August Lee Stevens will be closing out her first tour with a concert at the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz. She’s taking part in the two-year anniversary of the Speak for Change Podcast featuring podcast creator Thomas Sage Pedersen and an interview with Ashanti Branch, the Oakland-based founder of the Ever Forward Club. Her dynamic set will feature music from her upcoming project.

During the spring 2022 quarter the Isaac Julien Lab activities consisted of an art residency at the Isaac Julien Studio in London. During Livia’s time in the UK, she was able to advance her thesis project “Meeting Norma” by holding meetings and interviews with researchers such as B. Ruby Rich (Critic and Professor Emerita UCSC), Ros Muray, (King’s College), Nicole Ferrer (Centre Audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir), Catherine Deudon (photographer) and Syn Guérin (videomaker, activist). These videos were made with the support of Isaac Julien Studio and its partnership with The Derek Jarman Lab (Birkbeck, University of London). Next steps for the project include filming in New York and Rio de Janeiro.

Two pieces composed by David Evan Jones for traditional Korean instruments were premiered in Seoul, South Korea on March 20, 2022. The two premieres—entitled Invisible Light and Waves of Light—were composed in response to commissions from Jung Min Song on gayageum (a 12-string zither) and Hyo-young Kim on saenghwang (a 30-pipe reed mouth organ similar to the Chinese sheng). As director of gayageum quartet Sagye, Jung Min Song has been a frequent collaborator with Jones who has composed, recorded and published two pieces with the quartet.

As a first-generation American, first-generation college graduate and an adult child of a formerly incarcerated parent, Lindsey Tavares-Sabido has met more than her share of challenges. But every step of the way she has managed to succeed beyond the norm.

Dr. crystal am nelson was recently appointed assistant professor of African/Diasporic visual studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Pennsylvania State University, where she has been working on her first monograph, and will begin teaching in the fall. nelson is a specialist in African American art and her research examines the visual culture of Black pleasure, the aesthetics of Black joy, and Black middle-class art collecting practices.

Isaac Julien, UCSC distinguished professor in Digital Arts and New Media and filmmaker whose work has explored intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class across the years, has become one of the few Black artists to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

Dean Celine recently talked about her latest film 80 YEARS LATER on KPFA’s Letters and Politics program. On the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 that imprisoned Japanese Americans in World War II, 80 YEARS LATER captures how families continually grapple with the legacy of their experience. Beyond physical appearances, habits and tendencies, how does one inherit trauma across generations?

The Arts Research Institute's Arts & Oppression Initiative launched this week with an exhibition at the Special Collections & Archives Library showing work of nine award winning students led by Professor Dee Hibbert-Jones, and work from the archives. The Initiative is designed to provide opportunities for faculty and students to address freedom of expression, with a focus on censorship, race, and representation. The Arts and Oppression Initiative, grew out of ARI’s deep concerns about increased censorship of art and literature in education and the silencing of queer, trans and black voices in the U.S. and abroad. ARI’s initiative funds opportunities for faculty and students to examine, explore and elevate dialog of these issues in a protected and respectful environment. The Arts & Oppression Initiative includes a Visiting Artist program, a Freedom of Expression Student Comics Class and graduate student teaching fellowships and faculty/student funding for work that engages artists and scholars on critical issues related to freedom of expression, censorship, race and representation.

The Earth Futures Institute (EFI) initiated its first art-science collaboration between Canadian artist Brad Necyk, molecular ecologist Rachel Mayer, and mediaturg Edward Shanken. On April 15, the team, with EFI Director astronomer Sandra Faber and a group of graduate students and a postdoc from the UC Paleogenomics Lab, took water samples at the UC Landels Hill-Big Creek Reserve. They discovered a remarkable log jam that will be the site of an ongoing transdisciplinary research project on climate change and environmental DNA. Necyk is a Research Associate in Film & Digital Media and an EFI Fellow.

Marilia Kaisar, Ph.D. Student in Film and Digital Media, will present her paper "Situated and Displaced: Diasporic Subjectivities in Essaystic Film Production" at the NECS 2022 Conference: Epistemic Media: Atlas, Archive, Network in Bucharest, Romania. The paper explores essay films from three diasporic female filmmakers Chantel Akerman, Marilu Mallet, and Mania Akbari, analyzing how these filmmakers situate their bodies in place and how these films engage in practices of home-making. Presenting at the conference is supported by the Film and Digital Media Department Travel Award and the Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence and Equity (ADFEE).

Dylan Lombardo, Fine Arts Major in his junior year, has been working on a project called 300 Nails. The Introduction to Sculpture class was instructed to do something 300 times so he decided to collect 300 fingernails from UCSC students. He would introduce himself to people and have general conversations, and then ask if they would like to be a part of an art project. The reactions varied, but most participants were excited, or shocked. Dylan ended up meeting new friends and finishing his project along the way. His project is about the relationship between consent and bodily excrement.

Mahshid Modares’s (Social Documentation Alumna, 2020, & First-Year FDM Ph.D.) interactive documentary, Sanctions on the Sky, was one of the top 10% of the 2022 nominees for the 26th Annual Webby Awards, out of 14,000 entrants. The film is the revised version of Mahshid’s Social Documentation M.F.A. thesis project and won three awards in Spring 2022.

Estuaries (2022, USA/Mexico, 101 mins) directed by Lior Shamriz, Film and Digital Media Ph.D. candidate, is an expansive portrait of the LA art scene that ranges from hilarious and scathing to emotionally affecting and honest. Estuaries follows a mosaic of colorful, queer characters—all connected through an artist named Bdalak who recently passed during their own performance piece. Set in 2017—though filmed during the pandemic—the film centers on two figures: Bdalak’s partner Eli (played by director Lior Shamriz), a musician who must think of alternative ways to obtain an immigration visa; and Myrna (Chelsea Rector), a peer of Bdalak’s who is planning a retrospective of their work (albeit with questionable motives).

Be sure to watch episodes of the Art Division’s video podcast on UCTV, featuring conversations about various programs and departments, and their approaches to diversity, equity and inclusion.