YLEM Forum: Art, Activism and Technology

Wed, Sep 28
7:30pm
$5 to $10 sliding scale. 21+ only

There is a long and colorful history of theatre, (being the composite
of all the other 'arts') having evolved from shaman, trickster, fool
and a score of other designations to play a vital part in the
creation of our cultural mythology. The arts also have the capacity
to destroy myth with all of the tools of the trickster. Now with
modern technology as a tool, this power to satirize, ridicule,
subvert, derail, upstage, curse, demonize and co-opt has become even
more powerful. In times of war the arts are even more important if
they can remain free of the hush money and pressures from
corporations, militarism, and ALL politicians. The arts of San
Francisco are under immense pressure to promote policies that the
artists often don't personally support. The Pentagon subsidizes the
NEA for recruiting. War contractors spin their image as community
members. The retail media help regulate cultural parameters and serve
as corporate watchdogs of the status quo. But Direct Action Theatre
crosses the lines of social disapproval, institutional control,
copyright power, and good taste (which is the bugaboo of even the
most liberal supporter of the great artists of past and present.) We
will be exploring the essential roll of the 'trickster etc.' in this
modern technological imperium.

James Brightwolf has toured the planet for over 40 years doing what
he calls "the theatre of the public controversy." After an advanced
in degree directing and design from the Art Institute of Chicago in
the early 60's and quickly getting absorbed into the big charities of
official art in official centers, he started generating anti Viet Nam
war theatre in places such as Stockholm, Copenhagen, Heidleberg,
Aache, and London. He spent the 70's in Johannesburg and Nairobi
producing anti-apartheid theatre and smuggling South African black
actors out of South Africa into the United States and on a world
tour. Later efforts challenged the reintroduction capital punishment
in the U.S. and helped the Central American Sanctuary movement to
rescue death squad victims from Central America on the underground
railway through Arizona to California to Canada. He was arrested and
jailed in the 80's for performing street theatre in Berkeley that
linked the University of California, the CIA, the Contras, and the
cocaine business in the U.S. The University paid him damages for this
false arrest, which he promptly used to take his show on the road to
Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the 90's he wrote
a Rock Opera about Waco Massacre and worked on issues surrounding
pollution at Los Alamos. Now, after five years in Sydney organizing a
national protest against the American owned and operated refugee
prisons in Australia, he is back in San Francisco to unleash his
brand of activism which he calls Direct Action Theatre to reclaim the
arts from the hands of government and big business.

Howard Whitehouse is an artist and psychologist with over 20 years of
experience researching cross-cultural systems of healing with a focus
on shamanism. He co-founded the Human Science Research Institute at
the State University of West Georgia in 1984. His dissertation
entitled THE CHALLENGES OF THE RETURN FROM A SHAMINIC ODYSSEY: A
HEURISTIC EXPLORATION drew on his 10-year experience working with a
CURANDERO (or Native American healer) while studying at the
California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

Venue:

RX Gallery
132 Eddy Street @ Mason
San Francisco
415-474-7973
http://rxgallery.com/

Additional Info:

415-445-0196
http://www.ylem.org