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This event is brought to you by the Artist Legal Cafe, a cross-sector partnership between SELC, Vital Arts, and Movement Law, an artist-led initiative that offers direct services and capacity-building to individual artists, artist collectives, and arts organizations. The ALC is generously supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Gerbode Foundation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the City of Oakland.

DESCRIPTION:
Moving from Hopelessness to Agency 

This workshop will combine simple mindfulness practices with movement and theater exercises that work to remove the obstacles to experiencing joy and connection. We will also participate in dialogue that connects with the movement and mindfulness practices. 

CO-FACILITATED BY SHARMI BASU AND HOPE MOHR

ABOUT SHARMI BASU

Sharmi Basu (they/them) is a multimedia performance artist, curator, composer, and executive director of Vital Arts, born and based in the unceded territories of Chochenyo Ohlone peoples, also known as Oakland, CA. They create sound and performance pieces that address vulnerability, accountability, and experiences of diaspora by creating new narratives for decolonial thinking toward individual and collective liberation. Their primary performance project, Beast Nest, shows us that the abstract and immaterial experiences of trauma can be transformed through the process of creation in art and sound. They believe that transcending the emotional landscape through active presence is the key to accessing multidimensionality and work with these ideas in their Sound and Liberation workshops, their curatorial projects, and their BIPOC improvisation group, the Mara Performance Collective.

They received their MFA from Mills College and host a number of workshops internationally that center on sound healing, decolonization, and conflict & accountability, as well as technical skill-shares. They have performed for SFMOMA, YBCA, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Cluster Festival, Ableton Loop, the International Symposium of Improvised Music, Soundwave SF, Human Resources LA, and many other spaces throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. They have exhibited work at Coaxial, Southern Exposure, SOMArts, Counterpulse, Gray Area, and the Smithsonian. They are currently a research resident at the Kitchen in NY and an Emerging Arts Fellow in San Francisco. Their work on Decolonizing Sound has been taught at universities internationally at institutions such as Brown University in the US and Goldsmiths College in the UK. They are a certified mediator focused on interpersonal healing within Queer and Trans BIPOC communities, and are on the board of a number of organizations including Safer DIY Spaces, Bay Area Girls Rock Camp, Soundwave SF, and California FM. They co-founded the first-ever Bay Area Black and Brown Punk Festival, the Multiverse is Illuminated, and are currently an arts administrator at Southern Exposure in San Francisco. They are the Executive Director of Ratskin Records, an archival imprint championing decolonial artists in the Bay Area. The majority of their organizational work is dedicated to providing resources, mutual aid, and moments of joy to queer and Trans BIPOC.

ABOUT HOPE MOHR

Hope Mohr (she/her), artist and arts leader, has been making multidisciplinary performance for over 30 years. Hope works across performance, visual art, and language to explore embodiment, feminism, gender, and queerness. She teaches contemporary dance technique, creative movement, movement for actors, and cross-disciplinary practice. She has taught dance and movement at California College of the Arts, PARTS (Brussels), The Place (London), Trisha Brown Dance Studio, ODC, Stanford University, Lines Ballet BFA Program, American Conservatory Theater MFA program, Peabody Conservatory, UCLA, and Shawl-Anderson.

Theaters, museums, and galleries across the U.S. that have presented and commissioned Hope’s work include: Moody Center for the Arts (Houston), SFMOMA, ICA San Francisco, Movement Research at Judson Church (NYC), Highways Performance Space (LA), Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), 18th Street Arts Center (LA), di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art (Sonoma), 836M Gallery, Mills Art Museum, Gallery Wendi Norris, and the San Jose Museum of Art, ODC Theater, Counterpulse, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco International Arts Festival, West Wave Festival, Montalvo Arts Center, and S.F. VA Hospital’s Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation.

FREE LEGAL CONSULTATIONS FOLLOW

After the workshop, we will roll into the legal consult portion of our Artist Legal Cafe.
Want to sign up for a FREE legal consultation after the workshop?  RSVP here to receive a free 30-45 minute legal consultation. 

ACCESS NEEDS? Let us know!

ARTIST LEGAL CAFE PARTNERS

The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice by appointment.