Global Urban Humanities/Future Histories Lab

Illegal: the Theater of the Angel Island Immigration Station’s Paper Sons | Skyler Chin, Jeffrey Lo, and Sita Sunil (Fall 2022 Speaker Series)

Lecture, 73 minutes; Part of the Fall 2022 Speaker Series (Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration and Resistance)

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Recording of presentation at @BAMPFA Osher Theater; free and open to the public Friday, October 21, 2022

Speakers: Skyler Chin and Sita Sunil, Playwrights of Illegal; Jeffrey Lo, Director of The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin, Playwright

One island, two plays: Skyler Chin and Sita Sunil will discuss their new musical Illegal with Filipino-American playwright Jeffrey Lo, who recently directed The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin, which like Illegal dramatizes the family traumas created by racially exclusionary policies carried out at Angel Island. Skyler Chin was inspired to co-write Illegal by his own ancestors’ experiences at Angel Island, and Sita Sunil’s work as an artist is also shaped by her family’s history of immigration. In addition to his directing work, Jeffrey Lo’s playwriting often deals with issues of Asian American identity. This will be a stimulating conversation across generations and genres.

UC @Berkeley Arts + Design Fridays: Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration, and Resistance is a lively series of talks by artists, performers, scholars, and activists exploring themes of global and US migration, exclusion, and belonging. It is also a UC Berkeley course offered as Humanities 20: Explorations of Art + Design. Organized by Susan Moffat, Creative Director of Future Histories Lab and Executive Director of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative and by Lisa Wymore, Professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies and Faculty Advisor of Berkeley Arts + Design. Hosted by Susan Moffat.

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This speaker series is part of a program of music and dance performances, exhibitions, public conversations, and courses called A Year on Angel Island (futurehistories.berkeley.edu/angel-island/), using the historic Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay as a jumping-off point to consider landscapes from China to Australia to Mexico as sites of memory and meaning.

A Year on Angel Island is organized by Future Histories Lab and the Arts + Design Initiative. UC Berkeley departmental cosponsors include the Departments of Music; Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ethnic Studies; History; and American Studies. Campus partners include the Arts Research Center, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, On the Same Page, Othering and Belonging Institute, Center for Race & Gender, Worth Ryder Gallery, and BAMPFA. Our community partner is the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.

Preventing Erasure: How the Angel Island Immigration Station Was Saved | Ed Tepporn (Fall 2022 Speaker Series)

Lecture, 76 minutes; Part of the Fall 2022 Speaker Series (Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration and Resistance)

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Friday, September 16, 2022 Recording of presentation at @BAMPFA Osher Theater; free and open to the public

Speaker:

Ed Tepporn, Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Description: Angel Island in San Francisco Bay is a crucial spot marking the history of exclusionary, race-based immigration policy. Its immigration station has sometimes been called “the Ellis Island of the West.” But Angel Island was an ambivalent gateway, a place of incarceration and exclusion for migrants as well as an entry for half a million newcomers from 80 countries, mostly from Asia. Despite its significance, this important historical site was almost lost. Ed Tepporn will discuss how activists saved this site, current day efforts, and its meaning for the future.

UC @BerkeleyArtsDesign Fridays: Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration, and Resistance is a lively series of talks by artists, performers, scholars, and activists exploring themes of global and US migration, exclusion, and belonging. It is also a UC Berkeley course offered as Humanities 20: Explorations of Art + Design. Organized by Susan Moffat, Creative Director of Future Histories Lab and Executive Director of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative and by Lisa Wymore, Professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies and Faculty Advisor of Berkeley Arts + Design. Hosted by Susan Moffat.

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This speaker series is part of a program of music and dance performances, exhibitions, public conversations, and courses called A Year on Angel Island (futurehistories.berkeley.edu/angel-island/), using the historic Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay as a jumping-off point to consider landscapes from China to Australia to Mexico as sites of memory and meaning.

