There’s nothing more we love than workshopping with the youth. It was such an honor performing for and teaching a workshop about spoken word and how it can be utilized as an effective tool towards activism with RAIZ earlier this year. It was the beauty and power of the community that made that conference so inspiring.
Now, we have been invited back by RAIZ and we are extremely excited to collaborate again! We will be setting it off THIS Monday in Santa Ana!
Spoken Word Workshop
Monday August 13th
6:30pm - 8:00pm
Presented by forWord
Explore the power of spoken word with Southern California’s own, forWord. This workshop will be an introduction to spoken word/ performance poetry as well as working on tapping into one’s emotions to express oneself and empower others to action.
***Stencils workshop - Tuesday
***Aerosol workshop - Wednesday
All workshops will be at:
El Centro Cultural de Mexico
313 N. Birch St, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Visit their website: www.youthinresistance.org
04.27.12
Pass the Mic: Reclaim Your Roots
Sponsored by the Asian Pacific Student Association
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA
Show starts at 8pm
04.28.12
Spring Social Mixer
Sponsored by the California Medical Association’s Ethnic Medical Organization Section and Orange County Medical Association
17322 Murphy Ave.
Irvine, CA
Event starts at 6pm
Let’s end NaPoWriMo with a BANG!
Who says werewolves are not real?
ITZ HAPPENIN’ Full Moon Open Mic
Once Every Full Moon
At El Centro Cultural de Mexico in Santa Ana, CA
8:30 PM - Midnight
At our forWord feature at the ITZ HAPPENIN’ Full Moon Open Mic on April 6th, 2012 in Santa Ana, creative monsters were unleashed and we were there front-and-center to witness the carnage. In all seriousness, the community was as huge as the moon that night. There was a variety of performers like Hip Hop emcees, singers, flute players, poets, comedians, reggae artists, rock bands, and more.
Joese Gloria, one of the organizers and the host for the night, kept it real with freestyle sessions and honest opinions to keep the audience engaged. Nestor aka Illness was the sound engineer for the night and made sure that everyone’s voices were heard clearly and that the beats reverberated our chairs for an awesome evening of creative self-expression.
We loved this open mic! One of the best open mics we’ve ever experienced. We had fun out there. During our set, we performed a poem about our Asian-American identity and cultural competence (still untitled). Susan performed, “A Taste of Home,” Steph and I performed “Are listening now?,” and I ended our set with “Everybody Wants to Be An Activist.” The crowd was very receptive and showed love to everyone not just us. And that is what open mics are all about: Connecting and forging a community through self-expression.
A special shout-out to Sherwin aka ReVerse and Tony aka NOIZE for coming out to support and enjoy the arts with us!
If one night you look outside and there is a full moon, make your way to El Centro Cultural de Mexico in Santa Ana for one of the best open mics in the area!
From,
Eddy M. Gana Jr.
On March 1, 2012, forWord was featured at common ground’s March collaboration show with Tuesday Night Project for an all around night of explosive awesomeness. The night was filled with a lot of art and a lot of community and a lot of heart on all ends. It was a little strange for me because I help organize common ground and I was featuring with forWord as well.
Enough about me… on to the show! It was an exciting show for us because fW loves both cg and TNP and they came together to put on a great show. It was our second time featuring at common ground. You can read about the first time here! Mark opened up our set with his Untitled piece about hip hop and then I tagged in with my piece about wanting to kiss someone. Eddy and Stephanie did their new piece about censorship and we closed out our set with a currently untitled piece we’ve only performed one other time at APAAC about being Asian American.
As for the rest of the show, the co-hosts were Cara from cg and Candace from TNP aka C^2 (but squares they were not!). They really upped the ante on awkwardness but in a very warm and hilarious way. It was amazing to share the stage with the other features! Pratiti brought the house down with her beautiful voice and the harmonium, a very interesting Indian instrument, and it was really cool to see the creator of Tuesday Night Project, traci akemi kato-kiriyama, in front of the scenes collaborating with Sue Jin and Jenny San Angel for a poetry and music extravaganza! DJ 2-one was cool as a cucumber!
Shout out to my friend Mai-Thi who sang her soul out on her ukulele and Noize who came out to support and who beatboxes his way into our hearts all the time. One time he chased me down a street in Long Beach after the Definitive Soapbox just to get me to SPIT! That’s love right there!
Much thanks to common ground (Phi, Cara, Sandy) for the invite to perform (cg/susan: you’re welcome!). It was a beautiful night and we were glad to be a part of it!
common ground will be on hiatus but for updates, check the facebook! Also, more photos from the night on the facebook! Tuesday Night Project kick starts their show on April 3rd. Check them out here.
