Engineer's Daughter

to do list

Free Oakland UP

Holiday malaise got you down? Have I got some ideas for you!

• Tucked into an unassuming strip mall in Oakland's Dimond district, Free Oakland UP is a wondrous little "shop" where every visitor is welcome to one free item. The project is the brainchild of Jocelyn Meggait, created as a social experiment, and when I visited on Friday it felt like the perfect antidote to the rampant shopping going on elsewhere in the country. Take your time selecting your free item, check out the work in the gallery area by the current artist-in-residence, and buy an artfully-potted plant to help Maggait pay the rent. Then bop across the parking lot to get a quart of lemon chiffon at local ice cream legend Loard's...and I hear that the framer and mechanic in that same lot are awesome too.
• Meanwhile, down in Uptown, Windy Chien has a beautiful show of knots and splices at Local Language called Mutations. Grab a seasonal cocktail from the in-house tasting room to enhance your viewing experience and marvel at Chien's sculptural, textural pieces, which are deceptive in their simplicity.
• Further afield but well worth the drive, the San José Museum of Art has two unique exhibitions up right now I highly recommend. The first is the group show Other Walks, Other Lines, which begins with a quote about walking from Rebecca Solnit's Wanderlust and spirals outwards from there to explore the many ways traveling by foot can be a source of inspiration, a form of protest, or a way to inadvertently court danger. The second is an epic solo exhibition on the second floor by Dinh Q. Lê entitled True Journey Is Return, and you could easily spend a couple hours exploring the varied narratives Lê has assembled about the Vietnamese experience.
• Coming up this Thursday, author Jose Antonio Vargas stops by Yerba Buena to chat with artist Jerome Reyes about the art-billboard Reyes currently has installed at the center and probably some other things besides. Alley Cat Books will also be selling copies of Vargas's Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen if you'd like to get a copy signed.
• And last but definitely not least, all this week the Recombinant Festival will be bringing extraordinary sounds and visuals to the Mission. Pick any night to attend; you cannot go wrong.

agenda 04.19.17

Art

Through April 28 - The New Situationists at Pro Arts Gallery.  Quickly, get thee to Oakland for this amazing group show that encompasses both historical aspects of the Situationist International movement (active 1957-1972) and contemporary interpretations, including a vibrant roster of activations in Ogawa Plaza, films, podcasts, performances and more.  Guy Debord would approve.

 

Theater

Through May 21 - Leni at Aurora Theatre.  Seeing two of my favorite local actors (Martha Brigham and Stacy Ross) face off against one another as dueling Leni Riefenstahls was divine pleasure, and in the intimate space upstairs at Aurora the audience is literally drawn into their dialogue.  Playwright Sarah Greenman covers an impressive amount of ground in 80 minutes, and does a great job of highlighting Riefenstahl's genius while not letting her completely off the hook either for her role in the Nazi propaganda machine.

 

Film

Marlon Brando only directed one movie in his lifetime, the mesmerizing western One-Eyed Jacks (in which he also starred).  Gorgeously shot in locations like Death Valley and Monterey, the film is an intense depiction of one man's quest for revenge, and it features wonderful and complex performances by Karl Malden and Pina Pellicer alongside Brando himself.  Bonus true fact: Brando and Pellicer and I all have the same birthday.

 

Book

Set in mid-'90s Montego Bay and with all dialogue in authentic Jamaican patois, Nicole Dennis-Benn's novel Here Comes the Sun tells the stories of a trio of women, each with her own unique struggle.  Margot has ambitions beyond her job at the local resort, and her sister Thandi is trying to decide what to do with her life after she's done with school...and bleaching her skin to achieve a different social standing.  Meanwhile Verdene must live as an outcast in her own town due to her sexuality.  I get frustrated when a book with this depth gets the standard chick-lit cover, but I encourage readers to look past it and to dive in.

 

Music

The last time I saw Phil Elverum perform as Mount Eerie was many years ago at LoBot, when a small gaggle of us stood in a circle around him and listened as he played his beautiful music.  The scene was similarly respectful at his sold-out show at the Starline Friday night where he performed the newest Mount Eerie album "A Crow Looked At Me" in its entirety, an album on which Elverum processes the recent death of his wife Geneviève Castrée from pancreatic cancer.  For me his grief connected directly to the Ghost Ship fire and other personal tragedy, and that night Oakland stood together, with Phil, and wept.

