselves. We need community. We need family members. We need people to show up for each other. [00:46:59] Robin Birdd David: Our piece is called collective futures. Our installation is a critique about self care and coming out of shelter in place. We were encouraged to take care of ourselves, but also as a means to be productive and to get back out there and to work. it's like what Jeff mentioned is really important, but there needs to be a shift to like community care like how do we take care of ourselves. If institutions aren't are not working if certain systems are not working, how can the community show up for each other and I think that. Under the Same Sun is an example of this collective experience of coming together to reimagine new ways of experiencing art and really integrating and bringing together different communities outside of Chinatown, into Chinatown bringing other migrant, people of color communities who all have similar ways of showing up and caring for each other rather than being segregated Into like different communities by ethnic groups, but like, how do we come together? [00:48:04] Miko Lee: Jeff. If I walk into Edge on the Square, what do I see? [00:48:10] Jeffrey Yip: If you walked into Edge on the Square, you would see a mound full of moss. We're inviting people to come and sit down on and in the middle of that mound, there's going to be like a bowl of water that will be vibrating and the whole platform is actually vibrant. So we're inviting participants to come on and feel these vibrations that are being produced by the sound artists that we're inviting to, to provide sound. On these platforms, there are transducers that essentially work like speakers, but instead of pushing air out of the cone, they vibrate . And so basically that's essentially what this project's about. We'll be like having a platform building a platform that will be vibrating. So there'll be like a, like a sound installation that will vibrate the same frequencies into the platform. And so there's this idea called a vibroacoustic therapy. And it's the idea that like. under certain vibrations that can be a healing thing, right? And so we're inviting folks to come on this platform and all vibrate on the same wavelength and essentially just have the intention to heal. And I think a lot of times with these healing spaces, we're not like, Oh yeah, these spaces are going to heal you. It's more it's more so like we're inviting to people with to come in with the intention to heal because I don't identify as a healer, but I feel like we all can do the work to heal ourselves. [00:49:31] Miko Lee: Where is your piece going to How can people find it? [00:49:36] Robin Birdd David: Collective Futures installation can be found in the Edge on the Square gallery space. It is part of the gallery exhibition that will be up, till next year, June. And the location is 800 Grant Avenue in San Francisco, Chinatown. The nature of the installation is really about collaboration. We're inviting other collaborators to come in to either create sound performances where the sound performance connects to the vibration. On this installation can feel can physically feel the music being played at the same time. We also are inviting other healing practitioners, we're hoping to invite a Tai Chi instructor to host a class, maybe with different, with elders, with different community members in Chinatown to be able to utilize the platform in different ways. [00:50:35] Dominic Cheng: We wanted to create a platform as a means of opening up dialogue about other community engagement opportunities. Some of the folks that we have been interested in is cone shaped top, which is arts and culture space based in Oakland that has been doing a lot of work opening up space for a new emerging sound artists to have a space to perform and just to share music and be in community with each other. [00:51:01] Robin Birdd David: Cone Shaped Top will be collaborating with us for the opening of Under the Same Sun Festival on September 30th. They will be hosting a series of other sound and performance based artists that will perform live for the festival. So we're really excited about that and to really kick off this installation where throughout the year, the rest of the year and next year, we'll be able to collaborate with other community folks. [00:51:28] Miko Lee: That is very exciting. Jeffrey Yip, what do you want audiences to feel? [00:51:35] Jeffrey Yip: Everybody's gonna have a different experience, right? I personally want to start with telling somebody how they should experience the work, like I really do feel like everybody's going to come in with a unique perspective. The way that they'll experience it will be new to themselves because for me part of the art right is the experience within the individual, and that's what they're bringing to the table. It's a almost a collaboration with the participants as well because they bring their unique experience to it and you know maybe they'll share some share the experience with somebody else and there might be similarities but they'll have a unique experience. Ultimately I would say a sense of togetherness and community. That would be ideal. [00:52:19] Miko Lee: What about you, Robin and Dominic, what do you want the audience to feel when they leave your exhibition? [00:52:28] Robin Birdd David: The concept behind collective futures really comes from that feeling that we had in the pandemic where we were actually able to take a break. The concept of self care, even though it existed already, was there was a hyper focus on self care, and whatever the care is that people needed, it was obvious that we all needed a break and we needed space from capitalism from the day to day work and hustle and bustle, and so this installation really is a nod to that. It's wait a minute, how we take a step back and think about like how do we show collective care? How do we show up for each other? How do we care for ourselves? In a way that I don't know if we really got to the We never really got to the root of the problem since we came back from COVID, even though COVID still exists. We never really figured that part out. Like here we are still continuing to hustle and continue the work which is all important. I'm hoping that people who experience our installation will be reminded of I need to rest and it's okay to take a break. It's okay to pause and it's okay to just lay here and be still and be okay with where they are in their lives, where we are in our lives. [00:53:47] Dominic Cheng: Building on to that, I really do think that one of the hopes that I have is for folks to come to this leaving with just more interest in exploring collective care. It's important to not just only continue to do the work of living day to day and trying to survive, but really to take those moments of rest and really to seek out opportunities to provide community collective care. It has to be a constant and it can't just be, like, a one time thing. That's what we're really hoping for folks to do is to really be moved by the collective experience that they share with. Either folks that they bring together with them to the space