Visiting Artist/Writer/Curator/Lecturer

David Thomson

Film Critic and Historian
David Thomson gave a Visiting Scholar Lecture at the Arts Research Center on September 29, 2016.

David Thomson is a British film critic and historian based in the United States, and the author of more than 20 books. His reference works in particular — Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films (2008) and The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (6th edition, 2014) — have been praised as works of high literary merit and eccentricity. Benjamin Schwarz, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, called him "probably the greatest living film critic and historian" who "...

Linda Tillery

Singer, Percussionist, Producer, Songwriter, and Music Arranger
Linda Tillery was a Visiting Artist Panel Participant at the The Old World in the New Conference at the Arts Research Center on August 28, 2006.

Linda Tillery first came to prominence as the lead singer in San Francisco group The Loading Zone from 1968 to 1969. She recorded her debut album for CBS Records, and worked as a studio musician through much of the 1970s, playing drums on albums by Santana, Mary Watkins, and Teresa Trull. She became a producer and staff artist at Olivia Records late in the decade, and released a second full-length album on the label in 1978....

Sarah Thornton

Writer, Ethnographer, and Sociologist of Culture
Sarah Thornton was a Visiting Writer Panel Participant at the Art of Cultural Criticism Lecture Series at the Arts Research Center on November 10, 2016.

Sarah Thornton is a sociologist who writes about art, design and people. She is the author of four critically acclaimed books. A Canadian who went to the UK on a Commonwealth Scholarship, Thornton was once hailed as “Britain’s hippest academic.” Now based in San Francisco, Thornton is better known as “the Jane Goodall of the art world.”

Thornton’s latest book Tits Up explores the universal truths of mammary...

The Yes Men

Activist Duo
The Yes Men gave a Visiting Artist Performance at the Arts Research Center on March 2, 2016.

The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo and network of supporters created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos Through various actions, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. To date, the duo have produced three films: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), and The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014). In these films, they...

Estelle Tarica

Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture at UC Berkeley
Estelle Tarica was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant / Moderator at the Memory Paths and Fragments from the Past Talk at the Arts Research Center on March 6, 2024.

Estelle Tarica (PhD Comparative Literature, Cornell, 2000) is Professor of Latin American Literatures and Cultures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and a former Chair of the Latin American Studies Program at UC Berkeley. She is the author of The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), concerning the discourse of indigenismo and mestizaje in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia...

Joel Tan

Playwright and Dramatist
Joel Tan was a Visiting Writer Panel Participant at the Impact in the Arts Think Tank Conference at the Arts Research Center on January 17, 2014. Joel Tan is a Singaporean playwright based in London and Singapore. Recent work in the UK includes No Particular Order at Theatre503; When The Daffodils at the Orange Tree Theatre; Living Archive at the Royal Court; Ghosts in the Blood for Audible UK; Overheard, and Augmented Chinatown with Chinese Arts Now. He is under commission with the Royal Court, Headlong Theatre, and the...

Lehua M. Taitano

Poet, Interdisciplinary Artist, and Educator
Lehua M. Taitano gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

Lehua M. Taitano is a queer CHamoru writer and interdisciplinary artist from Yigu, Guåhan (Guam) and co-founder of Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century. She is the author of two volumes of poetry—Inside Me an Island and A Bell Made of Stones. Her chapbook, appalachiapacific, won the Merriam-Frontier Award for short fiction. She has two chapbooks of poetry and visual art: Sonoma and Capacity...

Anicka Yi

Conceptual Artist
Anicka Yi gave a Visiting Artist Lecture/Talk at the Arts Research Center on January 25, 2018.

Informed by scientific research, biology, and perfumers, Anicka Yi has produced a unique body of work over the past decade at the intersection of politics and macrobiotics. Her practice questions the increasingly hazy taxonomic distinctions between what is human, animal, plant and machine, and is the result of an alchemical process of experimentation that explores often incompatible materials. She collaborates with researchers to create media that are often inherently political,...

Ken Ueno

ARC Fellow, Composer, Vocalist, Sound Artist, and Professor of Composition at UC Berkeley
Ken Ueno was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2021 with the Poetry & the Senses initiative – he was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

Ken Ueno, is a composer, vocalist, improviser, and sound artist. His music celebrates artistic possibilities which are liberated through a Whitmanesque consideration of the embodied practice of unique musical personalities. Much of Ueno’s music is “person-specific” wherein the intricacies of performance practice is brought into focus in the technical achievements of a specific individual fused, inextricably, with that performer’s aura. His...

Stephanie Syjuco

ARC Fellow, Conceptual Artist, and Professor of Sculpture at UC Berkeley
Stephanie Syjuco was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2017 - she was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

Stephanie Syjuco works in photography, sculpture, and installation, moving from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing and archive excavations. Recently, she has focused on how photography and image-based processes are implicated in the construction of racialized, exclusionary narratives of American history and citizenship. Born in the Philippines in 1974, Syjuco received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She...