Archipelago this weekend at Highways, Santa Monica. Feb. 17 & 18, 8:30pm

February 2, 2012

Archipelago by Denise Uyehara and Adam Cooper Teran

To reserve special $10 tickets call (310) 315-1459, give the code word “Denise,” and pay at the door.

Press Kit

Preview articles in Blue Fat’s Triple Echo
and The Rafu Shimpo

 

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| Tags: Adam Cooper-Teran, Archipelago, Denise Uyehara, Highways, Okinawan, Yaqui

Prophecy and Origin Myth Contest – winning entries performed at Archipelago Feb. 17 & 18, Highways Performance Space

January 30, 2012

Denise says "Submit!"

Happy 2012!

We’re holding a Prophecy and Origin Myth Contest leading up to the show Archipelago (view video here) at Highways Performance Space.  We want to hear from you!

Here are the questions:
- “What is the origin myth of your people?”
- “What is your prophecy for 2012?”

Winning submissions will be illuminated during Archipelago on FEB. 17 AND 18, 8:30pm, at HIGHWAYS PERFORMANCE SPACE.

I’ll recite the TOP TEN origin myths from an ancient compendium in the prologue for our show.  And I’ll perform the WINNING PROPHECY for 2012 during the show.  Hope to see you there!

All your submissions will be posted here on my website.
Deadline to submit if Feb. 16, 5pm PST.

Enter here:

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Your Prophecies and Origin Myths

January 27, 2012

Thank you everybody:  we’ve had over 100 submissions to this contest!   Last day to submit is Thursday, Feb. 16, 5pm PST.  At the Archipelago performance I’ll READ the TOP TEN ORIGIN MYTHS OUT LOUD from an ancient compendium in the prologue for our show, and I’ll PERFORM the WINNING PROPHECY for 2012 during the show!  Archipelago premieres on FEB. 17 AND 18, 8:30pm, at HIGHWAYS PERFORMANCE SPACE.

(image by Adam Cooper-Teran)

Some highlights:

In 2012 there will be an explosion of mixed-race babies and rivals the post-9/11 baby boom.
- Geo

My prediction is that the world will not end, but that it will be restarted anew.  I don’t think the Maya calendar predicted the end of the world, but the beginning of a new cycle.

- Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye

Prophecy for 2012:  That people will learn from each other, grow, give, receive, and give back through compassion, love, and communication.

- Lee Ann Goya
Origin Myth:
The Rana said to the arrivals in his kingdom in western India. Go back we have no space here. You cannot remain. Their emissary asked for a glass of milk filled to the brim. Then he asked for sugar. Gently he added more and more sugar into the milk and it dissolved.  And the emissary said to the Rana let us stay and we will be the sugar in your milk.  So we stayed.

Prophecy: We will become invisible everywhere outside our ancestral home (Pars in Iran) from which we will disappear.
- Asha Coorlawala

…

Prophecy:  and things shall get lost in 2012…

- Marcel Schaap

….

Origin Myth:

before the war
[after Lawson Fusao Inada]

there was no me before the war
my people’s faces were not even a dream before the war

before the war, we had no ancestors
to imagine us into being

before the war
we didn’t exist
the war made us, shaped us like figurines
out of the mud of battlefields
out of blood spilled by enemies in enmity
out of bloods mingled in the mud

before the war
there was no me
the war was always there with us
my mother and my father were
forever in the war
they battled
over the halves of me like
starving soldiers over rations

I am not a territory

my body is a landmine
and I am always exploding

- submitted by Wei Ming Dariotis, PhD, originally published in 580 Split, Issue 12.

…

Origin Myth: According to legend, the first Vietnamese descended from the dragon lord Lạc Long Quân and the female heavenly angel Âu Cơ. They married and had one hundred eggs, from which hatched one hundred children. Their eldest son Hùng Vương ruled as the first Vietnamese king.

- Erin O’Brien

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Workshop at USC

January 21, 2012

Performance artists Denise Uyehara and Erin O’Brien will lead a hands-on workshop that explores the materialization of memory in everyday objects. Through embodied practice, we will explore how memory becomes embedded in or evacuated from objects. Participants are encouraged to bring an object from their daily lives that holds some meaning them. Objects will also be available at the workshop for participants to use.  Space limited.  To secure your spot please RSVP to: tdc@dornsife.usc.edu

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Bus Stop Dreaming awarded PLACE grant

December 14, 2011

Bus Stop Dreaming has been awarded a P.L.A.C.E. III Initiative Grant.  This grant is from the Tucson Pima Arts Council with funding received from Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Open Society Institute (see side bar to the right for project details).