and to the installation or for folks that they meet and connect with organically just throughout their visit. [00:54:37] Miko Lee: What are you looking forward to at this whole event that's happening? Will all of you stay with your piece or will you get to wander around and experience the other events that are happening? [00:54:49] Robin Birdd David: That's a good question. I'm hoping we'll be able to experience the events. That's also my birthday. So I'm hoping to be able to celebrate, see folks I haven't seen in a long time in the community, and to learn about other artists work and to be able To also explore Chinatown as the way that the festival is, was designed to be able to support small businesses. And then also to be able to collaborate with Cone Shaped Top is such an honor and something that we've wanted to do for so long. [00:55:19] Dominic Cheng: I'm excited to just support other artists who are activating like different parts of the festival. I had attended last year's festival the inaugural festival and was really amazed and really moved by the ways in which folks were taking up taking up space in like public areas through art and were sharing different stories in different parts of the entire Chinatown neighborhood. That was really exciting for me to experience the first time and I'm hoping to experience that and something new this time around. [00:56:01] Miko Lee: What about you, Jeffrey? What are you looking forward to? [00:56:07] Jeffrey Yip: I echo everything they both said. I think being a spectator and experiencing What these other creatives are showcasing. I know Kim Ip is going to do a performance. I'm excited about that. TNT Tricycle is going to be there. Maybe I'll sing a song I know there is going to be a lot of great stuff. There's going to be the canto pop. I'm excited for that as well. So maybe dance a little bit in the street. , I think that would be nice. it'll be really good for me and Jeff to brush up on our Cantonese through dancing to canto pop DJ music. [00:56:43] Miko Lee: Okay, and we will just look forward to seeing you all dancing in the procession, which is going to be lion dance and then Duniya dance all the way around the block. So you can do a little Bollywood, a little lion dance. Thank you so much Macro Waves Collective for joining me on Apex Express. I hope people can get out in the streets and see this amazing artwork going down the end of the month, September 30th. Thank you all for joining me. [00:57:08] Robin Birdd David: Thank you so much for having us. [00:57:10] Dominic Cheng: Thank you so much Miko. [00:57:14] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for joining us. Please check out our website, kpfa.org backslash program, backslash apex express to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. [00:57:39] Miko Lee: Apex express is a proud member of the AACRE network. Asian-Americans for civil rights and equality. Find out more at aacre.org. Apex express is produced by me. Miko Lee. Along with Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaida. Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hieu Nguyen and Cheryl Truong tonight's show is produced by me Miko thank you so much to the team at kpfa for their support have a great Night. The post APEX Express – 9.7.23 – Under the Same Sun appeared first on KPFA.

Welcome back to the Embodied Astrology podcast! We're relaunching monthly overviews with Renee Sills this Aquarius Season. We hope you enjoy this episode! Timestamps are below for easy navigation through this 3-part episode. 0:00-24:37: Welcome back! A re-introduction from Renee and a developmental overview of the Embodied Astrology project and timeline. 24:37-54:55: Astrology in collective context. Looking at the influences of Capricorn and Aquarius. 54:55-end: Aquarius Season overview. Key transit dates, timing, and interpretations. Aquarius rules connective tissues and conduits for information. It is associated with technology, innovation, invention, and The Future. As The Water Bearer, Aquarius is also a symbol of the flow of energy between humans – the ways that information shapes emotions, beliefs, actions, and “reality.” Aquarius' archetype demands our participation in the life experience but also invites us to awaken to the potentials for choice within this realm. It forces confrontation with the rigidity and violence of humanity's ideas, as they've evolved over the forces of time, dominance, and control. It asks us to ask deeper, to consider our own compliance, investigate our options, and identify and embody alternatives to the status quo. This is a season to make micro-adjustments with intention. Small (and large) changes now, will amplify exponentially when we commit to them. In the midst of a world experiencing devastating violence, environmental and human calamity, and unnecessary compounding harm, there are still so many reasons to continue. There is a revolution underway. Creative brilliance is blossoming in the spaces of resistance. It is happening everywhere, in everyone. Though nothing is guaranteed and chaos is inevitable, the next decades also bring the option of powerful progressive change as increasing numbers of people stand up, speak out, and shift. — CLICK HERE FOR EMBODIED ASTROLOGY CLASSES & WORKSHOPS CLICK HERE FOR EMBODIED ASTROLOGY MONTH-AHEAD READINGS FOR ALL 12 SIGNS Defend the Atlanta Forest Direct donation link to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund Stop Cop City Site MPD150 Abolitionist Toolkit https://www.theviolenceproject.org/about-us/ https://abcnews.go.com/US/guys-guns-men-vast-majority-americas-gun-violence/story?id=79125485 https://www.healthdata.org/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier https://www.statista.com/statistics/476456/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-race/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/06/us-police-killings-record-number-2022 -- Thank you Ari Nason for preparing notes for me to reference and for your work with MPD150. I learn so much from my partner Ayanna Drakos- historian and scholar of Black Feminism and conduit of tender-hearted wisdom. Conversations and friendships with several of this year's EA faculty continue to support me in thinking through many of these issues and illuminating their dimensions: Dr. Amber McZeal; Sherri Taylor; Indira Allegra; Junauda Petrus, Karlyn Bradley; Bridgette Hickey; Michelle and Ramon Gabrieloff- Parish; Ced Clearwater and Gabz 404. Gratitude and acknowledgement to Bayo Akomolafe, Janice Lee, Resmaa Menakam, Alnoor Ladha, and Carlin Quinn for teaching and modeling post-capitalist possibility and somatic abolitionism. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/embodied-astrology/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/embodied-astrology/support