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agenda 04.12.17

Art

Through May 14 - Henrik Olesen: The Walk at the Wattis Institute.  "Henrik Olesen adds dirt to the neatness and sexlessness of conceptual art...He queers all that is fixed and organized, replacing it with the dissolved and the disorganized, the polysexual."  Which is a great way to describe why I adored this exhibition and its refreshingly grimy take on identity and representation.  It's also very punk rock.

 

Theater

Through April 16 - Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes at the Arabian Shakespeare Company.  Yussef El Guindi does it again with this incisive look at how Muslims are portrayed in the media, made all the more poignant by current events.  Tarek Caan is fabulous as Ashraf, an actor who is being offered the chance to work with his dream film director and a mind-blowing co-star.  There's only one problem: the script is Islamophobic drivel.

 

Film

I accidentally put together a perfect double feature this week when I watched Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless and then Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale back-to-back, both films I already knew I loved and had been meaning to watch again.  But I had forgotten Jeff Daniels's Bernard attempts a Breathless reference to Laura Linney in The Squid and the Whale at a fraught moment, and it falls dead flat.  Both films: dead brilliant.

 

Book

Every once in a blue moon a book comes along so deeply-researched and written with such intelligence and compassion that it could actually change the course of society.  Every single American should read Matthew Desmond's Evicted to better understand the plight of those living in poverty in our cities, and how those poor are being exploited by the rental market.  I genuinely hope Ben Carson is reading it.

 

Music

As part of the SF International Film Festival, Will Oldham (aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy) teamed up with Chicago's Bitchin Baja's and our own Cornelius Boots at the Castro Monday evening to provide a live soundtrack to a trio of avant-garde films by Jerome Hiler, and the result was nothing less than exquisite.  Oldham's music is pretty damn gorgeous all on its own too.

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agenda 04.05.17

Art

Through April 29 - Won Ju Lim: Casting at Haines Gallery.  If you saw Won Ju Lim's YBCA exhibition Raycraft Is Dead a couple years back you know not to miss this solo show at Haines, full of fragmentation and reconstruction in the form of paintings, sculptures, lightboxes, and film.  Her new work uses Proust and the multiple meanings of the verb "to cast" as jumping-off points, and the breadth of her practice is impressive (I can't wait to see more film from her!).

 

Theater

Every first Thursday - Tourettes Without Regrets at the Oakland Metro Operahouse.  I recently attended my first TWR, their "Fuck Valentine's Day" edition, and as I was standing there packed into a crowd of diverse freaks watching various vulgar and hilarious acts on stage I was just extremely grateful for this Bay Area institution.  The messier it is the better, and this month's "Awesome April" installment looks like it will be quite the beautiful mess.

 

Film

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams might have confounded some of its viewers at the time of its release in 1990, but it reads as pure prescient poetry now, especially with the director's focus on the destruction caused by human ignorance.  Each of the eight "dreams" stands on its own, though there are subtle linkages as well, and it is completely impossible for me to pick a favorite.  I love them all for different reasons.

 

Book

Hans Herbert Grimm hoped his 1928 book about a young German solider during WWI would achieve the same success as All Quiet on the Western Front, but sadly Schlump never took off in his lifetime.  Possibly it was too smart and satirical, with a main character who is relatable but decidedly less than a clear hero.  However, rarely has an author been able to capture the extremes of war as masterfully as Grimm did here, and by reissuing it now NYRB has given contemporary readers a chance to rediscover this gem.

 

Music

Mild High Club played a sold out Tuesday night show at the Starline last night...which means that will probably be the last time I'll be able to see them in a venue that small.  This video gives you a good taste of their weirdo-psych sound; please enjoy!