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Arts, Culture and Democracy: A Tucson Community Discussion

November 17, 2011

Friends, if you’re in Tucson – join us for a cup of coffee and engaging discussion.

“Arts, Culture and Democracy” hosted by TPAC on Nov. 17, 9am.  
Temple of Music & Art at the Cabaret Theatre in Tucson, November 17^th, from 8:30 am – 11:30 am.  Admission is free, but seating is limited.

Keynote by Douglas McLennan, founder and editor of ArtsJournal, featuring Ron Barber, District Director for the Office of Gabrielle Giffords; and James Garcia, Co-founder of the Real Arizona Coalition and the Producing Artistic Director of New Carpa Theatre; Denise Uyehara, an award-winning performance artist, writer and playwright.

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Interview on Arizona Public Media

November 16, 2011

Roberto Bedoya from the Tucson Pima Arts Council and I interviewed on local PBS’ Arizona Illustrated.

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Transitions premieres at LACE Thursday November 10

November 1, 2011

LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)
6522 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Thursday, November 10, 7pm.
$10 general admission/$5 students/FREE for LACE members

Part of Pacific Standard Time, an initiative of the Getty

Great news! Artists2Artists and an anonymous donor have now set up a matching fund for our project.  This means that every dollar you donate is matched, up to $500!  If you donate $5, your donation becomes $10; donate $25 and it becomes $50.  Click here to donate before funds run out!  Check out our fundraising video:

Everybody has a past.  For James Luna and myself, that past began in Orange County — land of malls, surfers and the 405 Freeway.  How did we evolve from being ethnic minorities in suburbia to the artists we are today? And in the sea of consumerism and cultural amnesia, what makes an Indian or Asian American truly “authentic?”

I need your help support a new collaboration with Native American artist James Luna, to premiere at LACE November 10, 2011. It’s part of LA Goes Live, as part of Pacific Standard Time, an initiative of the Getty. In this project we revisit one of James Luna’s performances from the 70′s, also entitled Transitions, in which he unpacked a bag full of “Indian” objects and created a new rituals with them.

We’ll spring board off the earlier work and unpack the metaphorical bag to revisit what’s inside.  Together we’ll conduct a series of rituals that recount surviving life behind the “Orange Curtain.” We’ll be remixing surfing music, disco, narrative and home movies and surfing footage projected onto a psychedelic kimono with 30 foot long arms that can wrap around Denise like a cocoon or straight jacket.

Transitions is commissioned by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) for Los Angeles Goes Live as part of Pacific Standard Time, an initiative of the Getty. Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California coming together for the first time to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene, beginning this fall. Your contribution will directly support production and travel expenses for this new project, and ready it for premiere at LACE on November 10, 2011. This is a great opportunity to for us to work with LACE and the Getty and be part of this city-wide celebration. After the premiere we hope to continue to tour with this project and bring it to a community near you!

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| Tags: Denise Uyehara, Getty, James Luna, LA Goes Live, LACE, Pacific Standard Time

Beginnings and Transitions: Denise Uyehara & Cheri Gaulke speak at Pomona College

October 20, 2011

I’m speaking on a panel with the fantastic Cheri Gaulke, for Francis Pohl’s class on feminism, Pomona College, CA.   November 14, 4:15pm, FREE.  Click on image for details.

Denise and Cheri Gaulke speak at Pomona College November 14

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MAP Fund award for Bus Stop Dreaming

September 18, 2011

Pan Left, Jason Aragon and Denise Uyehara receive MAP Fund

We are pleased to announce…

Pan Left Productions, Jason Aragon and I have been awarded a MAP Fund to create an evening of outdoor, multi-media “micro-performances” at sites of deportation in southern Tucson.   The audience will view the performances from inside cars as driver takes them from site to site on this three-mile journey.

Bus Stop Dreaming is inspired by interviews   Jason is currently conducting with immigrants as he covers the ongoing deportation crisis in Tucson, AZ, a city just 70 miles north of the US-Mexico border.  Jason volunteers with Migra Patrol/Copwatch — hey, someone’s gotta police the police.  He tapes South Tucson police as they stop people going about their business in public spaces (driving, walking, sitting at the bus stop) and when they subsequently call in Border Patrol to deport them — right there on street corners.  This project works closely with Pan Left Productions and the grassroots organization Derechos Humanos to gather stories from the community.  I’ll choreograph an ensemble that performs at selected public sites of deportation. Engaging in pedestrian and butoh-inspired movement, the performers’ bodies will also serve as a canvas onto which video footage—testimony, clouds, dreams, desert landscapes, and urban crisis—will unfold.

Project interviews begin in the spring of 2012; outdoor free performance in October 2012.

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