This episode is released with Venus' conjunction to the Sun and square to Pluto in Capricorn, just a few days before the beginning of Scorpio Season and a new moon and solar eclipse in Scorpio. My guest Indira Allegra and I talk about themes of being swallowed and reborn, claiming personal power, and transforming fear. Indira Allegra is a social psychopomp accompanying people, places and non-human beings through cycles of death, memorial and regeneration. Their projects, performances and installations draw from an investigation of inner space, animism and the ritual, relational and performative aspects of weaving. Allegra's combination of past experiences as a sex worker, sign language interpreter, domestic violence counselor and yoga instructor allow them to work with the tension of human and nonhuman experience as creative material. Their work has been featured in ARTFORUM, Art Journal and Emergency Index Vol. 8 among others. Allegra has been the recipient of numerous awards including the United States Artists Fellowship, Burke Prize, Gerbode Choreographer Award and the Art Matters Artist2Artist Fellowship. @indiraallegra - IG To inquire about 1:1 sessions with Indira, please dm thru Instagram Indira will be facilitating a two-part Scorpio Season workshop with Embodied Astrology called Beyond Domination: Kink in the Glow of Vesta. Beyond the binary of master and servant or top and bottom, there is devotion. Join us for an electric workshop as we establish parameters for consensual play where partners pleasure each other as an offering to the larger archetypal energies they are each devoted to. Whether you are a devotee of emotional intimacy, slippery spontaneity or just the joy of learning itself - there is a satisfying kink for you lit by the glow of Vesta. Click here for more information and registration If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends and networks You can also make a 1-time or recurring donation to support our future production Find more guest episodes here Stay tuned in with the earth, skies and planets by becoming a member of Embodied Astrology. Membership tiers include access to monthly readings for your sun and rising sign, seasonal workshops, and a vibrant virtual community space where you're encouraged to explore your chart through the lens of your own embodied experience. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/embodied-astrology/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/embodied-astrology/support

This is Five and Nine, a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice. Welcome to Season 1, Episode 4. We are pleased to share we are now available on Apple Podcasts!Listen to the podcast now, or read the transcript below, or both!ResourcesMusicDance of the Songbirds, composed by Benjamin Richmond and performed by Joseph Belmont (the whistler) and the Victor Orchestra in 1913.Our Guest's Workindiraallegra.comUnspooling Die Gramgewinde: Writing with Gunta Stölzl on Grief-Threads and Grief-Portals, by Indira Allegra in TextileTexere: The Shape of Loss is a Tapestry, at Minnesota Street Project, visible at Texere.Space [password: weave]Othe ResourcesB******t Jobs, by David GraeberTaking a Thread for a Walk at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)Mumurations Tarot Deck by AS220Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, by Rachel PollackTarot Cards:Eight of SwordsSeven of CupsThe TowerQueen of PentaclesTranscriptDorothy: We have a special guest today. We haven't had one yet, so this is a momentous occasion for us at Five and Nine. It is the incomparable Bay Area-based artist Indira Allegra. They are a conceptual artist, but there's so much more than that. And we'll talk about that. They are also a recognized leader in the field of performative craft, which I hope we are able to get into. So, you know, obviously working with weaving, the loom and using that as a framework for exploring these kinds of tensions that haunt both non-human and human relationships. A lot of the things that they've been working on is a combination of past experiences, within sign language interpretation, domestic violence, counselor, sex worker, union organizer. And so, so, so much more, and if we kept this going it would be the whole podcast. We're not going to keeping going, but this is Indira Allegra, and welcome!Indira: Thank you, Dorothy, for that introduction. I'll try to live up to everything you've read. Dorothy: I will say — and I'll put this on record because we were on a podcast — Indira's worst day is my best day. Just to put it out there right now. Ana, Xiaowei and I, we've had many discussions regarding the differences between work, labor and career. And so, for example, when you think about something such as labor, what are the mechanisms that are needed to kind of make something come to fruition versus work, which is like the every day? Some people might even think work might be something lik, David Graeber's B******t Jobs. So work is a thing that allows us to survive as much does, but then career sometimes can be this abstract thing, this always changes for us. But within the arts, do you feel there is a distinction between those three, and how have those lines blurred, or how have they become much more clear during the pandemic? Indira: Okay. All right. Well, let's just start with the questions then! Okay, so actually, I would say that first, you've got to figure out what your calling is, and then you can mobilize your career to be in service of that. And then the labor is like all of the details which make your career possible. So I think that for me, on a much larger level, I do work of holding transformational space, holding the space of the portal, or being there with both human and non-human co-conspirators so that transformation can happen. And sometimes that transformation involves a death process. Sometimes that transformation involves the development of understanding. You know, like with my work, as a sign language interpreter, to be the body that holds the text for two people who wouldn't otherwise be able to communicate with each other easily. So I think that you can have a calling, and you can have many different careers, which are in service of that calling. You know, hence the work as a union organizer and being with people who are in this transformational place of realizing that they have work in the workplace as it exists anymore. And that there is a boundary for them internally around what they are willing to live with and what they're willing to work with. And more importantly, there is a world that they want to move into and be ushered into in terms of what their workplace could feel like and how it could operate for them. Yeah. So maybe it's even a kind of doulaing work, but I think that births and deaths and transformations of all kinds are happening all the time. I think to live is to lose and to learn how to do that. I think within the space of an art practice, what I'm able to do is to work more closely and more regularly with non-human conspirators or co-conspirators or performers. Whereas if I were to have stayed in the realm of doing interpreting or even the realm of sex work, the focus would be more on the human to human interaction. And I think it's actually really important to be thinking big picture in a way, which decentralizes human concerns, conceits, and when we can do that and kind of almost like a bit is turning the human volume down. I know that Ana's in the producer role, like at the controls. And so Ana is