What's the Big Idea? Day May 10, 2008

FREE all-day for everyone. YBCA invites people to learn more about contemporary art with an open house festival of exciting events & exhibitions that highlight the last Big Idea of the season — Identity Shifts. Enjoy visual art, music, performances, hands-on workshops, exhibition tours, film screenings and food & drink! Get an introduction to the diverse programming that YBCA offers everyday. We hope you’ll join us!

The programming includes:
• YBCA’s Young Artists at Work will be silk screening t-shirts throughout the day with unique designs created as part of their internship at YBCA. Bring a shirt to be screened or come early since only the first 100 visitors will be given a t-shirt.
• Guides will also be in the galleries between noon – 5 pm to dialogue with visitors about YBCA’s current exhibitions: The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics and Tracing Roads through Central Asia: On Traders' Dilemmas And Travelers' Perspectives.
• From noon – 5 pm gallery visitors are invited to participate in The Counterfeit Crochet Project organized by Stephanie Syjuco, a featured artist from The Way That We Rhyme exhibition. Syjuco and friends will teach visitors how to crochet their own luxury brand accessories.
• Two workshops of Art Savvy, designed to deepen people’s connection with contemporary art, will happen from 1 – 3 pm and 4 – 6 pm. Tour The Way That We Rhyme and participate in a post-tour discussion, an overview of contemporary art and an introduction to Visual Thinking Strategies.
• At 1 pm and 2:30 pm there will be screenings of Let There be Light by John Huston. Banned by the US military for over 35 years, this unflinching documentary follows 75 World War II soldiers who sustained debilitating emotional trauma and depression. The film chronicles their entry into a psychiatric hospital, their treatment and eventual recovery.
• At 3 pm YBCA presents a panel discussion as part of its Community Conversations series that brings together women to discuss the art, the politics, and the aesthetics of hip hop and how it informs their creative, intellectual, and political processes. Panelists include Jessica Tully, an artist featured in The Way That We Rhyme, and Andreana Clay, Professor of Sociology at San Francisco State University.
• From 5 – 5:30 pm there will be a performance in front of YBCA by Sisterz of the Underground, a community of women who choose Hip-Hop as a form of expression.
• At 5:30 – 6:15 pm in the Forum, a program guaranteed to make you laugh with MC Aundre the Wonderwoman, includes comedians Samantha Chanse and Ali Wong. Plus see Kellita and Bob Everett, the newly crowned King and Queen of Carnaval San Francisco, for a dance performance not to be missed!
• Dj La Niche leads the way into the evening with salsa, reggaeton, and Latin Hip hop from 6:15 pm – 7:30 pm in the Grand Lobby.

At 8 pm, YBCA presents an evening of work by local performance artists, titled Bay Area Response. The ticketed program embodies the spirit of experimentation and innovation that is at the core of YBCA Performance. Artists featured, include: Jane Chen and Kazumi Kusano, whose theater work renders deeply personal and outrageous caricatures; Jennifer Locke, whose interdisciplinary, multi-media wrestling performance deals with power, issues of the body and voyeurism; Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa (aka Devil Bunny in Bondage), a performance artist/video maker/cultural activist whose new piece, Big Pink, explores idealized feminine identity and substance abuse through the lens of hybrid femininity; Paige Starling Sorvillo/Blindsight who performs an excerpt from Pavlova, a visually striking and emotionally potent piece developed in collaboration with Arab-American poet Samar Abulhassan; and choreographer Jacinta Vlach/Liberation Dance Theater whose piece The Quetzel in Flight explores identity and assimilation from a Latina perspective. Please note: Bay Area Response is a paid, ticketed event. Tickets are available in advance through the YBCA Box Office at 415-978-2787, online at ybca.org or at the door.

Public Info:
415-978-2787 or ybca.org
FREE from noon – 8 pm
Bay Area Response evening performance: $25 regular; $21 students, seniors, teachers

Official Website: http://www.ybca.org