Technology has become the primary vehicle to navigate multiple discourses.  But to some cultures, a future embedded in technology alone is not possible without engaging multiple mediums of communication for a sustainable future. Thus, collaboration will be at the center of inclusive change.

The ancient force and form of the Nkisi is to protect. Out of the Congo Basin in Central Africa, the Nkisi literally means sacred medicine; the Nkisi takes a variety of forms from sculpture to container to a charm. Seneferu’s piece Techno-kisi is the first of its kind for the entire piece is made up of charms symbolic of individual community members in need of healing while multi-media, the center of the power force, protects the community.

The technology symbolizes the belly. In this case, the console created by Buglabs shows a slide presentation of people Kwahuumba and Seneferu interviewed on film, named after the exhibition: An Idea Called Tomorrow.  In collaborating with Buglabs, Seneferu attempts to unhook the seat of power, by enclosing the images of those who are often times outside of it.

In a third element of the project, Kwahuumba and Seneferu recorded interviews of people from a broad cross-section of society to answer the questions “what is a sustainable future” and “who and how is it determined?”  They were interested in looking at historically excluded communities who have been deterred from participating in the dialogue and the actions needed for change. They interviewed a wide range of activists both prominent to the world of the Green Movement, such as Majora Carter, an environmental justice advocate, who promotes green-collar jobs as a route out of poverty to Tyrone Stevenson, aka “Scraper Bike King,” a youth from East Oakland California who created a mobility craze that has gained worldwide fame by incorporating art and an eco-green philosophy to change his community. There are other diverse individuals who are just as relevant. What they all have in common is that they point out that in order for us to have a sustainable future, that “everyone on the planet must be seen as having a particular value that should be shared with the world.”

http://www.soulgoddess.blogspot.com/

http://community.buglabs.net/mcholerton/posts/158-BUG-art-Nkisi

Castillo works with the concept of time. According to certain Euclidian space perceptions, the universe has three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.  Tomorrow Brings… is a collection of captured moments, a series of “nows” in a non-linear fashion as with the 4th dimension—space-time.

What does tomorrow bring? What would you like to see in the future that you do not already experience today? Castillo asked this question to people in the arts community in Los Angeles.  They answered the question as if they were already in the future.  A virtual galaxy of self-fulfilling prophecies twinkling in the cosmos, yet ethereally pulsating, keeps them very much alive. The individual affirmations and the magnified power of their collective intent spark a visionary incantation that wills the ideas of tomorrow into manifestation.

View “Tomorrow Brings…” online

Castillo earned her B.A. at Cal State Fullerton in Art Education and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University.  Jane’s artwork has been on exhibit throughout the country and abroad in museums and galleries.  She has been featured in the California African American Museum, The Craft & Folk Art Museum, The Ontario Museum of Art & History, Rush Arts Gallery, New York, and the National Assembly Library of Korea to name a few. She is one of six California artists chosen to participate in the Visions from the New California project, an artist residency, sponsored by The James Irvine Foundation, in 2009 as well as the 2008-2009 C.O.L.A.  Fellowship. Castillo has added curatorial and public art projects to her resume. She is also a newly published author.

Castillo enjoys the exploration of materials and their identity. The definition, purpose, and typical perception of materials inform her work. Presenting materials in a new way that embodies layers of meaning, while not denying their identity remains a fascination.

Paper Person is a persona created from one day of paper-trash at Harvard-Westlake School.  The figure’s size is based on the amount of paper thrown away in one day. Each year, the Harvard-Westlake visual arts department hosts a professional artist’s exhibit on its North Hollywood campus. In 2009, inspired by the school’s green initiative, Visual Arts Department Chair Cheri Gaulke contacted artist Kim Abeles, who has a reputation for exposing environmental issues via her work. Abeles also worked with students and teachers at the school to create art pieces that demonstrate the effects of human waste and consumption on the environment.

Over a period of five weekdays, Abeles went dumpster diving at Harvard-Westlake’s upper school to collect trash. She then cleaned, ironed and assembled the trash in her studio and transformed it into new artwork. More than one student discovered drafts of homework assignments comprising the Paper Person.