balancing the sound of my voice with the sound of the room noise. And what if actually the room noise and my voice were at the same level? And what if that was at the same level as the trucks going down the street outside? With the bird songs, all of that stuff. That would be an artwork, an art assignment or a sketch or something to try, to listen to one's environment where you're at the same level as everything else, which is happening around you, and how might that impact how one feels about animacy and power and also access to resource. If a bird songs as loud as my voice, then maybe it has the power to impact something in my life in a really powerful way too. I think we're used to, as humans, thinking about other sounds as being smaller than our own. And so then we're unable to connect with their spiritual or intellectual resource. Maybe there's an intellectual resource in the bird's song that I need. Xiaowei: I think you brought up transformational space and the non-human, and I'm curious, both in your art practice as well as holding transformational space, and being in the world that we live in, that we have to eat and pay bills and all these things. How do you draw these lines, like of self and non-self either in your practice or in holding transformational space? Indira: I'm smiling right now because I think that's more mutable. I'm interested in thinking of the self as maybe more mutable than — like most people, I think I like to think of the self as being fixed , finite, you know, something which is reliable and can be counted on. And I don't know, as a non-binary person, I feel like — I just feel like a lot of things are in flux all the time. How do you know who you are? I think we only know who we are in relationship to other folks, right? I know where the earth is, because I know where the sun is in relationship to that. And I know where the moon is in relationship to that. But what if the moon drops out? Where am I located now? I have to re-situate myself within a new network of relations. That's the grieving process, right? It's learning how to accept that a loss has occurred, that a death has occurred. And trying to figure out a new constellation to fit into. So I think the self is always changing in relationship to the losses we experience in our lives. I have a name which will follow me throughout the long arc of my life, but I think that there are many different selves which can exist within that name. The Xiaowei that you will be at the age of 90 will contain many different selves. I think that's really a beautiful thing. So I do think of myself as a collection, a multitude. That's where the they/them comes from with my pronouns. It's not only stepping outside of a masculine or feminine binary, but thinking about all the different ages that I have been, all the different ages I will be, all of my ancestors, all of the nonhuman parts of which I am constituted. It's a way to tip my hat to each of my white blood cells and my red blood cells and the vessels they're in, you know? Xiaowei: There are so, so many things that I feel like you have such wisdom on. I've noticed, even within birth doulaing, it's like, there's the beauty of the work itself in holding the transformational space. And then there's also the kind of realities of — in many ways you're doing client work in a lot of senses. That makes me think of art institutions. And so, I think I'm just curious about, what are the ways that you can — I would hesitate to use the phrase "stay true to your practice," but I guess I'll use that as a proxy. And also, where you are now having this capacity as a full-time artist and like supporting yourself on that? Indira: I mean, really, it is a faith-based practice. I will say that the bulk of my income comes from grants, awards and fellowships. My practice up to this point has not really been in the commercial realm so much. Yeah, and, and that's a very competitive way to get your coin. I don't know what it's like in other realms, but I think that the odds that artists have to contend with when applying for grants or fellowships of any kind are really massive. But then I think about when you have thousands of people applying for a thing, and then there's multiple rounds that you go through. And then after the round, there may be an interview and then a year later after the initial application, you'll know whether or not you got it or not. And there's letters of recommendation. There's all sorts of different rituals, which have been created around what one has to do to deserve funding, right? I think about the odds that I've had to contend with in my own life around difficult circumstances, around instances of violence or illness or homelessness or disability. And I think about, oh, you know, damn, well, if I can survive that, then maybe the odds of winning this award — maybe I don't need to be worried about that so much. Money is not the most difficult thing. It's enough to live. [14:34] Ethos and Art Dorothy: There's an ethos on your website, which I feel oftentimes is not something that people incorporate into their artistic or creative practices. I mean, this is something that people should just incorporate in their daily lives personally, but I so deeply appreciated — and I'm obviously familiar with your work and I've written about it, full disclosure to those out there. But it's one of the things that we wanted to pull, because it is a brilliant list of statements that almost serve as a type of rider. Indira: Yeah. Dorothy: Both non-human, human, institutions, organizations, collectives, and a few that we pulled out were, number one, there is no such thing as a quote-unquote blank or open space geographically, visually, or ideologically. Another line from your ethos is, build an altar to your creative and intellectual ancestors, tend to it. Please visit indiraallegra.com to really view this wonderful list. But the third one that we pulled that's related to grief and loss was loss is a normal part of the human experience, so attention to grief and loss is always timely. We pulled those three out because we wanted to kind of have a conversation around how grief and loss actually is something people need to remember when you're thinking about economic justice. Indira: That's right. Dorothy: So when we think about this ethos and some of the ones that we just mentioned right now, this is a part of the work. This is exactly what you were stating and what you said. You know, and this is also related to the abundance versus kind of scarcity ideas that Ana, Xiaowei and I have been talking about, not just on the podcast, but just even in life. And so I guess, related to the ethos, because we wanted to kind of set this up here, with your most recent project Texere. You know, it explores different types of digital weaving practices that actually encourage reflection and grief and loss and how they're woven into other participants. What in doing the project has it revealed to you about the way we need to survive? Indira: Well, first I want to say thank you for looking at the ethos on the site. It has been amazing to — when people really go there and, they read through