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agenda 03.29.17

Art

Through April 2 - From Generation to Generation: Inherited Memory and Contemporary Art at the CJM.  Co-curated by Pierre-François Galpin and Lily Siegel, this extraordinary group show does not try to be comprehensive by covering every historical trauma ever, mercifully.  There are still many heartbreaking moments to be sure (as in Chikako Yamashiro's video about the Battle of Okinawa, pictured above) as the artists respond to "postmemories," events that they did not personally experience that still have resonance for them.  But there is a lot of humor and beauty here too.

 

Theater

Through April 2 - peerless at Marin Theatre Company.  In Jiehae Park's jet-black comedy, twins M and L have their hearts set on The College, and they will let no thing and no person stand in their way.  This is Macbeth reimagined amongst overachieving high school seniors with a dash of Heathers and Beautiful Creatures thrown in for good measure, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

 

Film

Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love was an instant favorite of mine when it came out in 2002, and I see something new in it every single time I watch it again.  Adam Sandler in one of the only roles I can tolerate him in, Emily Watson as luminous as could be, Jon Brion's insane score, those interstitials by Jeremy Blake, and of course the sheer perfection of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

 

Book

For those like me who never wanted Eve's Hollywood to end, NYRB is back with its latest glorious Eve Babitz reissue.  Slow Days, Fast Company is another delectable series of Babitz's autobiographical Los Angeles vignettes, but do not be fooled by her breezy party girl exterior.  Babitz slices directly to the heart of what it is to live and love in L.A., and of the complexities of being a modern woman.

 

Music

Artist Gwenaël Rattke gave an inspiring talk at the SF Public Library this weekend to celebrate the publication of his new book/folio San Francisco Reverberation, and while at the event I was thrilled to learn it was he who'd done the cover art for Muscle Up by Patrick Cowley, a favorite recent release of mine on SF's own Dark Entries label.  Which then led me to reread this great article on Cowley by Sam Lefebvre and want to share it with you.

agenda 03.15.17

Art

Through March 25 - Steuart Pittman: The Twist at Traywick Contemporary.  Pittman's gorgeous abstracted forms are inspired by the architecture of Oakland, and in his color choices you can imagine the faded paint of the warehouses on Mandela Parkway.  Don't miss the titles of his artworks either; one in particular made me laugh out loud in the gallery.

Theater

Through March 19 - Eclipsed at the Curran.  Written by Danai Gurira, who when she's not being a badass on The Walking Dead is also a seriously amazing playwright, Eclipsed takes you deep inside the lives of five women during the recent Liberian civil war.  Unforgettable performances from an all-woman cast, extraordinary production design, and history that needs to be better-known outside of Africa -- I cannot recommend this play highly enough.

Film

Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's classic manga comes to splatterrific life in the six Lone Wolf and Cub films, recently released by Criterion and watched in quick succession by me.  Tomisaburo Wakayama is perfectly stoic as samurai-for-hire Itto Ogami, while Akihiro Tomikawa as his young son Daigoro glares down any and all opponents -- or stabs them in the stomach with a random weapon from his perambulator.  Originally released between 1972 and 1974, the movies have some aspects (ahem gender roles) that have not aged so well, but their over-the-top attitude is hard to deny.

Book

My favorite resistance tool Daily Action just started a book club, and I was beyond psyched they chose David France's How to Survive a Plague as their inaugural selection.  Living in the Bay Area the AIDS crisis still feels very close, and this is a true survivor's tale, rich with historical insight, from someone who was on the front lines.  Read the book, watch this interview with France.  And next up for the Daily Action book club: Matthew Desmond's Evicted!

Music

Last week I was shocked to find out my dead friend Glenn had passed away suddenly, and my entire community has been rocked by the news.  I can still barely type it out; it doesn't seem real.  Besides being the kindest soul, a sharp wit, and a bon vivant, Glenn was a talented and passionate musician, always popping by my Facebook page to banter with me about music or to make some obscure Blur reference that made me laugh.  Many many years ago he organized a group of two dozen geeks into making a 24-hour playlist, and the results are posted for posterity here.  He's pogo, I'm nightfall.