An Idea Called Tomorrow also marks the launch of Abeles’ website frugalworld.org. The website addresses practical, innovative and poetic responses to the human dilemma of desire for excess vs. the need for practicality.  Kitchen-table and family-remedy advice are innovative solutions necessitated by small incomes.  Art created within limitation expresses a desire to create a life acknowledging environmental and global responsibility.

Frugality is ever more important in a time of crisis ― political, social, cultural or economic. An investigation of frugality challenges preconceptions about individual economics.  In our effort toward “green living”, isn’t the low-income bus rider making a more effective contribution than the owner of a new hybrid?  Resources and consumption are global issues though people respond most often when limitations resonate with a personal effect.

frugalworld.org is available for viewing here in the exhibition, or online anytime. Viewers are encouraged to submit their own frugal tips.  The site is divided into four sections:

nothing

thinking something is nothing

something from something

interactions among earthlings

This artwork and ideas in frugalworld.org seek to address the details of being frugal, the broader implications, with a balance of practicality and metaphor.

Kim Abeles is an artist who crosses disciplines and media to explore and map the urban environment and chronicle broad social issues. The Smog Collector series brought her work to national and international attention in the art world and mainstream sources. Abeles has exhibited with a unique range of collaborators such as the Bureau of Automotive Repair, Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project, California Science Center, and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.  A mid-career survey sponsored by the Fellows of Contemporary Art for the Santa Monica Museum, Kim Abeles: Encyclopedia Persona A-Z, toured the United States, and South America through the United State Information Agency. She continues to exhibit internationally, including projects in Vietnam, Thailand, Czech Republic, U.K., and China. She represented the U.S. in both the Fotografie Biennale Rotterdam and the Cultural Centre of Berchem in Antwerp. Abeles has received fellowships from J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts and the Pollack-Krasner Foundation.

This half-year long project in sustainable urban farming began with many “partners,” from Michele Obama with her edible organic garden at the White House to friends, family and artists around the world seeking a way to make and share food grown locally.

We can’t grow everything we need or use, so we are interdependent even as we attempt to be self-sufficient.  I was given seeds from Okinawa to grow hechima, also known as loofah, as well as ancient Indian corns.  The garden microcosm reflects the interconnectedness of the planet itself, weaving its land and water: Tomorrow’s Garden spans the Ryukyu Islands, Japan, the Pacific to California, the Southwest, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

My connection to the Pacific Ocean began 60 years ago, when my family sailed from Japan to California, and continues with family, friends, seeds and songs, but the changes in all our oceans during this time have been devastating.  In the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” plastic debris engulfs the ocean habitat; this image forms the background to Tomorrow’s Garden.  Our great mother ocean has become the drain for our plastic wastes, poisoning from the most microscopic level all marine and bird life.

Tomorrow’s Garden tries to stop using plastic.

Parts of my paintings, Yemaya, Initiation Series, Ogun, To be Joyous, Amami Singing, Amami Being, Orunmila, Winter Light, 24 Hours, September Wind, Odu, and BEginnING appear in the video  Tomorrow’s Garden created by Homer Rabara.

Betty Nobue Kano is a painter, curator and lecturer. Her work has been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally, including at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Triton Museum of Art; Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico, and Havana Bienal, Cuba. Her artwork is included in: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color; Women Artists of Color: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook to 20th Century Artists in the Americas; Black Velvet, the Art We Love to Hate; International Review of African American Art and Mixed Blessings, New Art in a Multicultural America. She co-founded Art Against Apartheid, Asian American Women Artists Association and Women of Color Camp. She received a Rockefeller Foundation Residency Fellowship in the Humanities and the “Sisters of Fire” Award by Women of Color Resource Center. She received her M.F.A. in Painting from UC Berkeley. Email: bkano@sbcglobal.net http://www.apiculturalcenter.org/events/2005/fullcircle/KanoGallery.html

Paradigm is designed to investigate its surrounding environment as an object consisting of a process of ongoing relationships between man and nature while addressing our ecological responsibility towards a healthy environment tomorrow.

Graham Goddard will place Paradigm in multiple locations that are at risk and affected by pollution, such as mountains, deserts and watersheds. The next location that the artist aims to install Paradigm in is Ballona Creek, a toxic watershed in Southern California.

