Friday March 15th, 8pm, $5 and up

Art vs. Prison

Art vs. Prison is a hard-hitting multimedia art show that combines painting, film, and music to speak out and confront the Prison Industrial Complex. The evening will present artwork by Leonard Peltier, Marilyn Buck, Linda Evans, Tom Manning, Laura Whitehorn, and other US political prisoners.

The show will also feature "The Life of Mumia Abu Jamal" a slide show by nationally renown, graphic artist Seth Tobocman and several films including: Haurn Farocki's "I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts", Sandra Cnotreras's "The Blessing", Sanipepa Malimali's "Lil Paypa", Tonga Vunipola's "Life in Da Small Town", and "Truth To Power." UC Professor Ruthie Gilmore will address the roots of the Prison Industrial Complex, and Company of Prophets will rock the house with their blend of electric, acoustic and acapella Hip-Hop. All the benefits for this event will go to Mumia Abu-Jamal defense fund.

(I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts)
Images from the maximum- security prison in Corcoran, California. A surveillance camera shows a pie-shaped segment of the concrete yard where the prisoners, dressed in shorts and mostly shirtless, are allowed to spend half an hour a day. When one convict attacks another, those not involved lay flat on the ground, arms over their heads.They know that when a fight breaks out, the guard calls out a warning and then fires rubber bullets. If the fight continues, the guard shoots real bullets. The pictures are silent, the trail of gun smoke drifts across the picture. The camera and the gun are right next to each other. This video also emphasizes the social relationship between the one who fires and the one who films, between the one with force and the one who takes shots. 25 min.

Writer, Scholar Ruthie Gilmore,
Prof. Gilmore's main interests include race and gender, labor and social movements, uneven development, politics and culture, the U.S., California, and the African Diaspora. Recent publications include: "'You have dislodged a boulder': Mothers and Prisoners in the Post Keynesian California Landscape," in Transforming Anthropology (March 1998); "Public Enemies and Private Intellectuals," in Race and Class (1993); "Terror Austerity Race Gender Excess Theater," in Reading Rodney King/Reading Urban Uprising; and "Decorative Beasts: Dogging the Academy in the Late Twentieth Century," in California Sociologist (1991).

Company of Prophets
From the depths of OaklandÌs underground, Company of Prophets brings 5th dimensional tag-team lyricism to Hip-HopÌs fragile surface. Emcees Brutha Los and Rashidi Omari came to international attention in 1999, leading protest with song at the WTO protests in Seattle. The dynamic-duo took top notch, true school Hip-Hop back to the streets again for CaliforniaÌs ÎNo on Prop. 21Ì campaign. Don't get it twisted though, these two ainÌt no X-Clan throwbacks. Brutha Los and Rashidi Omari are at the vanguard of the evolving soundscape of this thang called Hip-Hop. From two turntables to Congolese drums, from a 20-piece bataria to a Berimbau and beat-box, there are surprisingly few musical arrangements that these talented emcees canÌt work. CPsÌ seamless blend of electric, acoustic and acapella Hip-Hop has kept crowds jumping, and hands in the air from the House of Blues LA, to OaklandÌs Black Dot Caf», where they recorded their first independent LP, "Company of Prophets: Hella Live!"

Seth Tobocman
Seth Tobocman is a New York based illustator whose work has appeared in countless newspapers, zines, comics, posters, murals and t-shirts. He has been featured in the New York Times, he is the co-founder of World War 3 Illustrated - the longest running publication in zine history, and he is the author of two politicaly charged, graphic novels - "War in the Neighborhood" and "You Don't Have to Fuck People Over to Survive."

Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier is a national leader of the American Indian Movement, a world renown human rights activist, and a master of Indigenous Art. He has spent over two decades in federal prison as the subject of one of the most controversial law cases in US history. Mr. Peltier was convicted on circumstantial evidence for the shooting of two FBI agents during a day-long seige in 1975 on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. As a result of the ambiguity of evidence, his case has been the subject of several books, including his own, "Prison Writings - My Life is My Sundance." World religious leaders, Democratic and Republican Congressional representatives, and over 35 million private citizens have continually requested a new trial, Executive Clemency, and long overdue parole.

