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In this week’s lecture, Jacob Gaboury, assistant professor of new media history and theory at UC Berkeley presented the connections between experimentations in Computer Sciences and Art. Focusing on the period of the 1960’s to the 1980’s, Gaboury organized the talk in three parts: First presenting two case studies on experimental computer sciences, second exposing the relationship between public and private funding in experimental research, and third, focusing on the Bay-Area scene and its specificities.

Invited to UC Berkeley through the Art Practice 2018 Regents’ Fellowship program, Emily Jacir’s lecture at BAMPFA was the very first activity on the artists’ agenda while spending time in the Bay Area for the next ten days.

“Is this a required lecture for a class?” Asked the person seating next to me in a packed auditorium. Seeing Nicholas Negroponte’s talk was definitely an event not to be missed. Founder of MIT’s Media Lab, and the One Laptop per Child Association, Negroponte’s visionary thinking is inspirational and encouraging, and also shows us the importance of timing, collaborative works and, mainly, to think one step ahead, “visiting the future”, as he says.

“I am a lesbian feminist filmmaker”, Barbara Hammer emphasized as the lecture started. Her production of over eighty iconic films and videos touches upon topics that were just starting to be discussed almost fifty years ago, when her career started. Hammer is one of the most important names when it comes to woman directors working on experimental film and performances, thinking about cinema beyond the big screen.

Sensing as Research: Artist Talk with Anicka Yi

Response by Mel Y. Chen (Gender & Women’s Studies)

Thursday, January 25 at 5:30 pm
Maude Fife Room, 3rd Floor, Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley

Watch the recording here!

Craig Baldwin’s pace and excitement as a presenter directly reflects on his professional production. Media artist, filmmaker, instigator, provocateur… For the past thirty years Baldwin’s work is a great example of San Francisco’s alternative arts community. Known as an experimental filmmaker, Baldwin is also the main person behind the “Other Cinema”, an independent art house/ movie theater that works as a venue for counter-culture film and events located at Mission District, promoting and supporting alternative forms of film-making.

UC Berkeley’s Journalism school started off the Arts + Design lectures this semester by showcasing their understanding of assemblage through the various works and projects their students have been involved in the past few years. Journalism today is one of the key professions that has been learning how to reinvent the way they communicate with this fast changing world we live in. But one thing seems to remain the same: the focus of the discussion is not about the medium they use, but it will always be about the story they produce.

Day With(out) Art: Alternative Endings, Radical Beginnings

Tuesday, December 5, 7:00 pm

Nahl Hall, 5212 Broadway, Oakland, CA

Public screening co-presented with the 
California College of the Arts

Watch the recording here!

The Aerial View in Motion with Bull.Miletic

Monday, December 4, at 6:30pm

at BAMPFA

Artist Talk with Art + Science Artists-in-Residence Bull.Miletic
as part of Arts + Design Mondays @ BAMPFA

Watch the recording here!

Assembling through music happens all the time, but often we fail to notice how powerful this can be. Writer, curator and professor Josh Kun make this statement evident through his work “Hit Parade: Live in San Francisco”, that combines research, performance and curatorial works while discussing topics of gentrification in the Bay Area.

It might seem hard to believe for some of the younger generation today, but video and electronic art was not always a popular form of expression. “Today this kind of media is progressively being used by contemporary artists somehow through their work,” reflected Aebhric Coleman, director of the Kramlich Collection, the most influential private collection of new media/time based art in the world.

As an architect myself, I could hear the buzz amongst the students from the College of Environmental Design about that Monday’s lecture. Michael Rock’s reputation in the design community is very high, and the slideshow presentation in itself was already causing excitement. Rock’s current work as a creative director clearly builds on from his background as a designer, as he explains: “being a creative director – and no one really knows what that is- is taking different things and making them work together […] Creative directors structure stories”.

The Arts of the Present

October 26–28, 2017

ASAP: The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present is an international, nonprofit association dedicated to discovering and articulating the aesthetic, cultural, ethical, and political identities of the contemporary arts.

Will Rawls’ strong and remarkable presence on stage is not limited to dance. In order to tell the audience about his experience, he decided to share a piece that he wrote about his life and its connections to movement and performance, that were represented through some of his inspiring anecdotes. “Rawls’ work addresses what it is to be black in performance and art”, introduced Julia Bryan-Wilson, Director of the Arts Research Center and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at UC Berkeley.