Hannah Addario-Berry: Brain Food/Music

Hannah Addario-Berry

Cello Bazaar, the cello-centric monthly music series founded and directed by BAASICS.3: The Deep End performer and presenter Hannah Addario-Berry, is named after its principal venue, Bazaar Cafe. The Richmond District coffee shop and event space is not far from Hannah's home, and Selene and I met her there on a particularly warm San Francisco morning to discuss her contribution to The Deep End program.

Hannah describes herself as "a fierce advocate of the music of today," and, like Selene and me, she is passionate about exposing a wide audience to that which she cares about; in her case, that's music and food. Along with Cello Bazaar, Hannah founded and runs Locaphonic, an organization dedicated to "connect[ing] Bay Area residents with our local musicians, food, and culinary artists, promoting sustainable livelihoods for artists and farmers and uniting our community through food and music."

Ernest Jolly's Unfinished Labors

Ernest Jolly
"Limbo"
2012
Disco ball, flocking, wire, leather thread, and foam
Dimensions variable

One has to marvel at the inscrutability of the sculptures and installation Ernest Jolly includes in "The Labor Party," his current solo exhibition at Patricia Sweetow Gallery. "Carry Me Home," a wheelbarrow fashioned of frosted Plexiglas and metal, and "Limbo," an installation featuring a half-flocked disco ball spinning above leather punching bags, are compelling and surreal creations. Yet I connected neither to the plight "of the black agricultural worker in the Southern United States before the First World War," their conceptual substance according to the gallery's press release, which almost reads as if it describes a piece of choreography or theater.

"The punching bags represent the hero of the field laborer, a Black Prize Fighter, whose strength was respected in a world where the laborer was powerless. If only for a brief moment, and with great cathartic justice, The Prize Fighter could break the color barrier, by competing with, and potentially beating the white fighter. [...] The globe, while being a ubiquitous object at dance halls, also gives voice to the specific dance 'Limbo' - dancers move under a pole that is gradually lowered from chest level, and when cleared is considered the triumph of life over death. In Jolly's 'Limbo' the transformation of hope, life, and place are revolving in his disco sun, casting an eclipse in a profound struggle for life."

Stretcher: Surabhi Saraf

Surabhi Saraf
"Fold {Live}"
2011
Photograph of site-specific performance in San Francisco
My write-up of new media artist Surabhi Saraf's "Fold {Live}," a series of site-specific performances in San Francisco, is published on Stretcher: Visual Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond.

Read it here.

This month, Saraf's "Fold {Live}" is being performed in Australia.

Image credit: courtesy, Surabhi Saraf, 2011