Shailja Patel announced as one of 2010's Sundance Theatre Lab Fellows!
Shailja Patel's award-winning MIGRITUDE is forthcoming from Kaya Press in Fall 2010.Poetry Flash reviews Lisa Chen's MOUTH
"If, as Lisa Chen herself advises in “Translator’s Apologia,” you “…Enter these pages with / The lowered expectations of a prison guard,” you may be pleasantly surprised by the pointed coherence that frequently emerges from Chen’s fantastic verbiage...."Click for the complete review.
Lisa Chen reading at UC Berkeley
April 1, 2010: 12 pm : Lisa Chen will be reading at UC Berkeley's acclaimed LUNCH POEMS Series!Bay Area folks, come out to hear Lisa Chen give a reading from her award-winning book MOUTH!
Don't miss Kaya's first Bay Area Holiday Party!
Join us for a holiday book launch reception, and a preview of KSW's performance tour "SF Thomassons" with Philip Huang.WHEN: Friday, December 18; 6 - 9 pm WHERE: PariSoma, 1436 Howard St. @ 10th WHAT: Reception, book launch, performance ADMISSION IS FREE! In the 80's Japanese conceptual artist Akasegawa Genpei released HYPERART: THOMASSON, a book investigating and describing an urban architectural phenomenon called a "Thomasson." (See the book trailer below for more about Thomassons.) To celebrate Kaya Press' publication of the first English translation of HYPERART: THOMASSON, Bay Area Asian American arts organization Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) is producing "SF Thomassons," a two-phase project that includes a set of photographs by KSW artists of local Thomassons and a guided performance tour of a selection of these Thomassons. The complete guided tour will be performed January 23 & 24. To launch the book, we are holding a holiday reception, with music, an opportunity to buy the book, and a short preview of the tour. Come drink some punch with SF's Asian American arts community before we break for the holidays, and do a little last minute gift shopping!
Thomassons Come to the U.S.!
Because Kaya is a FULL SERVICE, AUDIENCE PARTICIPATORY kind of publisher, we present you with our Hyperart: Thomasson website.Hyperart: Thomasson website. In the seventies, Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei and his buddies discovered "hyperart," unintentional art created by the city itself. Urban objects and structures that had had a use in the past, but were now useless (e.g. telephone poles which no longer carried lines, or second story doorways in the wall that didn't lead to a landing anymore), were everywhere, watching the city progress all around them, overlooked by passersby. Akasegawa named these objects "Thomassons" after an American baseball hitter recruited to a Japanese team, who came near to a strikeout record. Akasegawa wrote about these objects in a regular column in a Japanese photo magazine, and soon readers were submitting photos of Thomassons they had found to be evaluated. Akasegawa collected these humorous and profound columns into the book HYPERART: THOMASSON, and it was a big hit in 1980's Japan. To celebrate the release of the first English translation (by Matt Fargo) of HYPERART: THOMASSON, Kaya is setting up a website [link] for a new generation of collaborators (i.e. YOU) to submit their Thomassons. Read the book to find out what it's all about. Then go looking for Thomassons in your area. Don't forget to bring your digital camera! When you have some Thomassons captured, upload the photos and your descriptions onto our website. Also, don't miss the "SF Thomassons" page! Kaya is collaborating with Bay Area Asian American arts organization Kearny Street Workshop to produce a performance guided tour of San Francisco's Thomassons. The SF Thomassons page will be populated by SF Thomassons discovered and photographed by Kearny Street Workshop artists. Stay tuned for more news on this project! .