July 16, 2023
7:00pm doors / 7:30pm show
Tickets $15 (discounted or free for members)
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Wu 吴 is the name of the region and the people expressed by the Chinese character that positions “mouth” 口 on top of “the sky” 天. Sourcing from the local dialect of Wu Yu 吴语—a sound that has a history of a thousand years—the storytelling practice of Pingtan 评弹 (“crit and flick”)—a language art form that has become emblematic of the region’s cultural identity—and the repertoire of Guan Wang 关亡 (“greeting the dead”), Some Historical Whisper is a unique experience that incorporates multiple forms of performance, sound, and movement. Through this set, mainland China–born and Oakland-based artist Jasmine Zhang explores the idea of meaning and interpretation and the concept of language evolving through time to the break of postmodern civilized sophistication. A pamphlet will be available at the door that provides access to the formulas and secrecies behind the Wu dialect and Chinese language.

Jasmine Zhang 张梦娇, born in 1996 in Suzhou, China, is a multidisciplinary artist who resides in Oakland, Ohlone Land, California. Encouraged to experiment outside a formal visual access, she is experienced with reframing the dimensions of art forms and media, discovering myriad possible executions of language, performance, sound, and installation—in short, her work is mostly time based, and certainly “language” based. Zhang received an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2020 and is an adjunct teacher at California College of the Arts. Her works have been exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Milan, Ningbo, Chengdu, Suzhou, and elsewhere.

Lead Artist: Jasmine Zhang
Performers: Jane Contis, Liz Boudain, Inin 
Costume Design: Mariana “M”at North Beach
Instruments: Mauricio Aguilar
Audio Design: Connor Tomaka

July 14, 2023
7:00pm doors / 7:30pm show
Tickets $15 (discounted or free for members)
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What comes to mind when you see or hear the word Blackness? What is your relationship to the projection of absence upon people?

Possible Dialogues is an ongoing conversation engaging humans’ ability to build equitable and sustainable culture, together, through creative practice. Possible Dialogues Vol. 1 is the first iteration of this conversation, instigated by multidisciplinary artist Zekarias Thompson, and focuses the conversation on an urgent challenge—creating, supporting, and maintaining equity for racialized Black people within our communities and institutions. It is also a practice of renegotiation, a container for those of us who have experienced these projections to aim at a kind of peace, in recognizing a universal connection through listening and responding with deep attention. We will utilize performance, facilitated discussions, visual works, and participatory music practices to create space to repair the rift created through a human-enforced separation that has brought about persistent violence, in all forms, upon those of us racialized as Black.

The project entails three consecutive days of programming:

Friday, July 14, at The Lab in San Francisco

Saturday, July 15, and Sunday, July 16, 11:00am–2:00pm, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Zekarias Musele Thompson (they/them) is an artist based in Oakland, California, and Reykjavik, Iceland, who is interested in humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures and how we bring them into material form. Their practice seeks to create containers that support our ability to navigate emergent psychosomatic responses through deep listening and close attention. Through sonic composition, photography, collaborative group practice and performance, writing, and mark-making, they intervene with entrenched historical narratives around individual and collective self-deception and embodied trauma. Their work implores us to relinquish our attachment to identities rooted in dis-integrated mythologies and unnecessary hierarchies, and invites us to expand our capacity to create sustainable futures through self-observation.

Zekarias is an MFA candidate at UC Berkeley for the class of 2025 and has presented work at venues including Land and Sea and Eternal Now in Oakland, California, as well as Associate Gallery and Open in Reykjavík, Iceland. They have performed and collaborated with artists such as Pétur Eggertsson, Phillip Laurent, Benjamin Rodgers, Ástríður Jónsdóttir, Joshua Wismans, Lonnie Holley, Zachary James Watkins, Claire Fleming Staples, Cory Todd, Matt Robidoux, James Wallace, Miles Lassi, and Jessica Ackerley. Zekarias is an instigator of the Musele Project, a sound, image, performance, and facilitation practice that encourages deep, empathic listening, and a co-founder of Working Name Studios, a collectively owned and organized arts institution with the mission of building institutional stability and equity for underrepresented creative practices, ideas, and people.

Photo by Ástríður Jónsdóttir