"Stir-Fry Stories is my friendly, neighborhood story eatery for anyone who is hungry. My stories are meant for everyday urbanites who are just as moved by Marvel movies as museum galleries. With irreverence and adoration, I make old Asian practices appetizing - akin to eating that comfort dish made by an auntie or three-star, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Welcome!"

About the Artist:

VC Tang (Imagintana) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She produces pop-up readings that integrate nature, food, music, and movement. Her work answers the challenges of modern livelihoods, arts advocacy, climate change, and racial belonging with the same call. VC spent thirty years immersed in dance and ritual at the Berkeley Thai Buddhist Temple, and also trains in Taijiquan and Zen. Her voice is influenced by sci-fi blockbusters, Thai poetics, martial arts memoirs, Zen master and strategist Norma Wong, and writer/dramaturg Sharon Bridgforth. With irreverence and adoration, her stories make old Asian practices appetizing. In 2022, VC self-published a cookbook memoir, a collection of recipes and vignettes of Thai-American self-discovery.

“Raw, Black & Blue" is a fictional love story chronicled through the journals and lens of Tamia, a photographer recovering from a mental breakdown. As she navigates reemerging trauma, her relationship with Keith, a community response member, becomes increasingly strained, leaving her hesitant to fully commit.

About the Artist:

Shantre Pinkney is a filmmaker, writer and photographer with roots in New York and Atlanta. As a lover of non-traditional and inquisitive storytelling, she seeks to raise dialogue between art and the audience. Her work reflects social relationships and characters coming of age through narrative, portrait and documentary styles. Currently, she is an art fellow with Asian Improv Arts and Kala Arts Institute.

"My goal is to use Raw, Black & Blue as an artistic tool in open forums for social justice, self care and mental health through literature, audio storytelling, photo exhibition and film."

Taken by Lauren Miyake

Filipino-American guitarist/composer Karl Evangelista presents “Auntie + Tebs,” a brand-new work that celebrates the enduring connection between political action and creative innovation. Conceived as a feature for experimental music duo Grex (Evangelista’s longtime collaboration with keyboardist Rei Scampavia), “Auntie + Tebs” blends cutting-edge sounds drawn from the realms of jazz, hip-hop, and electronic music with daring visuals and spoken word. This project underlines the relationship between Bay Area activism and hard-fought battles in countries like the Philippines and South Africa. The title “Auntie + Tebs” references two monumental figures: Miriam Defensor Santiago, Evangelista’s Aunt and a longtime Filipino public servant, and Louis Moholo-Moholo (“Tebs”), an innovative South African drummer and Anti-Apartheid activist. Both of these individuals devoted their lives to toppling corruption and oppression in their home countries. Like its titular heroes, ”Auntie + Tebs" argues that people of color are unified by a desire to uphold tradition and topple oppression - a message that is timely, empowering, and necessary.

In 2018 Michael Arcega, Paolo Asuncion, and Rachel Lastimosa began working together in the SOMA Pilipinas Cultural and Heritage District. Michael and Paolo started the TNT Traysikel project with support from the San Francisco Arts Commission grant. Rachel officially joined the team on their second SFAC grant to produce a short film called Lost and Found: TNT in America.

In 2016, SOMA Pilipinas became officially sanctioned by the county of San Francisco and the State of California. The community came together to express their needs for visual markers in the landscape. In response, TNT Traysikel was conceived. The roaming sculpture would signal the presence of the Fil Am community. The project began with a grant from SFAC for a sculpture that holds space in the streets of SF. Their efforts rapidly expanded to include three concurrent projects: 1) TNT SideCaraoke, karaoke activations of joyful sing-alongs; 2) Lost and Found: TNT in America, a short film that centers an immigrant object searching for a home in America; and 3) TNT SideNotes, listening sessions to give community members space to share their stories.

TNT Traysikel has been the anchor for many of their recent efforts. their activities blur traditional practice and disciplines taking sculptural, spatial, relational, performative, and cinematic form. For example, during a four-month long artist residency at Saint Joseph’s Arts Society (once home to the largest congregation of Fil-Am Catholics in the US), they produced non-traditional “artist panels” called More Awareness Something Something (M.A.S.S.). They filmed over 60 experts on four Filipinx American topics- History, Visual Arts, Cuisine, and Performing Arts. Every M.A.S.S. panel concluded with a TNT SideCaraoke sing-along.

In five years, they have co-produced over two dozen events involving hundreds of culture producers who intersect visual, culinary, literary, and performing arts, as well as motorcyclists. TNT Traysikel events occur in museums, galleries, plazas, parks, and sidewalks. They never charge the public and welcome all.

TNT Traysikel is currently a Rainin Arts Fellow for public space.

Claudia Katayanagi is a documentary filmmaker and an alumni of UC Berkeley. As a Yonsei, a fourth generation Japanese American, and a descendant of American concentration camps during World War II, her work explores the complex, and cumulative effects of multiple forms of discrimination, such as racism, sexism and the American immigration policy and how these issues persist today.

Her debut feature documentary, A Bitter Legacy, explores the history of the imprisonment of over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry during WWII with a focus on the lesser-known, almost secret prisons for those who spoke up about the unlawfulness of these prisons, and were then labeled troublemakers and sent to “Citizen Isolation Centers” in Arizona, Utah and California. These camps are now considered to be precursors to the contentious U.S. military prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A Bitter Legacy is an award-winning documentary, and not only has played in film festivals worldwide, but has a distributor, Gravitas Ventures, and is now available on 8 different streaming platforms and is available on DVD and Blu-Ray at the Japanese American National Museum in LA and at the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco.

One of the first women, not to mention Asian American women to be in the IATSE Filmmakers Union, Claudia is an accomplished activist, trailblazer for minority women’s rights, and an industry veteran of more than 30 years.

SanSan Kwan: Portals/Two Doors

As part of USAAF 2025, SanSan Kwan curates Portals, a multibill evening of dance showcasing the work of a collective of six Asian American femme dance makers. Centered around the theme of transition, this mixed program highlights their varied stories, each piece probing what it means to be at the crossroads of change. The program is anchored by Kwan’s work Two Doors, a choreographic study of the aftermath of anti-Asian violence, first mounted in 2024 at the Mondavi Center in Davis, CA. Two Doors ushers us on a journey towards relational vulnerability, opening a portal into an array of explorations on liminality and resilience.

The additional Portals choreographers are Iu-Hui Chua, Lily Gee, Frances Sedayao, Stacey Yuen, and Tatianna Steiner. 

Performances of Portals are Friday, April 25 at 8:00pm and Sunday, April 27 at 7:00pm. A performance of just Two Doors plus a panel on Asian American community mobilization with the UC Berkeley Asian American Research Center is on Saturday, April 26 at 8:00 pm.

About the featured artist:

SanSan Kwan (she/her) is chair in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley. Performance: Lenora Lee Dance, Chingchi Yu, Chen and Dancers, Maura Nguyen Donohue/In Mixed Company, Jen Liu, among others. SanSan is also a dance scholar. Books: Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration (Oxford, 2021) (winner of a de la Torre Bueno© Award and an Isadora Duncan Dance Award); Kinesthetic City: Dance and Movement in Chinese Urban Spaces (Oxford, 2013) and Mixing It Up: Multiracial Subjects (University of Texas Press, 2004), co-edited with Kenneth Speirs. Journal articles: Dance Research Journal, TDR, Theatre Survey, Choreographic Practices, Performance Research, and more.

More info:

https://sansankwan.wixsite.com/my-site

Tickets:

https://portals2025.eventbrite.com/