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agenda 02.08.17

Art

Through February 25 - Coming Clean San Francisco at Fouladi Projects.  A collaboration with awesome local nonprofit Lava Mae, this group show offers an empathetic look at homelessness and features art by Amy Wilson Faville (pictured above), Elizabeth Lo, Danielle Nelson Mourning, Ramekon O'Arwisters, Joel Daniel Phillips, Yon Sim, Kathryn Spence, and SOUND MADE PUBLIC.  The exhibition also offers a robust schedule of associated public programming, including an evening with Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, learning about their 'Empathy At Scale' project tomorrow night. 

Theater

Through February 12 - Love Sick at the Osher Studio.  I was utterly enraptured by Ofra Daniels in her adaptation of the Song of Songs, set in both modern Tel Aviv and ancient Jerusalem and rich with live music and dance.  This ain't your typical love story. 

Film

Barbara Kopple's 2015 documentary Miss Sharon Jones! about the extraordinary singer (and KALX favorite) is a wonderful tribute to one woman's strength.  It was finished before Miss Jones's cancer returned one final time, and if you're like me you will weep your way through.

Book

It's an especially timely moment to read Louise Erdrich's latest LaRose, a gorgeous, heartfelt book set among the North Dakota Ojibwe at the turn of the millennium but delving back into history as well.  It also pairs nicely with this recent article about the young Sioux who launched the Standing Rock movement.

Music

Entrance opened for Bill Callahan (who was reliably divine) at the Starline last Saturday, and he knocked me to the ground with this song.  Buy your own copy because all proceeds go to Planned Parenthood.  #resist

inspiration input

Chris Kallmyer

-Art - Chris Kallmyer: A Paradise Choir at SFMOMA
The always amazing Chris Kallmyer will be spending his Saturdays and Sundays in July activating galleries and spaces within the newly reopened SFMOMA with sound and sung music.  RSVP for one of his participatory workshops (no musical experience required!), or just swing by to listen.

-Art - Libby Black: A Light That Never Goes Out and Serena Cole: Let Me Look at You at Gallery 16
Libby Black's continued investigations of logo culture and her own personal history through sculpture and painting make a strong pairing with Serena Cole's otherworldly portraits.  Together they create a conversation about identity and fantasy, and how we construct (and/or try to escape) ourselves.

-Art - Postscripts to Revolution at Southern Exposure
Brilliantly curated by Genevieve Quick, this group show offers perspectives by four artists (Morehshin Allahyari, Jeffrey Skoller, Slinko, and Ehren Tool) on the aftermath of war and conflict.  By turns witty, poetic, and poignant, the exhibition succeeds in part because each artist concentrates on a personal narrative and reminds us of the individual lives at stake.  

-Theater - Hamlet at Shotgun Players
In this spectacular production of Shakespeare's existentialist tragedy seven actors have learned all the roles and only discover what parts they'll be playing on a particular night when an audience member draws their name out of Yorick's skull five minutes before the show begins.  Shotgun transcends mere gimmickry thanks to an extremely talented group of actors as well as snappy direction by Mark Jackson.  And because Shotgun is performing all of their plays in rep this season you have until the end of the year to see multiple outcomes of this so-called Hamlet Roulette.

-Book - The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End by Katie Roiphe
After the first half of a year in which I have mourned for both personal and public figures (please ease up a bit now, 2016) it was hard to put down Katie Roiphe's absorbing book, detailing as she does the last days of Sontag, Freud, Updike, Thomas, Sendak.  Roiphe is the first to admit that there are an infinite number of possible ways to approach death, each one of them correct in their own way, so there are no quick answers here.  Not necessarily an easy read but an important one, and it helps expand the current cultural conversation about how we can better integrate death into life.

monday melange

Tanja Geis at Headlands Center for the Arts

-Fundraiser - Aggregate Space Gallery
One of the most consistently thrilling spaces in Oakland is holding their annual fundraiser this Saturday, to help them not only survive but prosper in these trying times for Bay Area art galleries.  Experiences will be auctioned off, experiences will be had in the gallery, and it's going to be one heck of a party.  Do not miss!

-Art exhibit - I'll Tell You Later at Headlands Center for the Arts
It's always exciting to see the Graduate Fellows exhibition at Headlands after the seven artists have completed their year-long residency post-graduation, and this is a particularly strong group.  Themes of temporality, environment, social conscience, and play all make appearances in their work, and I liked how the art is curated by Joanna Szupinska-Myers into a "light" room and a "dark" room.