Paradigm aspires to ensure that Ballona Creek is no longer seen as “a thing-in-itself,” but instead as a physical region consisting of layered evidence of multiple issues that need attention and support so that it can become a cleaner and healthier environment. Eight shapes will be placed in Ballona Creek – each dedicated to a toxin found in it, such as Cyanide, Coliform Bacteria, Copper, Zinc, etc., according to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Santa Monica Bay Watershed Management Area summery in 2009. The toxins are currently discharged into the Pacific Ocean affecting the wildlife and quality of the water, resulting in an acute health risk for humans swimming, surfing and eating the fish. The grouping will investigate the space in which the water is held and the relationship of its contents to the surrounding community. The work will have a universal aesthetic while trapping trash that flows down the creek. Paradigm will be an example of our capacity to impact and control nature’s elements while exposing the environment’s desperate need for our constructive intervention.

Graham Goddard’s work will also encourage new ways of seeing a familiar landscape and explore our preconceived notions of what a “Creek” is or should be. The work’s abstract aesthetic will challenge the theoretical validity of the Picturesque, introduced by William Gilpin in 1782, by exploring the dialectic between the physical landscape and its temporal context. Paradigm’s presence will also amplify the creek’s characteristics, such as algae and objects of pollution found on the site, which have transformed Ballona Creek into a landscape that is layered with the evidence of natural growth, weathering and the perverse signs of destructive human behavior.

Graham Goddard is a conceptual artist living and working in Los Angeles. He was born in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and grew up in New York after his family immigrated to the United States in 1989. Goddard received art training from the University of Southern California (BFA), Rockland Center for the Arts, Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts.

Recent exhibitions include “Inside My Head: Innovative Artists of African Descent” at the California African American Museum, “Goddard, Gladding and Mackie” at Horizons Gallery in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, “Kisskadee” at Sargent’s Fine Art Gallery in Maui, Hawaii, and “365 and Counting” at Avenue 50 in Los Angeles.

Rhizomatic! Fiddleheads! is inspired and motivated by several concepts as well as to a response to the particularities of the California African American Museum.  Yong Soon Min’s goal was to activate the atrium space with words, colors and patterns, which in turn may activate the mind and the senses.

The conceptual basis for the design was inspired by rhizomes, which refers both to a particular type of plant life and a philosophical concept, developed by French theorists Gilles Deluez and Felix Guattari.  In botany, a rhizome is a horizontal plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes.  This fact serves as an organizing principle in the design.  In terms of the theoretical derivation, several tenets of Deluez and Guattari’s influential rhizomatic theory inform this work, principally the theory’s emphasis on nonhierarchical and relational multiplicity, and the idea that a rhizome doesn’t begin or end but is always in the middle, between things, in the process of becoming.  These concepts are translated in a design to have the visual effect of connecting the 24 windows with horizontal line of texts that function as connective nodes from which sprout root-like forms of text below and plant and flower-like forms above.  The horizontal line of texts is derived from a selection of sayings and expressions about time and concepts of the future.  The texts that make up the root-forms address various aspects of history and social condition.  Texts embedded within stylized growth motifs consider our relationship to nature in various registers.

Selected texts were culled from an eclectic range of inter-disciplinary sources including: Kwame Anthony Appiah, James Baldwin, Walter Benjamin, Kurt Cobain, Deleuze and Guattari, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, fortune cookie saying, Funkadelic, Antonio Gramsci, Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King Jr., Maxine Hong Kingston, John Lennon, Audrey Lord, Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Toni Morrison, Nam June Paik, Patty Smith, Subcomandante Marcos, text messages, David Henry Thoreau, Slavoj Zizek.  Diverse modes and styles of address are represented in the selection of texts ranging from the reflective, interrogatory, philosophical, eccentric, witty, irreverent, whimsical, and theoretical.

May this lively and heterogeneous mix of insights pollinate fresh new ideas and possibilities for viewers.

