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Workshop Starts at 7pm; Screenings & Performances at 8pm
$15 - $40 Sliding Scale includes food / NOTAFLOF
Request your member DICE Code or become a member.
Join Vital Arts for a transformative evening exploring the intersection of art, music, and housing in the Bay Area. "Fundamental" offers a unique platform to experience visionary creativity while engaging with critical conversations that highlight the essential role artists play in shaping vibrant, adaptable communities. Decompress with some pupusas and a drink after the 45th Affordable Housing Summit in San Francisco.
Sliding-scale proceeds help Vital Arts and The Lab present accessible programming to support fair wages and housing for artists in the Bay Area. While advance tickets are available and much appreciated, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
Workshop and Discussion at 7pm
Presented by Artist Space Trust, a joint project of Vital Arts and Northern California Land Trust.
Artists are foundational to a thriving and adaptable community. Join the conversation with Artist Space Trust, the nations’ first Community Land Trust preserving permanently-affordable housing and creative space in the Bay Area. This panel discussion will provide an introduction to the CLT model and insight into how AST safeguards space for Artists to thrive generationally amidst ever-increasing real estate costs.
Music and Art from 8 pm to 11 pm
Includes screenings of the films SMOOTH, by Sepi Mashiahof, and AFTER HOURS by Star Amerasu; and performances by Duende and Transcriptions01.
SMOOTH, a film by Sepi Mashiahof
“After being rejected by her stalker for being too hairy, a trans woman spirals into a dysphoric limbo, and the only way out of it is through her own skin." SMOOTH is a body horror film about body hair, depicting a raw and vulnerable portrait of how abject an experience it is for those who struggle to make themselves comprehensible to the aesthetic demands of normative society. As we follow our lead through a bloody night of tactile turbulence as she tries to quell her corporeal anguish, together we learn the language of refusal, autonomy, and transcendence.
About the Artist: Sepi Mashiahof is a trans-femme Iranian-American filmmaker, writer, and musician. Across all mediums, her work explores the compounded feelings of monstrosity that she’s internalized about her queerness. The horror genre is a generative space for her to engage with her vulnerabilities and she’s committed her life to contributing her stories, experiences, and politics to its tradition. Her stories are as heartfelt as they are sinister, where queer monstrosity is her entry point to find invisible channels of human connection. After a dissociative adolescence growing up in Los Angeles, she truly came of age in the underground arts and music community in Oakland, CA, where she directed a plethora of music videos for local artists before making her foray into narrative short filmmaking with LOVE YOU FOREVER (2021) and SMOOTH (2023). Sepi is a Sundance Trans Possibilities fellow, Film Fatales Forward fellow, and Transgender Film Center Career Lab fellow. In summer 2022, she was the director’s assistant on Jane Schoenbrun’s acclaimed A24 film I SAW THE TV GLOW.
AFTER HOURS, a film by Star Amerasu
Two transwomen chance encounter in the club bathroom, one at the end of her rope, one at the end of her break working at the bar.
About the Aritst: Star Amerasu is a multidisciplinary artist whose work for the past decade has centered around her experiences as a black trans woman. She currently supports the Transgender Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project as a Digital Media and Special Events Coordinator.
Performances by:
Duende
DiaspoRican Inter-dimensional Raveatón
Instagram: @x__duende__x
Transcriptions01
Peekaboo, under the appellation transcriptions01, is an experimental cellist, composer, multi-instrumentalist and youth educator situated on Ramaytush Ohlone land (SF). Their compositions are rooted in honoring the essence and spirit of Filipinx/Latinx past, present and future Queer ancestors, prioritizing sonic exploration practices towards the decolonization of Euro-centric structures embedded in youth and adult music education and performance. Their “expressions” dive into drag, theater and improvisational soundscaping, performing in spaces such as Counterpulse, the STUD, Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, Brava Theater and more. They’re moving towards growing a youth music program, visiting K-12 classrooms and collaborating with Bay Area educators on music composition and performance.
Instagram: @transcriptions01