SHIFTING FOCUS: Changing Your Brain, Changing Your Poetic Practice
with Pireeni Sundaralingam
When: August 1 & 8, 10:00am – 1:00pm Where:KSW @ PariSoMa, 1436 Howard Street
What: This workshop is split over two consecutive Saturdays and is dedicated to helping you develop a sustainable and effective practice as a poet. Incorporating ideas from neuroscience, the workshop’s aim is to challenge the way that we, as writers, engage with the world around us. In particular, the two-day workshop will explore how innovative metaphors can be used to shift our focus.
The workshop involves assignments, designed to enrich your out-of-class writing practice, that need to be completed between workshop sessions.
How: Registration fee is $80. To register by check, please send check or money order to: Kearny Street Workshop, PO Box 14545, San Francisco, CA 94114-0545. Or pay online at www.kearnystreet.org. Please include your full name and contact info.
About the instructor: Educated at Oxford, Pireeni has held research posts at MIT and UCLA and is a former professor of cognitive development. She has held national fellowships both in cognitive science and in poetry. Dedicated to examining the confluence of science and art, in the past year alone Pireeni has enjoyed invitations to speak on the intersections between poetry and cognition at MOMA (New York), the Exploratorium (SF), and the Life in Space symposium at Studio Olafur Eliasson (Berlin). Pireeni was born in Sri Lanka, and raised both there and in England.
Pireeni Sundaralingam’s poetry has appeared in national newspapers and political journals such as The Guardian (UK) and The Progressive (USA), university teaching texts, anthologies, and literary journals such as World Literature Today and Ploughshares. Pireeni is a co-editor of the forthcoming collection Writing the Lines of Our Hands, the first anthology of South Asian American poetry. Pireeni’s recent poetry honors include receiving the Rosenthal Fellowship from PEN USA and being invited to give the keynote lecture at the University of Southern California’s annual English Studies conference.
We close out this podcast mini-series with writer and performer, Samantha Chanse , who has worn just about every possible APAture hat: from emcee in 2001 to coordinator in 2002 to featured artist in performance/theater in 2008.
After serving Kearny Street Workshop for seven years with four different staff titles, she passes on years of institutional knowledge today as a board member.
Perhaps Sam’s longevity with the organization can be credited to a passion for her community and an uncanny ability to laugh at herself.
Mark Baugh-Sasaki is a busy sculptor and installation artist. He’s shown all over the Bay Area including Swarm Gallery, Diablo Valley College art gallery, and Triton Museum of Art, and had a solo show at 5 Mined Fields Studio.
Yet he still donates his gallery installation skills generously to KSW.
A fine artist as well as a community artist, Mark is in the midst of fundraising for a six-month art installation at Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley by invitation of the Hayes Valley Arts Coalition. Care to contribute?
Robin Sukhadia says he performed in APAture 2007 to represent South Asian artists in the festival. “Asia is a massive part of the world and we need to do more to bring all of the communities within Asia together.”
Although his APAture performance blended classical North India music mixed into a contemporary context, Robin promotes traditional Indian music through his teachings and performances. “There’s something to be said about respecting thousands of years of culture and history,” says Robin.
Robin’s musical ensemble, PremaSoul, performed in the Shifted Focus Performance Night combining sacred Indian and soulful American sound.
Matt Abaya teaches digital multimedia and video production to East Palo Alto youth and uses technological tools to make high concept, low- to no-budget films.
But back in the day, Matt helped launch the first APAture. Besides curating the APAture film night, he contributed an illustration of Asians with sunglasses for one of the APAture 2 t-shirt designs.
Matt is soooo O.G., he references Yahoogroups’ predecessor, eGroups in this following clip from 2000.
Cathlin Goulding first learned about APAture when she found a flyer at a Locus Arts event she attended for school credit.
Since participating in APAture in 2004, she has taken a number of KSW workshops and was selected to participate in KSW’s partnership with Intersection for the Arts, the Intergenerational Writers Lab, which is now accepting applications for the 2009.
Amy Ho’s work dances between film and visual art, with a psychedelic installation that required ladder-clilmbing at APAture 10. (Yes, that’s Amy dressed up as a durian.)
In addition to challenging her creative growth, Amy says her participation in APAture has introduced her to some of her closest friends.
Our third segment in the Artists of APAture features actor Michael Hornbuckle, a founding member of the 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors. 18MMW are an Asian American comedy sketch group founded in 1994 .
Since then, they were the featured artist in theater for APAture 2004, were named 2005 Bay Area’s best comedy group by the SF Bay Guardian, won the 2006 International Sketch Comedy Championships, and were featured in the Emmy Award-winning documentary, “Mighty Warriors of Comedy.”
In Binh Danh’s third solo exhibition at Haines Gallery, the California artist has created In the Eclipse of Angkor: Tuol Sleng, Choeung EK, and Khmer Temples, a new series of photographs based on a recent research trip to Cambodia. Here Binh Danh uses daguerreotypes for the first time. He says, “The daguerreotype is a negative image, but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appear positive in the proper light. The daguerreotype is a direct photographic process without the capacity for duplication. But with contemporary equipment, I have perfected a process of exposing a daguerreotype in the darkroom, allowing me more creative control over the process. This series also continues my exploration of the photographic process. Photography has allowed me to meditate on death and its influence on the living. The themes of mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality encompass this series.”
Binh between war and peace. A view of SHIFTED FOCUS at KSW.
The above image is a great photo of Binh with his War and Peace series, currently in KSW’s space180 Gallery for the SHIFTED FOCUS exhibition. Snaps to Elton Sim for taking this stunning shot.
Read on for more info on what War and Peace is all about.
What: This workshop is split over two consecutive Saturdays and is dedicated to helping you develop a sustainable and effective practice as a poet. Incorporating ideas from neuroscience, the workshop’s aim is to challenge the way that we, as writers, engage with the world around us. In particular, the two-day workshop will explore how innovative metaphors can be used to shift our focus.
About the instructor: Educated at Oxford, Pireeni has held research posts at MIT and UCLA and is a former professor of cognitive development. She has held national fellowships both in cognitive science and in poetry. Dedicated to examining the confluence of science and art, in the past year alone Pireeni has enjoyed invitations to speak on the intersections between poetry and cognition at MOMA (New York), the Exploratorium (SF), and the Life in Space symposium at Studio Olafur Eliasson (Berlin). Pireeni was born in Sri Lanka, and raised both there and in England.
We close out this podcast mini-series with writer and performer, 
Robin Sukhadia says he performed in APAture 2007 to represent South Asian artists in the festival. “Asia is a massive part of the world and we need to do more to bring all of the communities within Asia together.”
Cathlin Goulding first learned about APAture when she found a flyer at a Locus Arts event she attended for school credit.
The second post in our exploration of the Artists of APAture features Pireeni Sundaralingam.
