Here’s the (amazing) schedule of sessions for the Summer Symposium! Admission to all these events is included in your Symposium Pass.
We’ll also have single-day admission at the door, so if you only wanna come to only one thing, don’t feel like you need to buy a whole pass.
Also, everything on the session schedule is NOTAFLOF, so don’t stress, just come be part of it!
That said, Symposium Passes are the best (and only!) way to support these amazing speakers and performers, so please consider picking one up.
(Workshop schedule is here.)
We’ll also have single-day admission at the door, so if you only wanna come to only one thing, don’t feel like you need to buy a whole pass.
Also, everything on the session schedule is NOTAFLOF, so don’t stress, just come be part of it!
That said, Symposium Passes are the best (and only!) way to support these amazing speakers and performers, so please consider picking one up.
(Workshop schedule is here.)
WEDS/20
7pm • Moonglow, Oakland
Alexis Madrigal in conversation with Rita Bullwinkel
Our opening night kickoff! Rita and Alexis will talk about the intersections of writing and intense phyiscal exertion.
Followed by music from Alex Shen (Lower Grand Radio).
Alexis Madrigal is a journalist in Oakland, California. He's the co-host of KQED’s current affairs show, Forum, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, where he co-founded The COVID Tracking Project. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief of Fusion and a staff writer at Wired. His new book, The Pacific Circuit, is out now from MCD x FSG.
Rita Bullwinkel is the author of two Books: Headshot (2024) and Belly Up (2018). Headshot was a finalist for the pulitzer prize, the los angeles times book prize, the center for fiction first novel prize and the Gordon burn prize. She is a 2022 recipient of a Whiting Award, the editor of McSweeney's Quarterly, a contributing editor at NOON, the creator of Oral Florist and the former deputy editor of The Believer.
Space is limited: RSVP (coming soon)!
THU/21
6pm
Unity Newspaper 1985 jump cut to 2025 Maggie Wong, Eddie Wong, Carrie Mar and Teri Wing
Unity Newspaper 1985 jump cut to 2025 will be a reading and discussion that looks at the publishing history, organizational operations, care work, and political legacy of the League of Revolutionary Struggle, which was based in Oakland from 1978 to 1990 and raised me. This panel will present the publication, Unity Newspaper: Volume 15, Issue 1, which pairs archival excerpts from the League’s newspaper, “Unity,” with oral history gathered from children, who were brought up in the League’s communal childcare system. The reading will be performed as a group, akin to a script table reading, followed by a panel discussion with the readers and Q&A.
Maggie Wong is an interdisciplinary artist who creates installations, collaborations, publications, and pedagogy for misremembering and reconstituting political inheritance. Maggie’s research-based practice questions how we come to know what we know about politics, kinship, and interdependence by intervening in archives, engaging in autoethnography, and fostering social networks. Maggie is from Oakland, CA and now based in Boston, MA, and has presented work across the U.S. at well-resourced museums and scrappy DIY artist-run spaces and published in equally disparate imprints. She is the daughter of Eddie Wong.
Eddie Wong is a longtime political activist and cultural worker (photography, film and writing) in the Asian American Movement. He served as one of the editors of Roots: An Asian American Reader, the first Asian American studies college textbook, published in 1971 by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. He received his BA and MFA from UCLA School of Theater Arts/Film and was one of the co-founders of Visual Communications, the nation’s first non-profit Asian American media production company. He later served as Executive Director of NAATA/Center for Asian American Media and Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.
Caroline Mei-Lin Mar is the great-granddaughter of a railroad laborer and the author of Special Education (Texas Review Press) and the chapbook Dream of the Lake (Bull City Press). Her second collection, Water Guest, is forthcoming from Wisconsin University Press in 2025. Carrie is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, a member of Rabble Collective, and teaches high school health education in her hometown of San Francisco. She has been granted residencies at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and Storyknife, among others, and is a member of the board of Friends of Writers.
Teri Wing is a lifelong East Bay resident, a graduate of Berkeley High School, a mother, and the daughter of radicals. She raises her son Jamie and is a Yoga Instructor.
6pm (at Johansson Projects)
Artist Talk with Susie Taylor
Susie Taylor will speak about her pieces that are currently on display at Johansson Projects and will give insight into the various weaving techniques she uses. Guests are also invited to enjoy the other work throughout our gallery as well as a solo exhibition by ceramicist CJ Chueca.
