41 Ross Artist-in-Residence

The Chinese Culture Center (CCC) proudly presents 41 Ross Artist-in-Residence, an exchange platform for emerging API artists to develop work and expand on community-based practices located in SF’s Chinatown. Headquartered at 41 Ross, the Artist-in-Residence program builds upon CCC’s unique decade-long history in providing a platform for the artists’ experimental, conceptual, and research-based practices in an environment that strikes the balance between foregrounding artistic exploration, working within a cultural community, and promoting exchange amongst wider audiences.

Artists are invited to develop, produce, and present projects in Chinatown while supporting the social and economic recovery in the neighborhood; each artist will also receive mentorship from a CCC alumni artist. The first season of the program will feature artists working in futurist and speculative thinking, feminist discourse, and communal practices.

Follow this page & @41.ross for public programs, behind-the-scenes, and more

CURRENT
March 1, 2023 - August 13, 2023
Generation Chinatown | Youth Artist Residency Program

Generation Chinatown is a youth artist in residence program, designed to foster a learning space for high school aged youth to explore a diverse range of creative practices, build leadership skills, and create art activations to enhance neighborhood recovery and foster youth innovation. The CCC believes the arts is a powerful force in community development and this starts with building creative capacity to inspire different generations to invest in their neighborhood’s future through arts and culture.

Learn More

PAST
November 15, 2022 - February 15, 2023
The Rabbit Hole | Lucky Rabbit Pictures

As the newest 41 Ross Artist-in-Residence, Lucky Rabbit Pictures transformed 41 Ross into "The Rabbit Hole", an art space dedicated to supporting arts + culture and Chinatown businesses by bridging the gap between monolingual Chinatown residents and Chinese-Americans. Public programming includes open houses, film screenings + workshops, and a youth art exhibition.

In addition, Lucky Rabbit Pictures will be producing a documentary surrounding the impending demolition of the Portsmouth Square Bridge (the famous “Chinabanks Bridge,”) and the inhabitants of this urban jungle: the Chinese elderly, skaters, and the pigeons. In addition, they will be developing a television series - an anthology science fiction series set in the California ghost town Locke -- the last rural Chinatown in America. Inspired by 'The Twilight Zone,' the series will explore the only town made by the Chinese for the Chinese.

"There is a gap in understanding between the public (and even American born Asians) with Asians from Asia. I want to explore how we can find common ground, and create art that grants others access to unravel their identity like I am having right now. Maybe in this way we can create a new community." - Spencer Tsang

Programs:

- December 9th

The Rabbit Hole Open House

- January 8th

Open House #1

Sunday, January 8th 12-4PM

Celebrate the first open house of the year, featuring artist-led pop-ups by visual artist @soleoado and vintage reseller @homersgoods and music by DJ NIKO 💽 The space will be open to the public to interact with and have fun. Come hang out and vibe at the Rabbit Hole this weekend! Admission is proof of purchase from a Chinatown business worth $5 or more.

Check back soon or follow at @41.ross!

About Lucky Rabbit Pictures:

Lucky Rabbit Pictures is an independent production company directing narrative films, commercials, music videos and documentaries. We are also a movement interested in paving our own way in the media industry.

We aim to create stunning films with strong narratives because we believe everyone has a story. We are infatuated with the wonder existing outside of the viewing screen as much as what is happening within, upheld by our community-first mindset (we all can eat). Our unique approach has led us to festival success, securing grant funding for larger projects, artist residencies, and working with some of the most unique collaborators within a year of our founding.

