The APIC arts event for Winter 2018 was a concert by Musicians from Marlboro at the Hopkins Center and a post-concert discussion and social at Murphy’s on the Green. APIC helped attendees with ticket costs for the concert and provided food at the discussion. Mark Nelson, Ph.D., an area musicologist who had recently taught a class at the Upper Valley Music Center about the works in the concert (Beethoven, Penderecki, and Brahms (the Clarinet Quintet)), led the lively discussion, which included learning about the attendees, the works themselves, Indian classical music, how to listen to music, and the nature of art.

On 18 January 2018 APIC, along with IDE, the Asian and Asian American LLC, and EmpowHER, sponsored a showing of The Chinese Exclusion Act, a documentary by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu about the first and only U.S. immigration legislation to target (and ban) one specific racenicital group and the events that led up to it. The documentary, which was to have its TV premiere on PBS later in 2018, was co-produced and provided by CAAM, the Center for Asian American Media. Attendance was good, with students, both undergraduate and graduate, Dartmouth staff, Dartmouth faculty, community members, and families. After the screening, Professor Jennifer Miller of the History Department gave some remarks, including placing those historical events in context with current national events, and then everyone adjourned to the lobby outside of Filene Auditorium for Chinese appetizers and sushi and discussion. Multiple attendees commented that they had learned things about U.S. history that they had known nothing or little about previously.

As APIC’s community service for Fall 2017, Reina Kato Lansigan, Andrila Hait, Siva Kandasamy, Da-Shih Hu, and Shiella Cervantes prepared chili for the guests and staff of David’s House, the home-away-from-home for families of children receiving care at DHMC, on 29 November. Reina Kato Lansigan procured and delivered the foodstuffs, including Shiella’s proprietary seasoning mix. Andrila and Siva did the food prep, and Da-Shih (meat chili), Shiella (vegetarian chili), and Siva (kitchen factotum) engaged in a mini chili cook-off while they conversed with the guests. The meat chili won the cook-off, but all five participants felt successful in giving to the worthwhile organization.

Coming to campus next week:

The Office of Institutional Diversity & Equity is proud to sponsor a live performance by Kimi Maeda titled “Bend” on Wednesday, February 24 from 4 – 5:30 PM in Loew Auditorium, Black Family Visual Arts Center. This is a free event and open to the public.

“Bend” deals with the Japanese American internment camps, identity, art, and the fragility of memory. Kimi recently received a grant from the Japanese American Citizens League to bring “Bend” to colleges and universities for free in the New England area around the Day of Remembrance (February 19, 2016).

If memory forms our personal identity and shared memory forms our cultural and even racial identity, what does it mean when memories and our homes are lost? “Bend” explores this question by examining the lives of two men interned in a Japanese American Relocation Camp during World War II: the artist’s father, an Asian art historian who is currently suffering from dementia, and the subject of his research, Isamu Noguchi, a half-Japanese-half-American sculptor. Using sand as her canvas and brooms, rakes, and blocks of wood as her brushes, Kimi Maeda transforms image after image, calling to mind the Arizona desert where Robert Maeda was interned, Noguchi’s landscape designs, as well as Zen rock gardens. She combines live feed video projection of these drawings with archival footage so that in the end all that is left is the audience’s memory of the performance.

For more details, please visit Kimi’s webpage.

We hope to see you there!

— The Office of Institutional Diversity & Equity Team

This weekend, the Dartmouth Chinese Students and Scholars Association is hosting its annual Chinese New Year celebration.

Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) is the most important festival in China, a celebration once a year that you don’t want to miss out. You’ll have a grand feast to marvelous Chinese performances and delicious Chinese food. Come and enjoy beautiful songs, fabulous piano performance, and various dances from elegant traditional ones to hot modern ones.

Date: 7pm, February 6th
Location: Collis Common Ground

For more information, see Vox Daily.

Miwa Matreyek’s multimedia performance “This World Made Itself” will be presented in two shows at the Hop’s Warner Bentley Theater tomorrow, Friday, October 10.

For performance and ticket information, see the Hop’s website.

A multimedia performance artist from Los Angeles, Matreyek merges breathtaking digital animation with intricate, real-time shadow play for an experience both sophisticated and full of wonder. This World follows the history of the earth—from the universe’s first spark to the complex, accelerated present. With child-like awe, Matreyek’s “everywoman” silhouette moves through a vivid, dream-like panorama in which the fecund natural world gives way to the stark human-made one.

To submit additional events that may be of interest to the APIC community, please email the APIC account.