Join members of the Beehive Collective for a special presentation, discussion storytelling, and movement art. The Beehive Collective has been active for over 25 years making art and engaging in popular education to challenge corporate colonialism. They are best known for creating intricately detailed pen and ink murals in collaboration with directly impacted communities over the course of many years. These graphics, rich with nature metaphors, become the centrepiece of educational campaigns aimed at cross-pollinating movements for social, economic, and environmental justice. One of these graphics, "The True Cost of Coal" has been adapted into a rhyming kids book.
Carmelo Castro-Netsky and Julian Mithra
Be inspired to facilitate an accessible and inclusive community arts project through the case study of a mural developed and installed at the Ed Roberts Campus in South Berkeley, a hub for disability justice work. Through core principles, like slowness and emergent structure, attendees will accompany us through a circuitous path from concept to design to production to installation. The discussion harmonizes wisdom from community arts engagement (without a legacy of accessibility) and the collective wisdom from a cohort of artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities (who haven’t always been empowered in self-representation). What are the cognitive, creative, and construction tools that help interrupt capitalist demands for efficiency, expertise, or verbal communication? Join us to think critically about our relationship with each other and our bodies, nourishing the soil in which civic engagement grows by acquiring hands-on strategies for a site-specific project whose process and product are both accessible.
Dr. Joe Eis
All workshop participants will be part of making 1-3 person short guerilla theatre sketches. they will then go out into the general courtyard and perform them for the people there. No experience needed, no special clothing needed.
Ariel Gore and Jessica Lawless
Following in the tradition of David Wojnarowicz, Audre Lorde, Leslie Feinberg, Dorothy Allison and so many more, we will look at memoir as a queer strategy of resistance against the violent systems designed to erase us. We think about writing and reading books as a radical act that creates intimate spaces of solidarity while fighting against the complicity required by the systems that profit from our suffering. We will read from our recent memories that weave together personal loss with structural critique—one examining queer love against the cancer industrial complex, one tracing a path through three decades of left activism and the connections between interpersonal violence and institutional oppression—we'll consider: How to fight supremacy while also trying to survive it; Writing as an historical record and vehicle for imagining a liberatory future; Grief and love as forms of resistance; Maintaining our humanity within dehumanizing systems; Interconnected creative practices (visual art, writing, culinary arts, music etc) as an anchor for surviving the end of empire. The session will be moderated include participatory discussion with time to write, draw, and color as a temporary affinity group.
Paul Messersmith-Glavin, Danielle Filippo, Steve Moriarty, Stephanie Mendez
With the donation of the Maximum Rock n Roll music library to Rutgers University archive, a grass roots youth culture espousing DIY counterculture and punk ethos entering perimenopause and aging out of relevance internationally, the punk movement which challenged the music industry since the 1970’s has matured, but not faded away. Print magazines, like Razor Cake and hundreds of podcasts have revived the message. Festivals like Punk in The Park with shows featuring reformed bands like, Dead Kennedys, TSOL, and Black Flag draw three generations of punk music fans hungry to carry on resistance against the Patriarchy. Musicians instrumental in the DIY punk music scene with decades of experience are writing about the old days as a fame work for younger generations to organize bands and communities focused on social justice, inclusion and anti-fascist work. The discussion featured editors from Razor Cakes, Gilman Street Collective in Berkeley, musician turned authors from Tribe 8, Bottle Rockets, Mudhoney and The Gits. The panel will discuss how music created inspiration and charged the revolutionary spirit of youth culture during the past five decades.
Keith Knight and Fred Noland
Join cartoonists Keith Knight and Fred Noland in conversation about the history of cartoonists speaking truth to power. From Ollie Harrington to Dorothy Zeller (creator of the Black Panther Party logo), Aaron MacGruder to...themselves!
Cayden Mak, Max Elbaum, Maya Schenwar
The media system in general is at a crossroads: being pulled apart by private equity, ravaged by austerity, and squeezed by algorithmic suppression and AI slop, it’s harder than ever to thrive as a media maker these days. But the mission of the media also feels more urgent because of those pressures, and independent media is an important bulwark against the rising tide of authoritarianism. But merely being “independent” is not enough. Our shared commitment to building movement media is about building the informational and narrative power our movements need to strategize, struggle, and win against the far Right ascendant. In this intimate discussion between Max, Maya, and Cayden, we look to the past and look ahead: at the history of media consolidation; historic attempts to build alternative structures; and the challenges and opportunities we face as we strive to block authoritarian consolidation and build people power in our time and place.
Cayden Mak, Max Elbaum, Maya Schenwar
The media system in general is at a crossroads: being pulled apart by private equity, ravaged by austerity, and squeezed by algorithmic suppression and AI slop, it’s harder than ever to thrive as a media maker these days. But the mission of the media also feels more urgent because of those pressures, and independent media is an important bulwark against the rising tide of authoritarianism. But merely being “independent” is not enough. Our shared commitment to building movement media is about building the informational and narrative power our movements need to strategize, struggle, and win against the far Right ascendant. In this intimate discussion between Max, Maya, and Cayden, we look to the past and look ahead: at the history of media consolidation; historic attempts to build alternative structures; and the challenges and opportunities we face as we strive to block authoritarian consolidation and build people power in our time and place.
Eric Drooker
Renowned artist and graphic novelist Eric Drooker will present a multimedia slide lecture exploring the changing landscape of the modern city—its architecture, its people, and the forces that shape urban life today. Drawing from his decades of work chronicling city streets and social movements, Drooker will reflect on the tension between art and survival, asking: Is it still possible for an artist to survive in the 21st century? Best known for his many New Yorker covers and his collaborations with poet Allen Ginsberg, Drooker combines striking visual imagery with social commentary and personal insight. His latest book, NAKED CITY: A Graphic Novel, offers a powerful meditation on contemporary urban experience, rendered in his signature, expressionistic style.