-Theater - The How and the Why at Aurora
Playwright Sarah Treem finds an electric plot device with which to explore the issues contemporary women face, and how two particular generations cope.  Martha Birgham and Nancy Carlin are riveting as they spar over scientific ideas and feminist ideals, and they should receive an award for remaining complete pros even when the theater had to be evacuated for a medical emergency during the performance I saw.    

-Book - Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran by Laura Secor
Not an easy read, but an important one, as Secor traces the history of Iran's intellectuals and reformists since the revolution.  I finished the book with a much richer understanding of the many viewpoints that have shaped present-day Iran, and with so much respect for activists like Asieh Amini who fight for change even under threat of severe torture and death.

-Online magazine - Art Practical
AP's current issue "Moving Target" takes on the idea of collaboration/cross-pollination and features some real gems, among them a story/illustration project from the trio of Lindsey Boldt, Anne McGuire, and Steve Orth, as well as video pieces by Jennifer Locke/Camille Roy and Elaine Kahn/Trisha Low/Monica Raden.  Also keep an eye out for a yet-to-be-published conversation between Margaret Tedesco and Kevin Killian.

 

 

 

cheat sheet

Pablo Helguera

See:
-Pablo Helguera: Librería Donceles at Kadist SF.  Now extended through December 20, Pablo Helguera's pop-up Spanish-language bookshop is a delight to visit and also a sly statement on the lack of other such retail opportunities in the Mission.  Fill out a survey that illuminates your innermost thoughts about books and then be guided to a specific topic by the knowledgeable shop-minder, or just browse to your heart's content.  Sales are pay-what-you-will with all proceeds going to local charities, and the only rule is that you can only buy one book per day.
-Anything on Linda Mary Montano's website.  I saw her speak/sing/perform at the Art Institute on Halloween, and her art continues to deal with all the huge topics and be profoundly healing besides.

Read:
-Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and What They Feel About What They Do by Studs Terkel.  Originally published in 1974, this book is a veritable time capsule of the jobs in the United States at that time.  Terkel allows each person to speak for themselves and adds very little commentary, though he clearly was a sympathetic listener.  As for peoples' attitudes toward work, it's no surprise they were pretty much the same 40 years ago as they are now.
-Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince.  A lovely and heartfelt graphic novel about Prince's experiences growing up wanting to be more a boy than a girl.  As someone who was often mistaken for a boy during my own childhood I loved Prince's stubbornness and her refusal to conform to societal gender norms.

Listen:
-The new self-titled debut release by Ultimate Painting, featuring members of Mazes and Veronica Falls, is quite good if you haven't checked it out yet.  Excellent band name too.

Watch:
-SLC Punk! directed by James Merendino.  I hadn't seen this since it came out in 1998, but it totally holds up.  And I didn't know this until I checked IMDB just now but Merendino is releasing a sequel next year called Punk's Dead.  Eek.
-Shutter Interface by Paul Sharits.  This piece, all 24 minutes of it, closed out a recent (brilliant) program of double-projected short films at the PFA, and it was simultaneously a bit of an endurance test and an utterly rapturous experience.  I made a game of counting how many people walked out.

Eat:
-The veggie paella at Duende.  Pro tip: check with the kitchen on how long it will take if you have a play to catch after dinner.

Recent recommended theater:
-Arguendo at Z Space.  Sadly this is already gone after a very short run, because otherwise I would demand everyone run out and see it immediately.  New York's Elevator Repair Service turn a Supreme Court case about erotic dancing into a choreographed ballet of rolling office chairs and impenetrable legal language.
-Redwolf at The Flight Deck.  A wonderfully complex and original reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale by Ragged Wing Ensemble in their brand new home in downtown Oakland.  The play's got an incredibly talented cast, a story that aroused my curiosity and had me on the edge of my seat, gorgeous production design, a strong feminist bent, damn sexy moments, laugh-out-loud funny moments, and Latin.  I was definitely left with some questions at the end, but I will always prefer a play that takes risks and makes me think over one that is totally bleeding obvious.