it. It's something that I've been surprised how many people really welcome seeing that information out in the public. And I love that you use the word rider. Because it does function in that way for me. I think that my union organizer self is always concerned with the terms and conditions of any kind of economic partnership. You can go online and you can research a hundred different interviews that I've done, or like whatever. Or you can just read it right there. I'll just tell you what I'm interested in. I think it helps me to curate the kinds of folks who find their way to me. When thinking about the semiotics of cloth or the anatomy of cloth, we do typically think about the warp and the weft. I speak also of the spaces in between the threads being portals of activity. And for those of you who are textile nerds out there, there's an article that I published in the Textile journal, which is based out of the UK called "Unspooling Die Gramgewinde: Weaving Grief-Threads and Grief-Portals with Gunta Stölzl," who was a weaver for the Bauhaus. And we know that something is woven because of the pores that it has. And it was surprising to me that no one had actually ever written about that and never written about the potential of these spaces. And I remember after my last trip abroad — travel was very important to me in the beforetimes. I come back to New York from spending a couple of months in Europe. And I went to an exhibition Taking a Thread for a Walk exhibition at MoMA. One of Gunta Stölzl's wandbehang or wall hangings, was there. And I began to cry in the presence of this cloth. I began to cry because I'm a sentimental person. I began to cry because I just f*****g cry at museums because they're contemplative spaces and I am really moved in social spaces where there are contracts around thoughtfulness and silence. And I began to cry because I felt that that that cloth was pulling something out of me, that there was something in those pores that was actually like drawing a kind of grief thread along a Z axis. It's like you have your X and Y axis that you're used to thinking about. And then this other axis, which is like between the space between my body and the body of the weaving. And I got really interested in that. So I think that brings us to Texere: The Shape of Loss is a Tapestry, which is a solo exhibition of the Minnesota Street Project right now through April 30th. This is a collection of digital memorial tapestries, which honor different losses in our lives. So there are eight different categories of losses, including the loss of force to wildfire, loss of sleep, or loss of a loved one to a virus. What you can do, and all of you can do it here, and anyone who's listening to this podcast is welcome to do this as well, is you can go to texere.space online. The password that you need is weave, all in lower case. You can make a contribution to any of these tapestries. So say, for instance, you wanted to contribute to the loss of forests to wildfire. And that was something that maybe if you're here in California has impacted you. And I know that that's something that has impacted me deeply. What I might choose to contribute would be either text or an image, or even an audio recording about that loss. And then I can use texere.space to turn that text, image or sound into a thread which then gets uploaded or woven into this tapestry, which is now hanging in space. And so you're able to see your contribution woven in with other people's losses or other people's contributions to that. And it was important to me to work in this way, which can create memorials that change as we change in relationship to our losses, the same way that I felt it's important to acknowledge how the self is always shifting, right? What we talked about before when Xiaowei asked me that question. The memorials we need also need to change as we change. The prevailing way of thinking about memorial at this time has to do with something which is cast bronze in the middle of a public square, which few people care about after it's installed. The things which matter to people the most when I ask folks about memorial are the keepsakes on their dresser in a bedroom or something which is kept on the top of a fireplace or images in one's phone. So it's the stuff which is really close to you in your life, right? I think that we can use this through Texere to care for us as we move through our losses. [22:33] Tarot Reading Dorothy: D we have consent to pull a card or two?Indira: Yeah, please. Dorothy: And the three of us would love to provide our own thoughts. Is there anything top of mind? Indira: So one of the things I've been doing over the past few months is learning how to read charts. So for astro nerds out there, Neptune and Jupiter just had a big conjunction in Pisces, which means that the ancient ruler and the modern ruler of Pisces were at home together in the same sign or are at home together in the same sign. Venus and Mars are also transiting through Pisces right now, so there's a lot of activity which is happening in this very watery sign, which is associated with the 12th house, which can be a space between life and death and can also be a place where stuff is very unconscious, even within ourselves and takes a bit of work to define. All that is to say is I have been feeling tremendously emotional during this time. I feel like there's fresh grief around old grief, which has been coming up for me , and I'm always curious about other kinds of grief practices or rituals that I can incorporate into my day. That's the background to the question. How do I care for this grief that I'm experiencing right now? Dorothy: Mm. All right, so I'm going to pull a couple cards…And the first card I pulled was the Eight of Swords. It's an image of a feminine figure blindfolded with swords, kind of staked into the ground. She is bound, and there are a lot of ivy leaves in the background, as well as a panel of purple and hues that are bluish pinkish. And then the second card I pulled, it's the Seven of Cups. Indira: Oh, wow. Illusions abound!. Dorothy: Yeah. Or, you know, the imaginary liminal space, but yes, absolutely. The Seven of Cups is a masculine figure in the foreground, looking up at these seven cups in these different cups, they're golden goblets. They contain different types of figures: a dragon, a wreath, jewels, the tower that we might see in the Tower card, a serpent, a figurehead, and then a bit of a a hidden figure. Those kinds of elements that we see in the Seven of Cups. So let me hand it over to Ana and Xiaowei. Xiaowei: I'll start with the Eight of Swords. I'm actually using a new deck that I haven't used before. And it's by a series of artists from Art Space 220 in Providence, Rhode Island, the Murmurations Tarot Deck. And in the Eight of Swords in this deck, it's similar where there's like knives surrounding this feminine figure, but there's actually this latent strength, and the feminine figure, like their feet, their legs are quite muscular. And there's like one knife like in those secret agent movies where it's like, the knife is like in the garter belt. And it's like, oh, but I've got this one secret