Mobility Archived (2020)
About Mobility Archived: In Mobility Archived artists were invited to explore the themes of mobility, the archive, and their intersections and tensions. Mobility as it relates to the movement of bodies, cultures, and histories. Mobility as diaspora. Mobility as immigration. Mobility as a source of regeneration and agency. Mobility as home.
Roles & Formations in Mobility Archived:
Yoli curated Mobility Archived as the Community Outreach & Artist Projects Manager at Side Street Projects. In each residency, Yoli supported the artists in developing and sharing their projects to support the underserved communities of Pasadena, Altadena, and Los Angeles County and nurture their growth as artists. The artists were selected by a panel of artists and Side Street Projects staff.
Jose Richard Aviles: En movimiento
As a Queer Brown Boi from South Central, Jose Richard Aviles’ project En Movimiento reflects on the ever-evolving narratives and experiences of LA bus riders and pedestrians along the 204 bus route of Vermont Ave in South Central Los Angeles. En Movimiento highlights the impact that COVID-19 has had on the bus and its riders, a ripple of the personal and societal transformation that the pandemic has erected globally.
Celebrating El Dia De Los Santos, a Catholic Indigenous celebration of the ancestors and all those who have passed, Jose Richard performs El Camino de Vermont. In partnership with Metro Art, “El Camino de Vermont” is a guerilla-style performance and procession that traces 12.2 miles of the 204 bus route that passes through South Central inspired by the Catholic pilgrimage of El Camino de Santiago. Documented and transformed into a video piece, “El Camino de Vermont” is an ode to the bus riders and pedestrians whose lives and relationships to the bus have been affected by the pandemic.
Jose Richard’s second video piece, Tio Metro, unfolds in front of a bus stop along the 204 bus route; transforming public space into a site of engagement through dance & performance.
Michael Rippens: Care Talk
Care Talk is an interactive storytelling project that amplifies the voices of caregivers working on the front-lines of a global pandemic, created and facilitated by artist Michael Rippens.
Owing to a complex history of colonization, cultural propaganda, immigration politics, and global economic forces, the past 70 years has seen an influx of Filipinos moving to the U.S. to work as health care professionals. Rippens’ own mother immigrated to Los Angeles from the Philippines in the early 1970s and studied nursing at Pasadena City College, worked as an RN, and eventually managed a small caregiving agency which she operated for many years from a desk and telephone she had installed in her kitchen.
Care Talk is inspired by Rippens’ mother’s immigration story and her life-long commitment to helping others. This project pays homage to the many hardworking and dedicated caregivers that she worked with—most of whom were also Filipinos, immigrants, and women of color.
The Care Talk project utilized a telephone voicemail system as a physically-distant platform for sharing stories. Caregivers and home care aides were invited to call the hotline number (626) 427-7293 and record their personal experiences of living and working during the COVID-19 pandemic. As more voicemail stories are shared, the Care Talk website serves as an expanding public archive of these recordings. Additionally, visitors can contribute written messages to the project via the website’s contact form.
In collaboration with dublab, Michael created the Care Talk Radio Hour, a two-part series featuring caregiver testimonials and conversations with experts such as Catherine Ceniza Choy, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and Aquilina Soriano Versoza, Executive Director of the Pilipino Workers Center, a non-profit serving and organizing the low-wage Philipino immigrant community in Los Angeles.
Original Care Talk theme music was by composer and artist Nathan Matthew David w/ Angela Asistio, Music Supervisor.