FIELD TRIP: MEDIA ARTS CENTER SAN DIEGO

MACSD evolved out of the San Diego Latino Film Festival (SDLFF), which originated in 1993. Incorporated in 1999, MACSD has grown from a festival to a mid-size organization with diverse statewide programs and services for residents, visitors, and independent and amateur filmmakers. In 2012, MACSD moved into a new space in North Park. Renovating a derelict building, now known as the Digital Gym, has brought vitality and inspired new businesses to open in this once-blighted area. The Digital Gym allowed MACSD to expand core programming to better serve the community.

MACSD features a movie theater, a storefront community technology center, and the presenter of the globally-acclaimed annual San Diego Latino Film Festival (now in its 25th year). MACSD serves all ages through instructional programs and services, with a focus on underrepresented voices and communities. MACSD programs, events, and film festivals are diverse and inclusionary.

MACSD has been teaching media arts classes and workshops to youth for 17+ years–both in and outside the classroom—and has been serving the people of marginalized communities by using media as a tool for social change and artistic expression. Our decades of experience conducting youth media classes and workshops allow us to continue to refine our delivery to meet the needs of the populations we serve and provides the context for the development of the Youth Media Workshops.

FIELD TRIP: THE AJA PROJECT

The AjA Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization headquartered in San Diego, California. Utilizing participatory photography methods and an assets-based model, AjA’s programs transform youth and communities. Since its founding, AjA has provided long-term, community-based programming for over 3500 individuals, and has shared visual narratives with over 3 million viewers through large-scale public exhibits.

Our mission is to provide photography-based programming to transform the lives of youth and communities. We believe youth and communities have the ability to change from within. The AjA project exists to ignite change, break cycles of marginalization and to build healthy communities. We do this through a creative platform called participatory photography that asks participants to reflect on and analyze their personal and social landscapes.

GUEST SPEAKER: JOSEMAR GONZALEZ

Josemar Gonzalez Lizarraga is an artist and community organizer with extensive experience in both the Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California Transborder communities. He currently works with various independent artistic organizations on both sides of the border to help educate and enrich using the arts as a means of communication. The majority of his work deals with documentation, storytelling, and deconstruction of human experiences. Trained in the media arts, he uses them as tools to engage audiences and help bring experiences and stories to a wider audience. 

He is a member of COYOTE, an artist collaborative in Tijuana, and collaborator of the TJinCHINA project. In 2014, he founded a bi-national music and arts festival in Tijuana that brings together artist communities from both sides of the Mexico-US border, where he works as Director of PASE music. He is currently the Creative Director with The AjA Project a City-Heights based non-profit that works with historically marginalized communities in San Diego and co-founder of Borderclick, a project that workshops with Transborder communities creating a digital living archive of Transborder lifestyles funded by the California Arts Council and the California Humanities Grant. He has shown work in Mexico, the United States, Japan, and Germany. 

His most recent public art projects is 'Transcending Perception', an installation piece in collaboration with The AjA Project. The installation is comprised of a series of doors composed of a variety of layers placed strategically, juxtaposing the images and narrative of communities that have been historically silenced and or underrepresented by the media. The installation will be unveiled in fall of 2018, at Liberty Station in San Diego.

www.josemargonzalez.com

GUEST SPEAKER: ALE UZARRAGA

Ale Uzarraga is a transborder artist living and working between Tijuana and San Diego. Formally trained as a photographer, she works with digital photography, but loves to explore the possibility of materials. Her personal work thrives on exploration of the world. She does this through the study of landscapes, portraits and the relationship between the two. Her images carry a strong sensitivity to memory. Looking at her images are like time capsules that take you to a place that is familiar even if you've never been there before.

As a Teaching Artist at The AjA Project, a local non-profit with the mission to empower youth with the art of photography. She uses it as a tool to educate participants about different social injustices in our San Diego. Ale is focusing on the school to prison pipeline and the transborder community. Her love for photography is visible in the sensitivity of her students work. She serves her community by reaching out to unrepresented and marginalized youth in San Diego.

Her curious nature and cinematic skills make it natural for her to obtain many commercial assignments. She is able to combine photography with her interest in travel and new experiences. Ale documents special events, retail, portraiture, weddings and more. She is currently a photographer at the San Diego New Childrens Museum.

www.aleuzarraga.com

GUEST SPEAKER: CAT COPPERNATH

Cat Coppenrath is a Tijuana | San Diego based social worker, photographer, and teaching artist. She graduated with a Masters of Social Work from New York University in 2015 and has been exploring the integration of social work, community arts, and photography ever since. Currently, she is working as a Teaching Artist at various nonprofits including The AjA Project.

In her participatory work, Cat is interested in examining narrative around personal history, trauma, mental health, and the intersection of this in injustice and inequality. In her personal work, she is interested in exploring the power of the image in present day context, reframing what this image looks like and means in public spaces like social media. She hopes to challenge the representation of individuals in these places by asking critical questions. What is not being said and who is missing in this conversation? How can the photograph be a cultural function? Politically? Socially? Personally?

www.catcoppenrath.com

GUEST SPEAKER: QUYEN LE NGUYEN

Quyên Nguyen-Le is a Vietnamese-American filmmaker born and raised in Southern California, whose work explores the intersections of queerness, memory, and cultural identity. Quyên's films have been shown in film festivals, universities, art galleries, community spaces, & fundraisers in across the U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K., and Vietnam. After a brief time at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Quyên instead completed degrees in Comparative Literature and Philosophy/Politics/Law at USC; then moved to Santiago de Chile to study Spanish with an emphasis in politics. As a student, they participated in the Emma L. Bowen Foundation's three year fellowship at Focus Features/ NBCUniversal and directed a film for the feature anthology The Labyrinth. 

Following the completion of their first feature documentary, Queer Vietnameseness, which follows the lives of three queer 2nd generation Vietnamese American womxn, Quyên wrote and directed Nước (Water/Homeland) with the support of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival's Armed-With-A-Camera fellowship. Quyên is currently serving as the Program Director for Project Fôtô at the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) in Orange County and participating in the National Minority Consortia's Documentary Fellowship with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). Quyên actively promotes diversity in the arts by mentoring young filmmakers through programs like Inner City Filmmakers in Los Angeles and Reel Voices in San Diego.

www.quyennl.com