knife that I can always take out. And so I don't know, like a sword, there's the double edge of both the kind of grief and anxiety and anxiousness that pulls one back. And then there's also that sword as a kind of secret power, and so I don't know, I feel like your work speaks so much to grief and loss, but there's also this kind of latent strength and secret power. I'm curious how that resonates for you. Indira: I do feel like how I was talking about the 12th house. Right now I feel the presence of something, which is a resource. I know it's in the room. I know it's on stage with me. Yeah, but it's like, I don't have an ID on it. If that makes sense. Xiaowei: That kind of giving name to that latent power feels like a way to tend to tend to it. Indira: Thank you. Ana: To me, the Seven of Cups— there's the Rachel Pollack interpretation and in their book, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, it's about getting lost in visions. But I like this idea — what I love about the Seven of Cups, it's such a beautiful image of many things coming together, many practices, objects, spirits, visions. And it makes me think so much of your work, Indira, of Texere. That this work you're doing of weaving together people's stories and lives. That this time of grieving is a collective one. This time of grieving is both individual stories, but we're all weaved together right now. The sadness is bringing up old sadnesses for us. It's a collective kind of action at the same time. And I always liked the interpretation of the Seven of Cups as a way to understand the visions that you're looking at, to name them, sit with them, be present with them. And to me, what's so powerful about the work you do, your calling, as you say, Indira, is that it's both highly individual, highly specific, but also incredibly collective at the same time. And it just reminds me of a Buddhist teacher who said that sometimes these moments of grief, of sadness, they remind us of how not alone we are because they connect us. That pain connects us with other people and reminds us that we need other people, we need these stories. Dorothy: Yes. Plus 1000. All the things. Thank you, Ana, for that mention of Texere. I almost see the Eight and the Seven or the Eight of Swords and the Seven of Cups as basically the warp and the weft. Eight numerologically in tarot is that of action. So what is this figure going to do to unbind herself and find her way through the swords? Because there is an opening, actually, there is a couple in the Rider Waithe depiction where she is not fully enclosed. And so think about this kind of woven nature. If we think even how, if you look at how the figure itself is painted on, there is intersections and crossing over. But then when you talked about, well, there is an opening in between the warp and the weft and those are portals. Well, that is the Seven of Cups. So I love that the two cards are showing us what we've already been talking about this whole time. The reason why I think Ana, Xiaowei, you and I believe so wholeheartedly in this magic of tarot and what it tells us and how we create and how we create, generate and bring into existence these different narratives through all these different art forms, but especially thinking about your practice and how going back to your original question of like holding the grief, processing it. And I feel these two cards are so indicative. I feel tarot always tells you what you know, on top of having a huge sense of humor. Indira: Yeah, no, definitely on the humor piece for sure. Oh my goodness. I'm very grateful. Thank you. Thank you to each of you. [31:47] Queen of Pentacles Dorothy: The other thing is just because inquiring minds want to know is — we want to know about the Queen of Pentacles. Indira: That's so funny. So for those of you who are listening, I'm using my headphones to record this interview, and I name all my devices. Yeah, which I feel like for me is a way of engaging in practical magic around the practice of address. So in the same way that I love being addressed as they/them, because it invokes so many different types of power. I love being able to address my devices in the same way. And so Queen of Pentacles for me speaks to the kinds of resource that come to me through podcasts such as Five and Nine and other music that may be — I'm a big playlist person, so music is a huge resource for me, both emotionally, and in terms of thinking about moving my body. And thinking about phone call and voice node and other forms of conversation as being such a place of resource for me. I am a hard of hearing person myself. When I put my headphones on, there's just this space of intimacy and clarity, which comes through for me through the voice. Five and Nine is a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice. We publish “moonthly” — a newsletter every new moon

In this mini-episode Elena walks you through the final Feel Better exercise in the How to Feel Better Week 3 Program Guide: “Make and Create" as we conclude our exploration of Step 3: Commemorate.Sign-up for the free Feel Better program here. Rate and review the podcast! Click here for full show notes, including everything mentioned on the episode. Mentioned in This EpisodeBright Morning Podcast Episode with Indira Allegra

Welcome to the Nerdette Book Club! Each month, we read a book and chat about it with a rotating group of panelists. This month’s pick is Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation from author Anne Helen Petersen.In Can’t Even, Petersen argues that societal conditions and poor timing primed the millennial generation for burnout. Petersen points to the 2008 recession, the rise of the contract worker, the prevalence of cell phones and astronomical student loan debt as a few contributing factors.Listen along as Nerdette host Greta Johnsen discusses the book with Avery Trufelman, host of The Cut podcast, and Indira Allegra, a sculptor and performance artist. We also hear from many of you who called in with your feelings about burnout. Press play above to hear the conversation.

In this episode, Elena has a conversation with artist and writer Indira Allegra. Indira shares how their performative practice responds to this current moment, honors ancestors, and works toward healing the community and the self. Indira’s websiteSan Francisco Chronicle article, “How can we mark this moment?” James BaldwinNina Simone Gunta StölzlPamela Djerassi Paul RobesonJosephine BakerWilma MankillerLorraine Hansberry Felix Gonzalez-Torres

At UNTITLED, ART San Francisco 2020, three noted San Francisco artists working in diverse media discussed their art practices, concerns and challenges, and where the equity movement might lead in coming years. Hear artists Indira Allegra, Katherine Vetne, and Erica Deeman, as well as Heidi Rabben, Senior Curator at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. This panel was organized by ArtTable Northern California, a chapter of the foremost professional organization dedicated to advancing the leadership of women in the visual arts. This year, ArtTable celebrates 40 years of women's advocacy and professional development.