Susie Taylor weaves abstract and dimensional textiles. She has exhibited her work across the U.S. as well as in international fiber art and contemporary textile biennials in China and Ukraine. Her work challenges perception through optical effects, using the foundational grid of weaving—a precursor to computing—as the canvas for coded patterns and embedded imagery.
7:15pm
What we enjoy / what we loveElisabeth Nicula & Aaron Harbour
Elisabeth Nicula & Aaron Harbour discuss loving and liking things in the world—movies, television, music, and art. We’ll discuss a shared distrust of any list of ‘the best’, and instead argue for the value of loving what you love, and the challenges staying true to this subjectivity while doing one’s best to stay open to things new and new-to-you.
Among other things, Elisabeth Nicula is the editor of San Francisco Review of Whatever, and Aaron Harbour is co-director of Et al. gallery.
8:30pm
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving GraceClaire Mullen
My dad moved to San Francisco to work in the tech industry after attending a 1968 conference, the Mother of All Demos, in which the first computer mouse was shown. In 2023 he suffered a rapid-onset condition that caused swelling in his brain, leading to permanent changes in his body and mind. This is a first-time public showing of materials from an archive-based film that we are working on together about his recovery, computer technology, the Bay Area, cognition, care, and the promise of “the future”, followed by a moderated discussion.
Claire Mullen is a producer and editor of audio, texts, and images. She is currently studying for a masters in Film Preservation and Audiovisual Archive Studies at the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola.
9:30
Screening with Black Hole Cinemateque
FRI/22
6pm
iPhone Notes ReadingRel Robinson with Brittaney Newell and Brontez Purnell
A reading from the collection “iPHONE NOTES VOL. 1” the first collection from Conventional Projects. Volume one features: sophie appel, brontez purnell, maria silk, brittany newell, lora mathis, and rita bullwinkel.
7:15pm
Poetry Reading with rahaina, Joan Toledo, Geraldine Jorge, Booz Ullrey
7:30 (Eternal Now)
Collective Excitations
sonic/visual/mythic explorations with
Jasmine Nyende,
Vivid dividE, Xtra.dae, Lord Grimace, Chani Bockwinkel
Live music, poetry and performance, with live analog visuals.
Doors at 7pm. Entrance included in Symposium pass. Or $10 at the door/NOTAFLOF.
8:15
Wade in the Water: A Cinematic Offering Reflecting Black GirlhoodField of Jasmine Films
Wade in the Water is a curated screening of short films exploring the depths of girlhood and womanhood through the metaphor and memory of water. In these films, water acts as a storyteller providing sanctuary for some, a mirror for others, or even a source of haunting. This cinematic offering centers films that reflect the fluidity, softness, and strength of becoming – especially for Black femmes and girls.
Selected films include:
- Grace (dir. by Natalie Jasmine Harris)
- Cross My Heart (dir. by Sonte’nish Myers)
- Tiny Garden (dir. by Jamila Woods)
- Boneshaker (dir. by Frances Bodomo)
- Dulce (dir. by Guille Isa, Angello Faccini)
- Winter Insect, Summer Flower (dir. by Tee Jaehyung Park, Gbenga Komolafe)
- Nettles (dir. by Raven Jackson)
SAT/23
10am
In Search of a Collective Noun: on parenting and art-makingAngie Wilson, Klea McKenna, Margaret McCarthy, Yulia Pinkusevich, Ilana Crispi
What happens when a [collective noun] of moms comes together to make and present work? Drawing on WOW MOM and Mothers of Collaboration, two recent all-mom exhibitions produced in the Bay Area, panelists will explore the relational and the radical in the maternal. Open to moms and non-moms alike. Coloring pages available for children, crying babies welcome.
Angie Wilson is an interdisciplinary artist working in textile-based sculpture. She explores metaphors of weaving and fabric to illustrate interconnectivity and the structure of the universe. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the de Young Museum, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and NIAD, Her work has been exhibited at the Toledo Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Kala Art Institute, Cult/Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, 120710, Headlands Center for the Arts, de Young Museum, and California College of the Arts.
