In the spring of 2023, IAA visited three iconic locations in San Francisco and Oakland with projectors and audio equipment, displaying public works of light art by six Bay Area artists.
"Art and activism are sometimes thought of as different things, but Oakland history says otherwise.
The work of the Oakland artists presented in the Mobile Light Art Station reminds us of the way art and artists can pull a community together, filling our streets with imagination and beauty."
— Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao
Free events took place from March — April with stops on both sides of the Bay.
A wide range of community partners, including 826 Valencia, Nomadic Press, The Crucible, Oakland School of the Arts, Oaktown Jazz Workshops, and CounterPulse made each stop unique, adding music, dance, spoken word, and even an open-air dance party to the display.
Projection equipment for these exhibits was powered by BARCO.
1
Friday March 3
7pm to 9pm
415 W. Grand between Broadway and Telegraph
DOWNTOWN OAKLAND
The Mobile Light Art Station made its first stop at what became known as “The Great Wall of Oakland” when ProArts Gallery first activated the wall of the building at 415 West Grand. The celebration included light art activation + performances from Oakland School for the Arts (including dance students of Ms. Ebonie Barnett) and Oaktown Jazz Workshops; a reading from Roberto Bedoya, poet and Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Oakland; and an appearance from esteemed Oakland Poet Laureate Ayodele Nzinga, reading from her work. Trevor Parham of Oakstop was the Master of Ceremonies.
2
Thursday April 13
8pm to 9:30pm
Boeddeker Park in San Francisco’s
TENDERLOIN (Jones and Eddy)
In April, the Mobile Light Art Station moved to Boeddeker Park as part of the Tenderloin Arts Festival. Our partners included CounterPulse, Tenderloin Museum, Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery & Vita Brevis Club. Our MC was Saharla Vetsch, aka Major Hammy (dancer, performance artist, and drag king). Performers at this event included musician-composer Zachary Watkins (of the Center for New Music), and Hope Mohr (dancer, choreographer) with Tegan Schwab-Alavi (dancer).
3
Saturday April 22 (Earth Day)
5pm - 10pm
Esther’s Orbit Room
1724 7th Street, adjacent to the West Oakland BART Station
OAKLAND
Returning to Oakland on Earth Day, the Mobile Light Art Station touched down at Esther’s Orbit Room, a club that hosted Tina Turner, Etta James, B.B. King, and Al Green in its heyday. IAA partnered with the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) to illuminate the club and host an open-air party. This party celebrated EB PREC’s acquisition of the Orbit Room and adjacent properties, being renovated as a gathering place & center of activism for the community. Music from OakTownSoul and NTB (Nature of The Beast). The Crucible, also on the 7th St. corridor, added to the awesome.
Artists + Art
Artists in this exhibition are referencing the legacy of experimental cinema that is a vital part of San Francisco culture.
In the place of a traditional narrative or character-driven stories, we are provided a visual poetry which is by turns whimsical, elegiac, subversive and utopian.
Is there a common theme?
In a myriad of ways, we see depicted a meeting of the human enterprise and the natural world. The current moment and its dystopian aspect are reflected back to us in ways that are unexpected and often emotional.
Video captured in real time of performers onsite will be projected at these events too, and on a grand scale. This is part of Mobile Light Art Station documentation, created by Bay Area filmmaker and videographer Cecilia Diaz Cortez.
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Zeina Barakeh
Zeina Barakeh is a Palestinian-Lebanese artist living in Alameda. Her work has been exhibited internationally and locally, most recently on ZAZ Corner’s Jumbotron in Times Square (2020), in Art Journal Open (2020), and at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco (2022). Her work Standard of Capital was commissioned and displayed on the Salesforce Tower in 2021.
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Elaine Buckholtz
Elaine Buckholtz divides her time between San Francisco and Boston, where she is a Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. Buckholtz has shown work nationally and internationally at venues including Proof Gallery (Boston, MA); Souzy Tros (Athens, Greece); The Lumiere Festival (Derry, Ireland); The Swiss Technorama Museum (Winterthur, Switzerland); and Yerba Buena Center For The Arts (SF, CA).
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Can Büyükberber
Can Büyükberber attended San Francisco Art Institute on a Fulbright. He has been selected for Autodesk Pier 9 and Adobe AR Artist Residencies. His work, encompassing several digital mediums and platforms, has been displayed widely including at SxSW in Austin, London Film Festival, and MUTEK in Tokyo. He has been a member of IAA’s Creators Council since 2020.
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Heesoo Kwon
Heesoo Kwon is a multidisciplinary artist from South Korea based in the Bay Area. In 2017, Kwon initiated an autobiographical feminist religion, Leymusoom, as an ever-evolving framework to explore her family history and communal feminist liberation, making art to shed her burden as a Korean woman and redesign her feminist/queer life. Kwon received her MFA from UC Berkeley. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Korea, and Europe including BAMPFA (Berkeley), Chinese Culture Center (San Francisco), Ryan Lee Gallery and 47 Canal (NYC). Kwon was finalist for the Queer|Art|Prize in 2021 and the SFMOMA SECA award in 2022. She is the recipient of Hewlett 50 for media arts in 2022 and the Eureka Fellowship for 2025 from the Fleishhacker Foundation.
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Davey Whitcraft
Davey Whitcraft collaborates with AI to investigate notions of the natural. He has exhibited at LA MOCA, SFMOMA, LA A+D Museum, Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana, Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, and the Leap Second Festival, Oslo.
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Ian Winters
Ian Winters is an award-winning media and performance artist who often collaborates with acclaimed composers, directors, and choreographers. His work TIDES — about Bay Area climate change — was commissioned by and displayed at Minnesota Street Project and appeared more recently at IAA’s inaugural Oakland Festival of Immersive Arts. Winters has art designed digital stage settings for numerous operas here and abroad, including (most recently) SF Opera’s 2022 production of The Magic Flute.