"During global climate crisis, we need more writing in and through water," read poet Indira Allegra at UC Berkeley earlier this month. "This is the perspective through which we must contextualize ourselves. The downward squint into saltwater mysteries or the movement of light across the surface of freshwater above. Emergency is not separate from us. We have to partner it. We must find ways in our mythologies and in our language to partner disaster."Allegra, whose work has been featured in exhibitions at the Arts Incubator in Chicago and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, joined Chiyuma Elliott, an assistant professor in Berkeley's Department of African American Studies, and Lyn Hejinian, who teaches in the Department of English, in reading their poems on Feb. 4, 2020, as part of Poetry and the Senses, a two-year initiative by Berkeley's Arts Research Center that will explore the "relevance and urgency of lyrical making and storytelling in times of political crisis, and the value of engaging the senses as an act of care, mindfulness and resistance."Addressing this year's theme of "emergency," the three poets touched on a range of topics, including natural disasters, police brutality, the meaning of borders and gun violence."My uncle Jim was murdered in 2000, along with his girlfriend and her daughter and an older couple," read Elliott from a poem called "On Skipping a Funeral." "Jim was collateral damage in a botched extortion scheme. He died in his sleep and the others were not so lucky. It took me about 10 years before I could even start to write poems about this. Each week, almost 700 people in the U.S. die from gun violence. A lot of people, a lot of families, wrestling with the long reverb of violence and of preventable death."Learn more about Poetry and the Senses on Berkeley's Arts Research Center's website.Read a transcript and listen to the talk on Berkeley News. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome to Notes from MoAD: Emerging Artists and Critic Series, dedicated to the Museum of African Diaspora’s 2018-20 Emerging Artist Program. For our sixth episode of this series, multidisciplinary artist Indira Allegra and curator Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen discuss an expanding of world and experience, the interplay of consent and complicity, exhaustion of identity-based inquiry, and the temperature of colonialism. Indira’s faceted explorations of weaving through performance, textile, video/new media, and performance have documented and deconstructed physical, psychological, historical, social, and practical tensions. In conversation, Allegra and MacFadyen deliberate on these vectors of power and the reality that nothing is neutral. BODYWARP was a solo exhibition by Indira Allegra exploring weaving as performance requiring a unique receptivity to tensions extant in political and emotional spaces. BODYWARP explores looms as frames through which the weaver becomes the warp and is held under tension, performing a series of site-specific interventions using her body. Like the accumulation of memory in cloth, looms and other tools of the weaver’s craft become organs of memory, pulling the artist’s body into an intimate choreography between maker, tool, and the narrative of a place. BODYWARP was presented at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco as part of the Emerging Artists Program, from September 19 through November 4, 2018.

Kemi Adeyemi is assistant professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and Director of The Black Embodiments Studio, an arts writing residency, at the University of Washington. Her book manuscript on black queer women’s geographies of neoliberalism, and her co-edited volume Queer Nightlife, are currently in development. Adeyemi’s has forthcoming writing in GLQ: a journal of lesbian and gay studies, and has published in Women & Performance, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking. She has contributed exhibition essays for Tschabalala Self (Seattle), This is Not a Gun (Los Angeles), black is a color (Los Angeles), Impractical Weaving Suggestions (Madison), and Endless Flight (Chicago); and writings on artists including Liz Mputu, Adee Robinson, Brendan Fernandes, Oli Rodriguez, and Indira Allegra. Adeyemi co-curated the unstable objects exhibition at The Alice Gallery in 2017 and is curating Amina Ross’ October 2019 solo show at Ditch Projects.

[Art: Installation/Performance, Poetry] “Black Lesbians” contributor Indira Allegra dives into her art, process, and journey. Indira works with tension as creative material through sculpture and performance. She has been honored with the Jackson Literary Award, Lambda Literary Fellowship and Windgate Craft Fellowship. Her work has been featured on BBC Radio 4 and Surface Design Magazine. Allegra’s writing has been widely anthologized, and her commissions include works for SFMOMA, de Young Museum, The Wattis Institute, City of Oakland, SFJAZZ Poetry Festival and the National Queer Arts Festival. Indira is a KQED ‘Woman to Watch’ and 2018 Art + Process + Ideas Visiting Artist at Mills College.