A Year on Angel Island is organized by Future Histories Lab and the Arts + Design Initiative. UC Berkeley departmental cosponsors include the Departments of Music; Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ethnic Studies; History; and American Studies. Campus partners include the Arts Research Center, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, On the Same Page, Othering and Belonging Institute, Center for Race & Gender, Worth Ryder Gallery, and BAMPFA. Our community partner is the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.

Within these Walls: Conversations with Creative Collaborators and Dancers of the Next Generation | Lenora Lee (Spring 2023)

Documentary, 15 minutes; Part of the 2017 and 2019 performances at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, and 2022 rehearsal footage for the Berkeley Dance Project, a production of the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

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by Lenora Lee Dance in association with Lenora Lee Productions, Asian Improv aRts, Innocent Eyes and Lenses Films, Asian Improv aRts Midwest, powered by Asian Improv Nation

Directed by Lenora Lee & Francis Wong

Edited by Joel Wanek

Cinematography by Ben Estabrook, Edward Kaikea Goo, Lenora Lee, Olivia Ting, Rebecca Tsai, Joel Wanek

Production and rehearsal assistance by Lynn Huang, SanSan Kwan, Keanu Marquez, Johnny Huy Nguyen, Lucy TaflerFeaturing interviewees (in order of audio): Genny Lim, Lenora Lee, Olivia Ting, Francis Wong, SanSan Kwan, Crystal Song, Eika Tokunaga, Emma Lowe, Kimberly Fong, Tatianna Steiner, Teo Lin-Bianco

Additional film, performance, and rehearsal footage taken from the 2023 experimental dance film directed by Tatsu Aoki, edited by Kishino Takagishi, the 2017 and 2019 performances at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, and 2022 rehearsal footage for the Berkeley Dance Project, a production of the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

WITHIN THESE WALLS, the award-winning multimedia work by Lenora Lee Dancere-staged with UC Berkeley students as part of Berkeley Dance Project 2023February 23 - 26, 2023 at Zellerbach

Playhouse Info: tdps.berkeley.edu

WITHIN THESE WALLSexperimental dance film directed by Tatsu Aokiscreenings begin Spring 2023

COPYRIGHT 2023 Lenora Lee Productions, LLC LenoraLeeDance.com @LenoraLeeDance

A Year on Angel Island: A Project of Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design---9-minute documentary

A Year on Angel Island: A Project of Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design--6-minute documentary

A Year on Angel Island: A Project of Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design--90-second trailer

Yuriko Kamiya Oral History: A Year in Infamy | Miya Rosenthal (Spring 2022)

Documentary, 20 minutes; Part of the 2022-2023 A Year on Angel Island Island Project. 

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Course Number: COLWRIT R4B (College Writing Programs)

Course Name: "Reading, Composition, and Research: Images of History”Term

Taken: Fall 2022Instructor on Record: Patricia Steenland 

Creator Name: Miya Rosenthal

Year Created: First-Year

Product description:

“Oral History of Yuriko Kamiya: A Year in Infamy" aims to shed light on the experiences of families during World War II Japanese American internment. Through Yuriko Kamiya's life, the project utilizes documentary-style oral history, curated photographs, and personal narratives to explore the impacts of the Pearl Harbor bombing on Japanese Americans. The internment of over 125,000 Japanese Americans during World War II is the greatest constitutional violation in American history. The history is oft-told as a rash response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Contrary to this narrative, the internment of Japanese Americans was not an immediate or inevitable response to the events of December 7, 1941. Nearly one year was spent executing the incarceration following the bombing. Following what then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy,” was a year in infamy for Japanese Americans living in the western United States. That year in infamy is far more than a blip in the history of the internment. This is that story eighty years later. That year, 1941 to 1942, is remembered vividly by Yuriko Kamiya (now Lily Sugino). She was six years old, living in Long Beach, California when the bombing occurred. In the subsequent year, she was forcibly removed from her home, separated from her family, and transported across the nation. These events transpired prior to her three-year incarceration at the Arkansas Rohwer War Relocation Center. And while the experiences at Rohwer, and the nine other semi-permanent prisons, shall always be central to stories of the Japanese American internment, they do not provide a complete picture. This project seeks to add a piece, the life of Yuriko Kamiya, to the picture of Japanese American existence and to the picture of American history.