Yong Soon Min’s artistic practice, inclusive of curatorial projects, engages interdisciplinary sources and processes in the examination of issues of representation and cultural identities, the intersection of history and memory, and the role of the artist and the arts as agents of social change.  Her recent exhibitions include: 10th Havana Bienal, Smith College Museum, 7th Gwangju Biennale, Third Guangzhou Triennale, 2007 International Incheon Women Artists Biennale, and Kunsthalle Darmstadt.  Recent curatorial projects include transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix (ARKO Art Center, Seoul, San Art and Galerie Quynh in Sai Gon, University Art Gallery, UC Irvine and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco); Exquisite Crisis and Encounters (Asian/Pacific/American Studies Institute of New York University); and THERE: Sites of Korean Diaspora (4th Gwangju Biennale, Korea).  She is Professor of Studio Art at University of California, Irvine.

“Invisible Identity: Mujeres Dominicanas en California” a photographic/video installation documentary examines the stories of four generations of Dominican women in a single family who immigrated to California. The use of storytelling in collecting oral histories embraces the collective and collaborative process among and between the women, makes space for authentic voice, and allows the ethnographic process to be present without getting in the way.  This project began with the question of identity within physical space, the identity of the story collector, a Dominican American woman living in California questioning issues of race, ethnicity, and culture, and the perception of living silently between two worlds (Dominican and American) and belonging to neither. To understand this dilemma, it is important to understand the stories of the women who came before her in order to uncover the history of how she came to be Dominican in America.

Also included in this documentary are the comparative stories of her sisters.  Their examination of living a bicultural existence and what it means to them.  The matriarchs in the documentary, Abuela and Mami, migrated to American from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in the early 1950s.  One begins to understand the similarities of the women’s experiences, even though they speak of experiences that span 40 years.

The three sisters are identified in this documentary as Hermana, Gemela and Yo. Their stories are significant in revealing a more contemporary understanding of the hyphenated (Dominican-American) existence navigating between the Dominican culture and American identity.  The fourth generation is represented through Sobrina, the youngest in the group, yet the most important link in the future of this family. The ultimate goal is to predict what will happen to the subsequent generations of children in this family through her stories.  Her children represent the fifth living generation in the family.

As more immigrants struggle with the difficulty of maintaining their cultural identity, and the children of immigrants are finding it harder to identify with their parents cultural traditions, this project aims to give voice and recognition to those Dominicans who seek to maintain their cultural identity and traditions while living in California.

Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, PhD, is vice president of diversity and strategic partnerships at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.  She is the former executive director of the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts in the Bay Area and has more than 20 years of experience in higher education and nonprofit administration.  A former dancer, Dr. Mañjon began to study video documentary and photography in graduate school as a way to capture the oral histories and ethnographies’ of the women in her study.  Other projects include a full-length video documentary Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture: Tapa Making and Community Collaboration, 100 Families Oakland: Art and Social Change, a video documentary and book detailing a three year city-wide art collaboration, and Crafting a Vision for Art, Equity and Civic Engagement: Convening the Community Arts Field in Higher Education, an edited publication from a national community arts symposium. Sonia earned her Ph.D. in humanities, transformative learning and change in human systems and a Master of Arts in cultural anthropology and social transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies.  She received a Bachelor of Arts in world arts and cultures with a dance emphasis from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Mañjon currently lives in Middletown, Connecticut with her sons, Zyan and Ezra.

Inspired by the optical illusion and religious significance of a Jacob’s ladder toy that she had as a child, artist Ingrid von Sydow created “The Production of Subjectivity” to question the exaltations and condemnations of Black hair.  The artist hopes that through this symbolism, people all over the world, but particularly those with “kinky” hair, come to accept the beautiful texture of their natural locks.

Ladders are symbols in many cultures of travel between spheres or planes of existence and especially connote an ascent into the heavens or a higher consciousness.  The rungs of a ladder represent the various stages of a person’s spiritual evolution to attain the goal of perfection or in the case of “Production of Subjectivity,” to achieve total acceptance of the unaltered self.

The Jacob’s ladder is one of the most ancient and famous of folk toys. Legend has it that one was found in King Tut’s tomb, which means these fascinating toys were played with in Egypt before 1352 B.C., when the young king died (at about 18 years old).

