Nochtlaca: Todos, todos, todos
Soundwave guest curator Christo Oropeza presents vocalist San Cha alongside Guillermo Galindo’s hand-made instruments from objects found at the border, in Nochtlaca: Todos, todos, todos. This program explores how borders, walls, and unity looks, feels, and sounds like, in the face of our polarized times. The artists will emphasize importance of sound as a vehicle for a shared cathartic experience. The evening also features Persia, beloved SF Drag Queen, who will create a special set of performances to accompany San Cha and Guillermo’s work.
About Soundwave
Soundwave is a Bay Area festival featuring the most captivating sound art and performance experiences. This year the festival’s theme is “time” and will feature art parties, performance, dance, video, and music for our boldest, most interdisciplinary festival to date. Artists explore subjects like intergenerational history, the cultivation of safe spaces for healing and joy within black, brown, and queer communities, art grown out of migration and displacement, and our current political reality.
Curator Statement
Art is a powerful tool to connect with other human beings, and to shine a light on things that are unseen. To create an opportunity for respectful dialogue, in challenging times, to work towards a shared better future. “Art can go where other things cannot,” to quote artist Tania Bruguera. Art provides meaningful expressions of symbolic justice. As artists, we feel committed to this mission in our works. We believe that in this divisive moment in our history, we can use this as a platform to unite and to converse about our shared values, hope for the future and explore what is truly important to us as a local, global community of thoughtful, free people – everyone, Nochtlaca.
Borders, walls (physical & psychological), and a disruptive “us vs. them” narrative has taken root in our lifetime. It is under this premise that we will engage the space and what unity looks, feels, and sounds like, in the face of this polarized narrative. The importance of sound as a vehicle for a shared cathartic experience drives us to bring and create beauty and a positive narrative to shine light during difficult times.
Bringing together vocalist San Cha with Guillermo Galindo’s hand-made instruments from objects found at the border, we will create a sonic experience that resonates with the voices of the unseen, the unheard. Persia, our beloved SF Drag Queen, will create a special set of performances to accompany San Cha and Guillermo’s work, as we bring brown and queer voices to the forefront and celebrate unity. We will surround ourselves with the binding element of unity, in face of the polarization that our world is facing today.
Artist Bio
With a pedigree from performances at the late, iconic Esta Noche, Per Sia’s trajectory has gone on to include art curation, stand-up, television, modeling, and maybe a quinceañera or two, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and México. Currently, she is a regular performer in the nationally acclaimed “Drag Queen Story Hour” as well as an educator in residence at the Children’s After School Arts (CASA) program in the San Francisco Unified School District recently profiled on KQED Arts and National Public Radio.