Queer & Trans Artists of Color Vol 2 A celebration of queer and trans black and brown genius...building on the groundbreaking first volume, Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives, Nia King is back with a second archive of interviews from her podcast We Want the Airwaves. She maintains her signature frankness as an interviewer while seeking advice on surviving capitalism from creative folks who often find their labor devalued. In this collection of interviews, Nia discusses biphobia in gay men's communities with Juba Kalamka, helping border-crossers find water in the desert with Micha Cardenas, trying to preserve Indigenous languages through painting with Grace Rosario Perkins, revolutionary monster stories with Elena Rose, using textiles to protest police violence with Indira Allegra, trying to respectfully reclaim one's own culture with Amir Rabiyah, taking on punk racism with Mimi Thi Nguyen, the imminent trans women of color world takeover with Lexi Adsit, queer life in WWII Japanese American incarceration camps with Tina Takemoto, hip-hop and Black Nationalism with Ajuan Mance, making music in exile with Martin Sorrondeguy, issue-based versus identity-based organizing with Trish Salah, ten years of curating and touring with the QTPOC arts organization Mangos With Chili with Cherry Galettte, raising awareness about gentrification through games with Mattie Brice, self-publishing versus working with a small press with Vivek Shreya, and the colonial nature of journalism school with Kiley May. The conversation continues. Bear witness to QTPOC brilliance. Included in the evening will be performances by:  Ryka Aoki is the author of Seasonal Velocities, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song) and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul. She has been honored by the California State Senate for her “extraordinary commitment to free speech and artistic expression, as well as the visibility and well-being of Transgender people. Ryka was the inaugural performer for the first ever Transgender Stage at San Francisco Pride, and has performed in venues including the San Francisco Pride Main Stage, the Columbus National Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival, and Ladyfest South. Ryka also appears in the recent documentaries “Diagnosing Difference” and “Riot Acts.” She has MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and is the recipient of a University Award from the Academy of American Poets. She is a professor of English at Santa Monica College.Winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize, Meliza Bañales aka Missy Fuego is the author of Say It With Your Whole Mouth (Poems) and the Xicana-Punk-Rock-Coming-of-Age novel Life Is Wonderful, People Are Terrific which was a 2016 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. She was a fixture in the San Francisco Bay Area spoken-word and slam communities from 1996-2010, where she became the first Xicana to win a poetry slam championship in 2002. She is a Visiting Professor of Literature and Counter-Culture at UC San Diego and the feature film of her novel is currently in pre-production in Los Angeles.Nadia Ann Abou-Karr is an artist, writer and practitioner of holistic healing arts. She has been self publishing her own zines since middle school, with the most recent being THE ICONOCLAST Revolutionary Love series which highlights the complexities and confusion that arise from loving in the 5th dimension. Ultimately she always come back to the realization that self love is the best kind, and she uses all of her creative production to create an optimal climate for free love.Kim Tillman is an LA-based singer/songwriter, lead singer of the band Tragic Gadget and half of the music duo Kim Tillman & Silent Films. Her songs have been featured in film and television including American Girl: Saige Paints the Sky, the 2014 documentary feature Off the Floor, on Love & Hip Hop Atlanta and the ABC Family series Switched at Birth. Armed with a honey-velvet voice and precise, evocative lyrics, she aims simply to move you. Praise for Queer & Trans Artists of Color Vol 2 “Nia King’s essential project is about demystifying the artist’s life, and centering expression at the heart of radically diverse QTPOC lives. This second volume of artists’ voices is full of heart and wisdom, struggle and triumph. Another must-read for anyone dedicated to living creatively.” —Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be and We Gon’ Be Alright“With all the talk in the entertainment industry about a lack of diverse voices in our media, Nia King does the big work that is necessary to rescue the entertainment industry from itself. She is going out there to highlight these voices, not because they are diverse, but because they are absolutely necessary.” —W. Kamau Bell, host of United Shades of America“Queer and Trans Artists of Color, Volume 2 continues to amplify beautiful voices that need to be heard. Refreshingly honest and illuminating, these interviews combine to form a powerful statement on the journey of the artist, and the person behind the art, towards creating a world where we can all thrive as our true selves.” —Mat Johnson, author of Loving Day and Pym“Nia King once again provides a vital space where LGBTQ artists of color can share their unique experiences working in their creative fields. This volume, like its predecessor, will be a must-read for years to come.” —Hari Kondabolu, writer and comedian“This book shines a spotlight on QTPOC artists, activists and self-proclaimed weirdos, a group who rarely receive such attention. Through fluid and compelling conversations with King, readers learn about the creative processes, identities, organizing, and politics that inform their art. This is a beautiful archive as well as a rich source of information for creative people seeking inspiration.” —Farzana Doctor, author of All Inclusive and Six Metres of Pavement“In this new volume Nia King continues the invaluable work of amplifying the voices and interrogating the ideas of a new generation of joyous, committed creators. If you want to know who is shaping the culture of the next century, this is a book you must have: a book brimming with honesty, intelligence and heart.” —Nayland Blake, artist and professor“This book is a revolutionary literary gesture, providing both practical information to artists and also doing the work of expanding the archive. I love the way that King brings interviews to the page, disseminating artists’ knowledge while also creating a window into their language and lives. The honesty of the unscripted conversations feels both intimate and subversive.”—Virgie Tovar, author of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion Nia King is a queer Black, Lebanese, Hungarian, and Jewish artist and activist from Canton, Massachusetts living in Oakland, California. She is the author of Queer & Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives and the host and producer of We Want the Airwaves podcast. Her writing and comics have been published in Colorlines, East Bay Express and Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. She has spoken about her work at schools and conferences such as Stanford University, Swarthmore College, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Facing Race, the Allied Media Conference, and the National Association for Ethnic Studies Conference. You can find more of her work at artactivistnia.com and contact her at NiaKing@zoho.com. Elena Rose, a Filipina-Ashkenazi trans lesbian mestiza, rode stories out of rural Oregon and hasn’t stopped telling since. As an ordained minister, writer, and organizer, she has been published in magazines including Aorta and Make/shift, co-founded the Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Collective, co-curated the acclaimed National Queer Arts Festival show Girl Talk: A Trans and Cis Women’s Dialogue, works as a nationally-recognized interfaith educator on justice issues, and serves on the boards of the Solar Cross Temple and the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. She can be contacted at takingsteps@gmail.comand on Twitter @burnlittlelight.

Indira Allegra explores issues of violence against people of color and LGBTQ people through her video and textile work. In this episode, she discusses losing her hearing while working as an ASL interpreter, getting her first film picked up for distribution in Canada, and developing a disability justice political framework. Read the transcript at scribd.com/artactivistnia. Support the podcast at patreon.com/artactivistnia. Find more episodes at artactivistnia.com.