Klea McKenna is a visual artist and writer. She was a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow in photography. Her work has been shown and published internationally and is held in several public collections, including SFMOMA, LACMA, Getty Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the US Embassy collection, The Mead Museum of Art and The Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Klea lives in San Francisco with her partner and their young children. Her first monograph, Witness Mark, was published by Saint Lucy books in 2023. Klea co-founded WOW MOM nine years ago.
Margaret McCarthy (she/her) is a writer, performer, nonprofit executive, and proud mother of her favorite three-year-old.
Yulia Pinkusevich is an artist and educator based in Oakland California. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including projects in Paris, London, and Athens. Yulia’s art is in the public collection of the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, Stanford University, Meta & Google. She was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum in 2024. Yulia’s work is represented by Kutlesa Gallery, Switzerland/New York.
Ilana Crispi is a San Francisco based artist, mother, and teacher, with an interdisciplinary practice incorporating ceramic arts with local histories and geologies. She has mined urban soil for gold, shared it with neighbors, and built ephemeral monuments in the landscape. Crispi has been the resident artist at the Rochester Folk Art Guild, Montalvo Arts Center, the de Young Museum and Can Serrat. She has shown at museums, galleries, and alternative sites in the USA, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and China. Crispi is Associate Professor of Art at San Francisco State University and runs The Good Ship Dodo project and exhibition space in San Francisco, CA.
11:15am
Art Sharks: Art Making while ParentingLiat Berdugo, Christie George, Margaret McCarthy, Phoebe Kuo
This session gathers four artists working in diverse media to share work shaped by the conditions of motherhood -- from embracing distraction as creative fuel to finding theater in the everyday of parenting. Writer Leslie Jamison once called herself an ‘art shark’ while pushing her sleeping baby through a museum, never stopping lest the baby awaken. These artists similarly navigate the intersections of creation and caregiving, grappling with parental constraints and artistic production.
Liat Berdugo (she/her) is an artist and writer whose work investigates embodiment, labor, and militarization in relation to technological utopianism, the environment, and the middle east. Her work has been exhibited and screened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), MoMA PS1 (New York), Transmediale (Berlin), among others. She is currently on the faculty at the University of San Francisco and lives and works in Oakland, CA, where she makes bots, chains, and many school lunches.
Christie George (she/her) is a writer and producer who has been working at the intersection of media, technology and social change for more than 20 years. Christie has a particular interest in collaborative art, especially work that explores and expands the idea of collective authorship. She recently produced “”The Emergency Was Curiosity,”” a book report, exhibition and event series about cultivating creative attention.
Margaret McCarthy (she/her) is a writer, performer, nonprofit executive, and proud mother of her favorite three-year-old. She has performed her work at SOMArts, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Artist Television Access, and for nine years as an ensemble member of the San Francisco Neo-Futurists, where she also served as Co-Artistic Director. She is on the board of the Center for Artistic Activism.
Phoebe Kuo is a queer Taiwanese-American woodworker based in Oakland, CA. She uses traditional furniture joinery to propose alternative relationships between the crafted object and the context in which it sits. Her work has been shown at Chautauqua Institute, FLXST Contemporary, and ICFF, among others, and she lives with her wife, toddler, and two house rabbits.
12:15pm
Read (something radical) to a babyBeatriz Escobar
What is something you wish someone had read to you when you were really young? Participants are invited to bring a short piece of radical text to read out loud to a baby (one page maximum). Critical theory, poetry, manifestos. Please reach out to the artist if you also want bring a baby to be read to (babies in arms).
Beatriz Escobar is an artist and educator working primarily with participatory art projects, relational objects, and the body, engaging decolonial imaginaries and investigating how embodied knowledge interacts with the experience of otherness. Recently, she has been exploring how to weave together motherhood and her art practice.
1pm
The Anatomy of a BookshopTaneisha + Shikhar
Venture into Bathers Library and discover your browsing persona. Engage in a debrief where we introspect, challenge assumptions, and dive into live data. We hope to leave you inspired to explore bookstores differently.
Taneisha and Shikhar are artists in the SF Bay Area. Some of their creations you hang on the wall, others you walk around, and still some others you log into. Their guiding philosophy is that “there are no rules” and that everything is a remix.