Linda Evans
Linda Evans is a prolific quilt maker who spent over 15 years in federal prison for her role in the clandestine resistance movement opposed to US foreign policy in the 1980s. She was arrested on May 11, 1985 , convicted of harboring a fugitive and using a false name to buy four guns, and given a 40 year prison sentence. Before her incarceration, Linda Evans had been a community organizer who had years fighting police brutality, forced sterilization, racist hate crimes, and US imperialism. During her 15 year incarceration she pioneered a peer-based AIDS education program for prison inmates and mastered the art of quilt making. Her sentence was communted by President Clinton on January 20, 2001.

Marilyn Buck
Marilyn Buck is an award winning poet and a sculptor who was convicted of conspiracy for the successful escape of Assata Shakur from her New Jersey prison. Marilyn was also convicted of conspiracy to commit "armed bank robbery" in support of the Black liberation movement.In 1988 she was given an additional 10 year sentence for conspiracy to protest government policies (invasion of Grenada and Cental America) through the use of violence against government and miliary property. She has been in prison for nearly two decades with a total sentence of 80 years. She is incarcerated at the Federal women's prison in Dublin, CA where she has translated spanish for fellow inmates, organized poetry workshops, written countless news articles, and completed a bachelor's degree in psychology. She is the author of "Rescue the Word," a book of poetry, and in 2001 she was the recepient of the PEN Prison Writing Program award.

Sanipepa Malimali
Sanipepa Malimali, born in San Mateo and raised in Menlo Park, California, began her pathway in filmmaking through her involvement with the "School After School for Successful Youth " Young Media Activist Crew program. "I want to become a filmmaker because after working with Van, Molly, and Nick and being a part of the SASSY program, it made me want to make videos that reach out to young people who may have had similar problems I’ve experience. I hope to help heal people like filmmaking has for me".

Tonga Vulipola
Wuz up, this is Tonga aka Tongan Thug. I was born June 5th 1985, brought up in a part of East Palo Alto known as the village. I became involved with filmmaking when I first joined a Pacific Islander outreach program with Mike Uhila, then I came to OICWS’s SASSY youth programs where I became part of the Young Media Activists Crew, making my first video project entitled Life in da small town. I like filmmaking be there are no Pacific Islander producers, and I want to be a first for the Polynesian community. Working on my video gave me something to do instead of being back in the streets doing things that I’d rather leave behind. It takes certain people numerous times to go to jail to finally open their eyes, but for me...it only took me one time. Now, I’m trying to counsel kids that have similar problems. I want to help them not fall into the same traps I fell in. Becoming a filmmaker helped me to change my negative actions into positive ones; like working hard to get my high school diploma and pursue college. I see birth and filmmaking as a creation of life. With filmmaking, I get to choose images to show people what I am truly about.

Sassy Video Youth Program
The School After School for Successful Youth (SASSY) program at OICW digital video class (aka Youth Media Activists Crew ) promotes youth expression, self –empowerment and positive elevation through videos written and produced by East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Redwood City youth ages 15-18.

Harun Farocki
Born in 1944 at Soekabumie on the island of Java, Harun Farocki studied film at the Berlin Film und Fernsehakademie. Since1965, he's made over seventy films, spanning a wide range of genres. Most of Farocki's films are "essays": they deal, mostly, with socio-political issues from a resolutely subjective point of view and an ironic determination to interrogate the status of images. In this context, it's hardly surprising that a number of his works are montage films in which the filmmaker reworks material such as newsreel, archive footage and film extracts.

From 1973 to 1984, he was an editor at the fiercely independent magazine Filmkritik which finally closed due to lack of resources. In 1969, he established his credentials as a political provocateur with Nicht löschbares Feuer which deconstructs the production process for napalm B in a relentless, dispassionate manner. For more information on films he has since made, see the list below. It offers a selected bibliogrpahy of his work.