October 10 – 31
Simple Interactions | soundpocket, Andio Lai and Tsang Hoi-yu
「簡單交往」| 聲音掏腰包、黎仲民和曾凱渝

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“Simple Interactions” is an artist residency and community outreach programme that connects Hong Kong-based artists Andio Lai and Tsang Hoi-yu, and soundpocket with the San Francisco Chinatown community. Flying in from 6927 miles away, the first-timers are ready to indulge themselves in this familiar yet eccentric neighborhood. Fascinated by transforming ready-made objects into interactive instruments, Lai will work on a series of sound objects with items collected from the locals. He will also look into the history of the area’s daily sound technologies, such as the telephone exchange in San Francisco Chinatown from before the rotary dial phone was introduced in the late 40s. Tsang’s interest in individuals forming a collective leads her to research the immigrants’ individual patterns of speech and their forms of communication in relation to the cultural context of Chinatown. She will interview residents in their native languages and present her findings as they emerge at 41 Ross. soundpocket will present the ongoing Sound Scoop project by bringing sounds from Hong Kong to San Francisco Chinatown during the residency.

藝術家駐留和社區外展計劃「簡單交往」將連繫香港藝術家黎仲民、曾凱渝及聲音掏腰包與三藩市唐人街的社區。飛越 6927 英哩，初次探訪三藩市的兩位藝術家已準備好投身於這個既熟悉又新奇的社區。黎仲民熱愛將現成物轉化成具互動性的樂器，他將收集當地居民的物品來製作一系列聲音物件。同時，他亦會研究日常聲音技術的歷史，例如在撥號電話於 1940 年代後期推出之前，舊金山唐人街的人手電話接駁系統。基於對個體如何組成群體之過程的興趣，曾凱渝將進行有關唐人街移民的個人言說方式、溝通和該社區文化背景的研究。她將以街坊的母語訪問他們，並在舊呂宋巷 41 持續地展示她的發現。聲音掏腰包則會展示一直進行的「細聲公」項目，在駐留期間把香港的聲音帶到三藩市唐人街。

Programs

- October 15th -29th

soundpocket: OPEN STUDIO 工作室開放

- October 26th - 29th

soundpocket: SOUND SCOOP 細聲公

- October 29th

soundpocket: ARTIST SHARING 藝術家分享

soundpocket

soundpocket is a registered charity founded in 2008. It promotes the art of sound and listening and its research and education in Hong Kong.

The Library by soundpocket is a website of sounds that tell stories about Hong Kong culture and society. It aims at creating a community of active listeners who are curious about listening as a way of knowing ourselves and each other. It also aims at contributing to our public culture of listening.

www.soundpocket.org.hk | www.thelibrarybysoundpocket.org.hk

Tsang Hoi-yu

Freelancer. Tsang currently participates in sound and performing art creations.

As Simone Weil said in Oppression and Liberty: “They cannot stop us from working towards a clear comprehension of the object of our efforts, so that, if we cannot accomplish that which we will, we may at least have willed it, and not just have blindly wished for it; and, on the other hand, our weakness may indeed prevent us from winning, but not from comprehending the force by which we are crushed. Nothing in the world can prevent us from thinking clearly.”

Andio Lai Chung Man

Andio Lai Chung Man is interested in making sound objects and machine art, some are
built to be used in his sonic performances. He obtained BA (Hons) in Creative Media,
School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong & MA in Fine Arts at The
Chinese University of Hong Kong.Through the practice of Media Archeology, studying
tools development and the relative history of interfaces, his works focus on the subject
matter of experimental instrument, playing, toys and human-machine relation.

June 15th - September 15th

Connie Zheng: Table to Farm | 鄭韞欣: 從餐桌到農場

Working with the space in "real-time" through seasonal changes and festivities, Connie will play with the temporal affect of the community and its cultural practices. She envisions the programs in the form of communal art & culture making which includes but not limited to experimental video screening & community food pairing, living neighborhood art map, special Autumn Moom Festival collaboration, etc.