Ingrid von Sydow is a multimedia artist who uses sculpture, stand-alone sound, drawing, painting, printmaking and video.  Her artwork examines the political issues affecting marginalized people and in so doing aims to make palpable the subjective.  She has participated in a number of group shows in Los Angeles, New York City, Denmark and Iceland. She received her MFA and BFA from CalArts.

This next chapter in my life is based on an idea that has been more than twenty years in the making and it is called the “Nomad”, a Narrative, Odyssey, Manifesting, Artistic, Dreams. A concept intended to place me squarely on the map of my road to freedom, creatively, consciously and economically. As a mobile artist in residence, I will travel throughout the state and eventually the country and beyond. The “Nomad will function as my home, studio and work of art and my forty-fourth address. The “Nomad” was influenced architecturally by the vernacular houses shaped by the African-American experience. In this dwelling I will live and work with other creative individuals as collaborators along the journey. On the road we may encounter opportunities to create works that combine man made discards and natural elements into improvised land works.  I will also bring the classroom outdoors, sharing my life’s lessons. In keeping with this notion of collaboration, I’ve already set in motion a collaborative spirit which brought into being the installation at the California African-American Museum.

In this exhibition, the “Nomad” concept is edited down to its essential characteristics, which is the porch and a tandem set of wheels. Making them visible in order to understand its mobility however, the final “Nomad” will have a complete set of walls and wheels. Although the “Nomad is my vision, it took more than thirty people just to bring the installation into being. A diverse spectrum of individuals donated materials, labored and helped to finance the project. Each one became an integral component to the installation at the museum.   Graham Goddard a fellow artist who was inspired by the idea as well as a satellite image of California, painted my background in the installation.  In the process of working on the project I was introduced to the documentary called “Home”, a film directed by French film maker Yann Arthus- Bertrand, who offered the copyright free use of his film to inspire the world into action and agreed to the use in this exhibition. I felt a deeply rooted connection to this film and subject matter and therefore placed it in the Nomad in homage to the earth. Throughout this exhibition I will be present at certain times working on the Nomad, giving you an opportunity to see me work and to ask questions, creating an encounter filled with possibilities.

Consider a visit to the Skirball Cultural Center, for in that extension of the exhibit my drawings and model of the “Nomad”, as a work in process are featured there along with other visual voices. Once you’ve experienced both exhibitions you might want to consider participating yourself, by supporting this project. If so, please contact me through the museum and welcome to my home.

Dominique Moody is a mixed media assemblage artist who has been a Los Angeles resident for the past twelve years.  She has exhibited and resided on both the east and west coast and has shown work nationally and internationally.  Among her many collectors are Joy Simmons, Camille Hanks-Cosby, Danny Glover, Lyn Kienholz and Euzhan Palcy.  Her work is in public and publications.  She has collaborated with many Los Angeles based artists and had her first solo exhibition at the Watts Towers Art Center.  Moody has a B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa), from U.C. Berkeley in the Department of Art Practice.  She currently lives and maintains a studio at St. Elmo’s Village in Los Angeles.

The paper airplanes in Lift are made from photographs and prints of two international documents: The Geneva Conventions and the International Declaration of Human Rights. They are part of a continuing body of work in which the artist has been photographing texts that shape our world. Dallal started with articles in the printed media and then began to investigate UN resolutions, peace initiatives, and international treaties. The photographs are extreme close-ups of the texts, in some cases so close-up the lettering becomes abstract and unreadable. She has been fashioning these photographs and prints into larger pieces, some two-dimensional and some sculptural.  “I am struck by how these dry accumulations of words can be so powerful and also so ineffective. I find it poignant how we humans keep at it even when things don’t work or nobody truly listens. We still keep trying, amending; making new proposals…in the hope that one day there will be peace.”  Joyce Dallal

Joyce Dallal is an artist who has worked in a variety of media, from hand-made books and collage to photography, video, installation, and public art. The themes that surface repeatedly in her artwork are those of collective and personal history, community, memory, and the evolution of contemporary cultural identity. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, among them a National Endowment for the Arts Regional Arts Fellowship in Photography, a Brody Arts Fellowship, and a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship, and she has completed two public art projects for the Los Angeles Public Libraries. She received her Masters in Fine Art from USC and is a professor at El Camino College in Southern California.