Who took these bomb photos? Kristina Aquino
-susan
![commongroundoc:
TOMORROW, innovative and energetic spoken word collective ForWord will take the [common ground] stage as part of our March 1st “MERGING MICS” collaboration show with Tuesday Night Project— rumor has it, they’ll be performing some new work. The four-member crew took some time to share about the importance of art+community in their lives:
Eddy:
I love Hip Hop. With that being said, I’ve experienced art playing a significant role in my community. I grew up amongst those who used pencils, microphones, sidewalks, cardboards, aerosol cans, city walls, vinyl records, and mixers to get through the day. Honestly, I was never a master of the four elements, but a sheet of paper and a sharpened pencil went a long way. When I stepped into the open mic scene, I was exposed to not only emcees, but singers, musicians, and poets who all valued the freedom of self-expression. While some nailed high notes and others jammed on guitars, it was through spoken word poetry where I found myself and was able to meet so many good folks during high school, college, and still now. In this community, art is more than a role for me, for us. It is the reason to live. This community I live in and love so much is art expressed.
Susan:
I think art has been a really effective way to communicate within the community, especially for those who are not comfortable articulating in plain language their feelings and concerns. I feel really lucky to have spaces like TNP and cg— spaces for people to gather, share stories and ideas, connect, and grow together. When they can come together in spaces like TNP and cg and one can feel a part of that, it just feels like you’re a part of something bigger, working toward something bigger than yourself and that’s kind of nice to think about.
Stephanie:
The best, and perhaps most convenient, aspect of art is that it’s accessible to everyone. By accessible, I mean it can be enjoyed both as a spectator and a participant. Even further, it is emotionally appealing to the masses and, with respect to the APIA community, has been a vessel for increasing our visibility in the mainstream. The more Asian faces I see on the screen, the more I remember and am self-affirmed: we exist!
Mark:
Art offers a new avenue to express yourself. There are times when pictures, photographs, dance, paintings/murals, music, and poetry/spoken word hold the attention of an audience longer than a regular conversation. We can utilize that time to talk about politics, world issues, life or whatever else. In the APIA community, and any community for that matter, art is utilized as a way to bring issues that are affecting us into the forefront of the mainstream conversation.
Our “MERGING MICS” show is tomorrow! Bring a friend or ten, and RSVP here. See you soon!
Photo: ForWord on stage at our June 2011 show. Credit: Scott Chan
YES! We will be here tomorrow! See YOU there? Please? =).](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m065l98shK1qceq89o1_500.jpg)
commongroundoc:
TOMORROW, innovative and energetic spoken word collective ForWord will take the [common ground] stage as part of our March 1st “MERGING MICS” collaboration show with Tuesday Night Project— rumor has it, they’ll be performing some new work. The four-member crew took some time to share about the importance of art+community in their lives:
Eddy:
I love Hip Hop. With that being said, I’ve experienced art playing a significant role in my community. I grew up amongst those who used pencils, microphones, sidewalks, cardboards, aerosol cans, city walls, vinyl records, and mixers to get through the day. Honestly, I was never a master of the four elements, but a sheet of paper and a sharpened pencil went a long way. When I stepped into the open mic scene, I was exposed to not only emcees, but singers, musicians, and poets who all valued the freedom of self-expression. While some nailed high notes and others jammed on guitars, it was through spoken word poetry where I found myself and was able to meet so many good folks during high school, college, and still now. In this community, art is more than a role for me, for us. It is the reason to live. This community I live in and love so much is art expressed.
Susan:
I think art has been a really effective way to communicate within the community, especially for those who are not comfortable articulating in plain language their feelings and concerns. I feel really lucky to have spaces like TNP and cg— spaces for people to gather, share stories and ideas, connect, and grow together. When they can come together in spaces like TNP and cg and one can feel a part of that, it just feels like you’re a part of something bigger, working toward something bigger than yourself and that’s kind of nice to think about.
Stephanie:
The best, and perhaps most convenient, aspect of art is that it’s accessible to everyone. By accessible, I mean it can be enjoyed both as a spectator and a participant. Even further, it is emotionally appealing to the masses and, with respect to the APIA community, has been a vessel for increasing our visibility in the mainstream. The more Asian faces I see on the screen, the more I remember and am self-affirmed: we exist!
Mark:
Art offers a new avenue to express yourself. There are times when pictures, photographs, dance, paintings/murals, music, and poetry/spoken word hold the attention of an audience longer than a regular conversation. We can utilize that time to talk about politics, world issues, life or whatever else. In the APIA community, and any community for that matter, art is utilized as a way to bring issues that are affecting us into the forefront of the mainstream conversation.
Our “MERGING MICS” show is tomorrow! Bring a friend or ten, and RSVP here. See you soon!
Photo: ForWord on stage at our June 2011 show. Credit: Scott Chan
YES! We will be here tomorrow! See YOU there? Please? =).
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