The Autonomous Manufacturing Zone

You could say that I’ve been a media whore lately — due to the fact that we have this lovely internet thing here, there are so many ways to archive and keep video snippets of interviews, presentations, and more all in one place.

A few weeks ago I was on a rather amusing early Sunday morning local TV show called “Bay Sunday”< along with “The Way That We Rhyme” exhibition curator Berin Golonu and we talked with interviewer Sydnie Kohara about the show. It was taped at the Channel 5 KPIX/CBS-5 tv station downtown and it was really strange to sit at a pseudo-CNN style desk and yammer on about feminism and art and the like.

And then I just noticed that the panel discussion “The Political is Personal” that I was a part of a few weeks ago at the Commonwealth Club of SF has just been archived online and everyone gets to partake in the glory of me expounding the virtues of the Counterfeit Crochet Project. I always think it’s surreal to see oneself on video. Is that really what I sound like? Is that really what I said? omg! The whole panel is rather long, but they indexed it so you can skip on to my segment if you only have ten minutes!

Upcoming is the KQED “Spark” episode that documents my recent studio practice as well as the install and creation of the Counterfeit Crochet Project at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (that the lovely Berin curated), and it’ll air on TV in about two weeks. Yow! It was a great experience to be a part of the process and work with the editor, Adriane Calo, who was super professional and such a pleasure to be around (along with the fabulous video and sound crew). They really know how to bust out a documentary on a (relatively) shoestring public TV budget it seems :). It’ll air on Channel 9 (KQED) on May 7, at 8pm PST.

And for the record, here’s a radio broadcast by Pacific Time radio program host Nguyen Qui Duc covering the “Forged Realities” show I was a part of last year in Beijing.

The internet is AWESOME. And strange in that it becomes a permanent record of everything that gets videotaped or recorded. wow.

I started working on this project a year or two ago and then it got put on the backburner due to other pending deadlines and projects. But I’ve thrown new energy into it since the thought of stacks (thousands!) of these colored newspapers in stacks and on palettes are making me all dreamy and feeling wondrous. Based on the blocks of images and text taken from Filipino-American newspapers like Manila Mail and The Philippine Guardian — both examples of local “ethnic” journals — to which I assign basic colors to text, headlines, images, ads, etc to create color fields. As a translation of ethnically-specific information, it’s a meditation on communication and cross-cultural difference.

All this images are mockups of the work in progress — I’m fishing for price quotes to get a full-color newspaper printed, and it is DAMN expensive, let me tell you. Not sure what I can do to mitigate my circumstances, but I think I’m going to have to do some creative accounting to pull this one off. Sigh!

pages 1-3 of The Philippine Guardian

the entire edition of The Philippine Guardian all laid out flat

More info regarding the roundtable being held tomorrow at CCA (San Francisco campus). Can’t wait to gather with all these wonderful ladiez! Power power power!

Feminism and Art Today
A Roundtable Discussion

Friday, April 11th4-6
Reception to follow
Timken Lecture Hall
California College of the Arts
1111 8th St.
San Francisco

Since the opening of Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution at LA MoCA last year, scores, if not hundreds, of interventions into the high-cultural arena have enriched an on-going interrogation of contemporary feminisms in relation to the production of culture around the globe. An array of publications, exhibitions, demonstrations, colloquia, artist talks, roundtables, performances, interviews, seminars, fundraisers, retreats, workshops, conferences, broadcasts, and screenings have served as platforms for feminist historical revision and cultural exchange. Cornelia Butler, curator of Wack!, argues that “feminism’s impact on the art of the 1970s constitutes the most influential international ‘movement’ of any during the postwar period” and the New York Times critic Holland Cotter makes the similar claim that, without feminism, “identity-based art, crafts-derived art, performance art and much political art would not exist in the form it does, if it existed at all. Much of what we call postmodern art,” he concludes, “has feminist art at its source.”

Feminism and Art Today, a roundtable, hosted by the Visual and Critical Studies program at California College of the Arts, lends impetus to contemporary feminist initiatives in the arts while contributing to the analysis of both the rhetoric and the art circulating currently within art-world and academic contexts. We have invited art historians, artists, curators, critics, and art administrators who actively participate in the expansion of feminist cultural arenas to engage in conversation with CCA students and faculty members, as well as members of the wider community, about the influx of institutional interest in feminism. We ask, “Why now? What are the political stakes? Where are the silences and blind spots? What comes next?” We aim to create a space for public dialog and intergenerational exchange about contemporary visual culture that engages with feminist issues, provokes feminist analysis, and raises social consciousness.

(more…)

Just sent out earlier today: updates on future events, talks, TV shows (!), etc:

Dear friends,
The past few weeks have been busy for me, with more events to come… Please mark you calendars for a few upcoming exhibitions, talks, and even two TV spots (yow!). Note the special Counterfeiting Workshops I will be leading during the course of the Yerba Buena exhibition — if you find yourself free those particular Saturday afternoons, show yourself and say hi– it’s cheaper than going shopping downtown! Also, watch out for a KQED Spark television feature (with me and Margaret Cho on the same bill!), airing May 7. Details below…

——————————
PANEL DISCUSSION
——————————
Feminism and Art Today
Friday, April 11, 4-6pm
California College of the Arts, Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco, CA
http://www.cca.edu

Organized by Tirza Latimer and featuring a wide array of scholars, curators, and artists, including: Kim Anno, Tammy Rae Carland, Jill Dawsey, Berin Golonu, Jessica Hough, Patricia Maloney, Pamela Peniston, Moira Roth, Stephanie Syjuco and Tina Takemoto.

————————————
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS:
————————————
The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art, Politics 
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
March 28 - July 29, 2008
http://www.ybca.org

In conjunction with this multi-faceted show I’ll be leading informal, drop-in Counterfeiting Workshops where you can learn how to crochet, freshen up your pre-existing skills, brush up on your Marx and Adam Smith, or just hang out and converse about bootleg economies and ways of critiquing the capitalist system. I’ve got all the materials and tools available, so just show up for the action! Participation is FREE with general gallery admission, no sign-ups required, just drop by

Counterfeiting Workshops!
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; at the Counterfeit Crochet installation, main galleries
Saturday, April 19, noon to 5pm
Saturday, May 10, noon to 5pm
Saturday, May 24, noon to 5pm
Saturday, June 14, noon to 5pm

more info at http://www.counterfeitcrochet.org

Take Action: 83 Ways to Change the World
Museum of World Cultures, Goteborg, Sweden, 1/08 - 1/09

The Art of Diorama
Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA
http://www.bedfordgallery.org

———————————
FUTURE EXHIBITIONS:
———————————

Vested Interests
May 25 - September 6, 2008
Kohler Art Center
Sheboygan, WI

Solo Exhibition
James Harris Gallery
June, 2008
Seattle, WA
http://www.jamesharrisgallery.com

Futura Manila
August 29 - September 29, 2008
Osage Gallery, Hong Kong

Inappropriate Covers
April 11 - May 24, 2009
David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University
Providence, RI

———
MEDIA
———
KQED “Spark” television documentary airing Wednesday, May 7, 2008 (on Bay Area channel 9); featuring Suhaila Saliimpour, Margaret Cho, Stephanie Syjuco, and Lu Yi. http://www.kqed.org/arts/spark/episode.jsp?eid=196865

CBS Channel 5 (KPIX) interview with curator Berin Golonu and artist Stephanie Syjuco, airing Sunday morning, April 14, 2008.

San Francisco Examiner coverage of “The Way That We Rhyme” exhibition, March 27, 2008.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1305129~Women_artists_talk_politics.html

San Francisco Chronicle review of “The Way That We Rhyme” exhibition by Kenneth Baker, April 9, 2008.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/09/DDAT100EUJ.DTL&type=art

Cover image: SF Camerawork Journal, February 2008 issue, featuring
“Personal Protest (Catalyst for Change),” mixed media, 2006
http://www.sfcamerawork.org

——————
Cheers to all!

-stephanie
http://www.stephaniesyjuco.com
http://www.stephaniesyjuco.wordpress.com

Imagine my surprise when i checked on my counterfeitcrochet.org website and saw that it was SHUT DOWN due to too much traffic — argh! I had to upgrade and buy more traffic for the site and it should be back up in 24 hours (puh-lease!). What a big bummmmmmmer in the meantime! Sorry, folks, that you’re getting error messages and not getting access to all the groovy and fine info on it.

But today I went in to the gallery and took some awesome installation shots of the work. They’re all uploaded to my flickr account, with some selections below. I did an hour long workshop with about 20 of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts staff and had them all crocheting little bits of things in that amount of time. It was great to see the space so active, but alas I only have photos of the very tail end of it when four ladies stayed through their lunch hour to work on their own… how fab!

My art website has been sitting forlornly without much project updating for the past year — woe to anyone who has stumbled across it and thought I hadn’t been making new work, which is what it seemed like, ack! Added are a few new projects, some works in progress, and just a general spiffiness and updatey-ness. Took all day but considering the website is the main window into just what the hell is going on in my world, it’s totally worth it…

I’m soooo excited: after scanning numerous high-end interior design magazines for just the right types of classical and Modernist furniture images to use in my “Strange Attractor” drawings series, I realized that buying auction catalogs on Ebay were the most expedient and straightforward way of accumulating said types of imagery. For only the low, low price of $9.99 (for most of ‘em, at least), i am the very proud owner of a wealth of images that are ripe for cutting up and juxtaposing next to strange blob-like tracings of consumerist items that are culled from magazines and catalogs.

Er. Yeah. Not the most apt description of what’s going on. But don’t worry. I’ll post images of them as they come. Heh heh. For now, here are but a few of the future pedestals for capitalist conglomerations. My cup runneth over, it’s so happy!

I love behind-the-scenes photos, especially of museum and gallery art installations. There’s something about seeing art laying about on the ground and watching other artists fussing over their work that is so appealing. Like a type of demystification and exotification all at once!

Behold: photos of install week for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts exhibition “The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics” that opened last Friday and includes my Counterfeit Crochet project…

two walls of the Countefeit Crochet Project room are starting to come together…

Taraneh Hemami working on her meticulously placed broken glass and ashes “carpet” on the floor outside my space

SWOON and friend step back to admire their construction of discarded wood and paper cuts

Emily Roysden’s text wall in progress

Suzanne Lacey’s archive treasure trove of documents. I love the way the white on white of the shelves and boxes play off of each other. Super minimalism!

Lisa Ann Auerbach’s red knitted American flag adorning the entryway to the main galleries

Nao Bustamante and friend arranging her video installation in the lobby of YBCA

Vaginal Davis’ ultrapink room in progress. She was an amazing install neighbor and the biggest most joyful dragqueen in the universe.

My space with plastic-covered tables getting a hit of red paint in the center container portions

YBCA bright orange dolly/cart. Just because it’s so lovely with the purple logo spray painted on.

The beginnings of the “swatch wall” that takes up 1/3 of my installation space. Folks will be able to add little crochet swatches and projects here as the show progresses….