Process description:  

“A Year in Infamy” was created by Rosenthal as her semester-long final project exploring the Japanese American internment. The Kamiya story is communicated through a documentary-style oral history which primarily showcases Sugino recounting her memories. Sugino was interviewed at her home in Thousand Oaks, California in November 2022. Sugino’s interview is supplemented with photographs from a personal book of Kamiya Family History, curated by Sugino’s younger brother Eiichi Kamiya, the War Relocation Authority’s Central Photographic File in the National Archives, and additional archival material. Miya Rosenthal, the granddaughter of Lily Sugino, created and narrated the project in honor of her grandmother and the many hidden histories that demand uncovering. The project has received recognition, including the Immigration Creative Prize awarded by UC Berkeley Arts + Design Initiative and Future Histories Lab, and has been presented at the Oral History Association annual conference, Berkeley Discovery Symposium, Chiang Research Festival, and UC Berkeley undergraduate research seminars.

Angel Island Oratorio | Performance by Huang Ruo, conducted by Wei Cheng, and performed by the Berkeley Chamber Chorus and the Del Sol Quartet (Winter 2022)

Performance excerpts, 3 min; This December 3, 2022 performance of Huang Ruo’s Angel Island Oratorio at Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, was one of two performances that were the centerpieces of a year of curriculum and public programming about immigration and incarceration called A Year on Angel Island. Along with the February 23-26, 2023 performances of Within These Walls, by Lenora Lee Dance, this oratorio for voices and strings provided UC Berkeley students a chance to perform meaningful works of art as a way to explore challenging topics.

From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay processed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from more than 80 countries, most from Asia.  Its administration and detention facilities were built in order to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act and other discriminatory laws. Today it is a National Historic Landmark located within the Angel Island State Park.

A Year on Angel Island was a project of the UC Berkeley Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design and was supported by the Mellon Foundation. Co-directors of the project were Susan Moffat and Lisa Wymore.

The Angel Island Oratorio was commissioned by the Del Sol Quartet with the support of the Hewlett Foundation. It premiered inside the Detention Barracks at the Angel Island Immigration Station in 2021. The 2022 UC Berkeley production was created by:

Huang Ruo, composer

Wei Cheng, music director

Olivia Ting, visual designer

Ky Frances, choreographer

Mia Chong, choreographer

The Del Sol Quartet: Kathryn Bates, Benjamin Kreith, Charlton Lee, and Sam Weiser.

Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration | Julio Morales (Fall 2022 Speaker Series)

Lecture, 75 minutes; Part of the Fall 2022 Speaker Series (Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration and Resistance)

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Recording of presentation at @BAMPFA Osher Theater; free and open to the public Friday, November 4, 2022

Speaker: Julio Morales, Artist and Curator

Description: Curator Julio Morales talks about his current BAMPFA exhibition, Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration, which considers the cultures and institutions of confinement that have been centuries in the making. The exhibition features newly commissioned works based on art historical images of incarceration. The twelve contemporary artists in the exhibition—Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Juan Brener, Raven Chacon, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ashley Hunt, Sandra de la Loza, Michael Rohd, Paul Rucker, Xaviera Simmons, Stephanie Syjuco, Vincent Valdez, Mario Ybarra Jr.—invest in community collaboration, work in an expansive range of media, and rethink traditional archival research to consider how artistic expression reveals the underlying logics of criminality and correction.

Julio César Morales, by deploying a range of media and visual strategies, investigates issues of migration, underground economies, and labor on the personal and global scales. Morales’ practice explores diverse mediums specific to each project or body of work. He has painted watercolor illustrations that diagram human trafficking methods, employed the DJ turntable, produced video and time-based pieces, reenacted a famous meal–all to elucidate social interactions and political perspectives.