“At 41 Ross, I hope to learn how to become a more effective advocate for the Chinatown community — and to deepen my creative practice by facilitating aesthetically and conceptually rich engagements that can also support local residents in material ways. When I used to live in San Francisco, I lived on the edge of Chinatown for five of those years, and walked through the neighborhood almost every day. I'm excited to form deeper connections with a vital community and place that have reminded me of home and family, and which have helped to lay the foundation for diasporic AAPI communities on the local, state and national level.” - Connie Zheng

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Programs

- September 8th

Connie Zheng: Mooncake Harvest Party

- August 18th, August 25th, and September 1st

Connie Zheng: Cinematic Harvest - Food + Film Pairing

- July 28th

Connie Zheng: Table to Farm - Soft Opening

About Connie Zheng:

Connie Zheng is a Chinese-born artist, writer and filmmaker based out of xučyun / Oakland, California. Projects such as large-scale maps, speculative seed exchanges, seed-making workshops, and experimental films are strategies for navigating diasporic memory, the continued weight of history and the possibilities for collective imagining amidst ongoing and future ecological transformations. Her work pays particular attention to participatory scenarios and speculative fictions involving interactions between landscapes, humans and more-than-human worlds. Zheng has exhibited work nationally and internationally, through venues such as the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Asian Art Museum, Singapore Art Week, and the IMPAKT Festival in the Netherlands. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and the Minnesota Street Project Foundation, among others, and was the inaugural recipient of the Joint Space Award. She recently published a chapter in the Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change, and her work is held in the collections of the Kadist Foundation and the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University. She graduated with BAs in Economics and English from Brown University, an MFA in Art Practice from the University of California — Berkeley, and is currently a PhD student in Visual Studies at the University of California — Santa Cruz.

March 1st - May 31st

"Leymusoom Sarangbang" x Heesoo Kwon | 六毋神 x 權希樹

"Leymusoom Sarangbang" is a technology and social practice project that transforms 41 Ross into a spiritual space and a “pop-up park” to explore womxn/queer liberation. The artist performs communal rituals in parallel with a digital utopia. The residency program expands on her continued work exploring her personal history and rapidly changing cultural landscape with emerging technologies. Heesoo collaborated with Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) Youths, neighboring businesses, and cultural groups.

“As the first 41 Ross artist in residence, I feel so honored and so grateful for all the help and support along the way. I felt like I’m the first one ever writing history in a book, to start the new fun journey in Ross alley. My residency here really expanded my practice. I've never had such a deep connection and understanding of a neighborhood in the Bay area before until this opportunity. The immigration stories from the neighbors reminded me of my ancestors too, it inspired me to rethink my practice. For me, Chinatown is the neighborhood that makes me feel like home.“ - Heesoo Kwon

Programs:

April 15th, 2022: Leymusoom SarangBang Grand Opening (레이무숨 사랑방 개장 행사 // 六毋神之舍廊房慶典)

May 6th & May 7th, 2022: Leymusoom Tattoo Ritual

May 26th & May 27th, 2022: SF 아리랑 (SF Arirang)

About Heesoo Kwon:

Heesoo Kwon is a visual artist and anthropologist from South Korea currently based in the Bay Area, California. In 2017, Kwon initiated an autobiographical feminist religion Leymusoom, as an ever-evolving exploration of her family histories and feminist liberation. Kwon received her Masters of Fine Art from UC Berkeley in 2019. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Et Al and Studio 2W, San Francisco; Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley; and CICA Museum and Visual Space Gunmulsai, South Korea. She has participated in group exhibitions at the CICA Museum; BAMPFA, Berkeley; 47 Canal, New York; Chinese Culture Center, San Francisco; Slash Gallery, San Francisco; and Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK, among others. In 2012 Kwon received the Female Inventor of the Year Award from the Korean Intellectual Property Office. Her other accolades include the Young Korean Artist Award from the CICA Museum, a finalist in the 20th Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival, a finalist of the Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme, the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for Photos and Art Practice from UC Berkeley, a finalist of the Queer|Art|Prize of recent works in 2021.

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About Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco

Chinese Culture Center (CCC) is a non-profit arts organization established in 1965. CCC elevates underserved communities and gives voice to equality through education and contemporary art. Rooted in San Francisco’s Chinatown, CCC is a loud and creative voice to uplift social and economical transformation. We provide a safe environment for artists who champion activism, resiliency, and healthy communities. In doing so, we shift dominant narratives, empower change, and reimagine our futures.

Artistic programming at 41 Ross is proudly supported by

Additional Support

#StartSmall, Fleishhacker Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation

San Francisco Grants for the Arts, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, CCC Contemporaries