2:15pm
Blueprinting ChinatownTiny Lei
blueprinting chinatown is a session that presents a history of chinatown through the lens of architecture and worldbuilding. typically formatted as a writing workshop, this version of blueprinting chinatown takes the form of a shortened lecture and discussion. participants are encouraged to bring pen and paper for notes, and will leave with a deep understanding of their local chinatown(s).
tiny lei is an artist and writer whose work centers on ghosts and the sinodiaspora, amongst other things. she currently works as a researcher and archivist at the center for racial justice at uc santa cruz. you can find her on your corner of the internet under the handle saltduckeggs.
3:30
For the Record: Building a Living Community ArchiveCynthia Phươnganh Lê
Who decides what is worth remembering, and what fades away? An exploration of the living practice of community archiving through the lens of Sea 2 Sea, an evolving cultural preservation project rooted in food, music, and memory work. This 50-minute session invites participants into collective reflection on what an archive is and what it can become—not just a container for materials, but a space for meaning-making, storytelling, and future-building. We’ll share work from Sea 2 Sea alongside other grassroots archival inspirations, listen together to selections from music archives, and close with an invitation to contribute to a community archive project at Lower Grand Radio.
pondering: what we remember, how we remember & who we’re remembering for
cyn (cynthia phươnganh lê) works across food, music & memory to trace threads of Vietnamese diasporic life. Rooted in collective study and sensory storytelling, their practice unfolds through rituals of listening, gathering, and community care. They are drawn to how grief, displacement, and ancestral knowledge move through the body—and how art and ancient wisdom can hold space for reimagined kinship and return.
4:45pm
The Life of Romanticized Notions About Cuba and Other PlacesDanny Spitzberg
What happens when we romanticize a place, a people, or an entire political history – for example, Cuba and its revolution? This session involves a presentation (plus video clips and and small-group discussion) based on several years of organizing grassroots solidarity trips with two dozen people from nine countries traveling to Cuba to meet counterparts in software and media, plus several years of observing the opposite: Miami businesspeople and DC lobbyists earnestly hustling to hire Cuban engineers and open the country to the free market and trade. Participants will grapple with and hopefully find a better relationship with romanticism and its role in shaping our politics, our bias towards nostalgia or futurism over present-day realities, and our urge to find our own place in history.
Danny is a sociologist. He’s interested in cooperative economics, resisting cultural assimilation, and community research methods. Most of his family lived in Cuba for a few generations.
6pm
“We were about liberation”: A History of Central American Solidarity on 1970’s Lesbian Valencia StreetTatiana Luboviski-Acosta
A talk on the history of gay and lesbian solidarity with the Sandinista revolution in the Mission District in the 1970’s & 80’s, Plaza Sandino (AKA the 24th Street/Mission BART Station), and the Valencia Corridor. This talk will include a slideshow of archival materials, the screening a few scenes from Lourdes Portillo & Nina Serrano’s 1979 film After the Earthquake/Despues del terremoto, as well as archival local news footage.
Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta is an artist and poet living in San Francisco. They’re currently at work on a novel about the Central American solidarity movement, skyjacking, Norteño & country western music, custody battles, armed cells, motherhood, and lesbians on and around 1970s Valencia Street.
7:15
Poetry Reading with Brian Ang, Addy Malinowski and Zoe Goldstein
8:30
Deep Listening with Sonic Artifact Kiril Bolotnikov & Geoff Saba
A brief introduction to Pauline Oliveros’s theory of quantum listening and R. Murray Schafer’s listening exercises; a discussion about how we listen, as people and as musicians; and a guided deep listening experience with select musical recordings.
Kiril Bolotnikov is a writer, editor, and translator from Oakland. They hosted Sonic Artifact as a show on Psyched! Radio San Francisco for two years, playing an eclectic range of music from around the world and throughout music history.
Geoff Saba is a multi-instrumentalist, recording engineer / producer, and sound artist based in Oakland, California. Their main artistic output takes form as Forest Floor, and they own and operate the recording studio Itinerant Home Recording. They believe that creativity at its best is emergent and revolutionary.
Short Film Screening: Saigon Kiss
Mơ roams through the rush hour traffic to avoid an unwanted phone call. When she meets Vicky by the side of the street with her broken motorbike, a visceral chance encounter unfolds between the two young queer women on the loud streets of Saigon.
A screening of the short film Saigon Kiss (Vietnam, 2024) written and directed by Hồng Anh Nguyễn. The screening will open with a conversation about the current landscape of Vietnamese art in Vietnam and throughout the diaspora.
Cara Việt Chi Nguyễn is an Oakland based artist-researcher working in the realms of radio, design, and print. They are currently one of two artists in residence at Bathers Library. Their residency has been spent developing their project HẺM 510, a temporary/evolving/moving home for diasporic Vietnamese artists, archivists, and culture keepers.
SUN/24
11am-2pm (outdoors)
Waffle Swapple Waffle-fueled clothing swap!
Makeshift Center
Is the true Bay Area summer on its way? Or is fall just around the corner? Who knows anymore. One thing is for sure: it’s always time to refresh your wardrobe. Bring your unwanted clothes with light to minimal wear, all shapes, sizes and genders! We’ll organize items by general category for your perusing, and donate any left over items at the end. A changing area is not guaranteed, so be sure to wear clothes that are easy to try things on with, over, or under.
The clothing swap is free, waffles and beverages available for suggested donation. Vegan and Gluten Free options available. All while supplies last.
Launched in 2023, Makeshift Center for Material Studies is a gathering point for discourse and engagements with craft through skill-based workshops, free public events, reading groups, lectures, collaborative projects, (and now a shared textile studio in North Oakland!) that are in conversation with the larger history of making objects by hand. It was co-founded by two artists, Alli Sheridan and Karin Dahl, to explore how craft practices can bring people together and how craft can deepen our relationship to and understanding of material networks with an overarching emphasis on resourcefulness, adaptability and thrift.
11:00am
Nightliness: Conjuring the DreamspaceKelly Egan, Emily Hippert
Solarity gets too much play. Let’s conjure a better balance by contemplating how our dreams relate to our creative and communal lives. Join poet, dancer, and dreamers Kelly Egan and Emily Hippert in conversation about their longstanding dreamwork with The Dream Institute of Northern CA. Attendees are (optionally) invited to bring a dream to share that feels related to their creative lives.
Kelly Egan is a poet, amateur diviner, and student of the occult arts. She has an MFA in poetry from Saint Mary’s College of CA and has authored two poetry chapbooks—Millennial, from White Stag, and A Series of Septembers, from Dancing Girl Press. She studies astrology, tarot, dreamwork, and the paranormal in official and unofficial settings.
Emily Hippert is a multidisciplinary performance artist whose work draws from dream material, embodied memory, and the liminal space between worlds. Informed by her work with older adults living with dementia, her practice explores themes of impermanence, transformation, and connection across visible and invisible realms.
1pm
What Can Technology Be?Jacob Sujin Kuppermann, Jessica Dai, Humphrey Obuobi
Technology is often a tool of domination and capitalist extraction. Yet it need not be so. What role can technological tools play in building collective liberation and communal participation — how can seeing ourselves as technologists help in that process?
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann is an ecologist, writer, and editor based in Oakland, California. They are a member of the Reboot Editorial Board.
Jessica Dai lives in Berkeley, CA. She is a cofounder of Reboot, and a member of the Reboot Editorial Board.
Humphrey is a technologist and organizer based in Oakland, CA. Much of their time is spent upgrading the tools that support a more functional and participatory democracy (primarily through their creative consultancy, LETS). They love ramen, street photography, and losing track of time.”
2:15pm
HeteropessimismAdora Svitak
Are the straights OK? Definitely not. In this session we’ll discuss why and how heteropessimism/heterofatalism has emerged and how we might envision better possibilities for romantic relationships.
Adora Svitak is a writer and PhD candidate in the joint program in Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She is interested in gender, power, and intimate life. Adora’s writing has appeared in Post45, Apogee, and Kernel; her paper on heteropessimism in literary fiction is forthcoming in Cultural Sociology.
3:30pm
On Memory: perspectives from new media and playwritingBhu Kongtaveelert, Anna Zheng
How do we remember and recall? In this session, we explore how memory is molded by the political, the cultural and the nonhuman. Anna will talk about their work-in-progress play about the tiananmen square and collective memory. Bhu will share a short performance lecture about the utility and fragility of forgetfulness and storage.
Anna is a queer Chinese-American director, deviser, and writer whose work centers on acts of adaptation—of plays, of bodies, to other people, and to inhospitable environments.
Bhu is a queer Thai installation artist and researcher whose work centers on the role of climate, technology and archives in how we encounter the world.
3:30Closing Ceremony at Good Hot with David Wilson