Morales’ artwork has been shown at venues internationally, including; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; MUCA Roma, Mexico City; Prospect 3 Biennale, New Orleans, LA; Lyon Biennale, France, and Istanbul Biennale, Turkey. His work is in private and public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Kadist Foundation, San Francisco and Paris, and Deutsche Bank, and among others. In May 2018, Morales was awarded the Phoenix Art Museum’s Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Award, which culminated in a major solo exhibition in 2019. In 2021, a solo exhibition of Morales work will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tuscon, AZ.

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This speaker series is part of a program of music and dance performances, exhibitions, public conversations, and courses called A Year on Angel Island (futurehistories.berkeley.edu/angel-island/), using the historic Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay as a jumping-off point to consider landscapes from China to Australia to Mexico as sites of memory and meaning.

A Year on Angel Island is organized by Future Histories Lab and the Arts + Design Initiative. UC Berkeley departmental cosponsors include the Departments of Music; Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ethnic Studies; History; and American Studies. Campus partners include the Arts Research Center, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, On the Same Page, Othering and Belonging Institute, Center for Race & Gender, Worth Ryder Gallery, and BAMPFA. Our community partner is the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.

Rooted in Place: Radical South Asian Storytelling Blooms in Berkeley | Barnali Ghosh (Fall 2022 Speaker Series)

Lecture, 77 minutes; Part of the Fall 2022 Speaker Series (Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration and Resistance)

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Recording of presentation at @BAMPFA Osher Theater; free and open to the public Friday, October 7, 2022

Speakers: Barnali Ghosh, Artist, Community Activist, and Designer

Barnali Ghosh talks about creating the award-winning Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour, part of a growing movement of activist-led, place-based storytelling. She and partner Anirvan Chatterjee have led thousands of people through walks on Berkeley streets revealing little-known histories of immigrant freedom fighters in the 1910s and queer and feminist organizers in more recent years. Ghosh also led the campaign to rename part of Berkeley’s Shattuck Avenue after Kala Bagai, an early 20th-century community leader who immigrated through Angel Island. As part of her explorations of place and identity, Ghosh has expanded her art practice into photographic self-portraits that highlight the beauty of the native plants of California and the fabrics of South Asia.

Barnali Ghosh is a designer, artist, storyteller, and transportation justice advocate. She co-founded the award-winning Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour. Her work attempts to bridge homes and homelands, and create spaces for belonging. She is active in Bay Area Solidarity Summer, Walk Bike Berkeley, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, and the Berkeley Reimagining Public Safety Task Force. She has a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley. You can see her work on instagram @berkeleywali and @berkeleysouthasian or at www.barnalighosh.art.

UC @Berkeley Arts + Design Fridays: Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration, and Resistance is a lively series of talks by artists, performers, scholars, and activists exploring themes of global and US migration, exclusion, and belonging. It is also a UC Berkeley course offered as Humanities 20: Explorations of Art + Design. Organized by Susan Moffat, Creative Director of Future Histories Lab and Executive Director of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative and by Lisa Wymore, Professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies and Faculty Advisor of Berkeley Arts + Design. Hosted by Susan Moffat.

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This speaker series is part of a program of music and dance performances, exhibitions, public conversations, and courses called A Year on Angel Island (futurehistories.berkeley.edu/angel-island/), using the historic Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay as a jumping-off point to consider landscapes from China to Australia to Mexico as sites of memory and meaning.

A Year on Angel Island is organized by Future Histories Lab and the Arts + Design Initiative. UC Berkeley departmental cosponsors include the Departments of Music; Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies; Ethnic Studies; History; and American Studies. Campus partners include the Arts Research Center, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, On the Same Page, Othering and Belonging Institute, Center for Race & Gender, Worth Ryder Gallery, and BAMPFA. Our community partner is the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation.