LAST WEEKEND, the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge took place in downtown San Jose and it was a mammoth cultural achievement, both for the city and SJSU, as well as the public and private sectors—true collaboration as only Silicon Valley can achieve. Some random notes:
• At the festival, the sense of community prevailed above all else. A wide mixture of artists took part—not just big names cruising into town on stipends and not just academics. Local talent was featured much, much more than last time and everybody intermingled. Legendary playwright Luis Valdez spoke at the opening ceremonies and proved he is the only dude anywhere who can defend Robert Graham’s Quetzalcoatl statue in Plaza de Cesar Chavez as “art & technology.” I didn’t take notes, but it had something to do with how the Mayans, not the Hindus, invented the zero and that the statue’s coil represents the sacred spiral dance. Imagine the scene: Luis Valdez—playwright, actor, producer, filmmaker, SJSU graduate and lifelong pal of Cesar Chavez—celebrating what’s commonly ridiculed as the “poop statue” in the park named after Chavez—with all the politicos and corporate bigwigs in the audience. It just doesn’t get any more “San Jose” than that, folks. Wow.
• S.J. has always been a place that looks to the outside for validation and approval while completely ignoring the subcultures and scenarios already existing here, and this festival has the potential to change all that. And to see the city of San Jose finally taking an interest in having a cultural signature of any kind is downright refreshing, to say the least. Walking around during this festival, knowing that this is only the second incarnation of something that will constantly change and grow and adapt, as it should, was awesome. You felt like San Jose was no longer just an adult city with diapers on.
• The SubZero street event all along South First Street on Friday night was by far the bohemian cyberlicious crème de la crème of the entire festival and easily the hippest thing to hit downtown San Jose since the first SoFA Street Fair in 1992. All the galleries showcased tech-related zonked-out works; bands performed on three stages; videos projected on buildings; interactive exhibits flanked three blocks and the widest possible variety of people showed up: kids, adults, corporate types, Burners, artists, politicians, programmers and the lunatic fringe. The entire vibe was high-tech, planetary, abstractly machinic and downright rocking.
• Unfortunately, during the run up to the festival, the phrase “pop culture” emerged in a few radio spots, and all of a sudden it was being billed as “Art, technology and pop culture” for some reason. I would hope that the organizers don’t let this wonderful event degenerate into yet one more colorless dumbed-down “pop culture” event. If this thing winds up on MTV, or if I even start seeing 01SJ shirts on the wall in Hot Topic, then I will be very disappointed. It must continue to be a cutting-edge provocative zonked-out latticework of activity that asks questions, challenges assumptions and does all the things that new media art should do. I don’t want to see a 01SJ jingle wind up in an Audi commercial.
• Now, will the 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge eliminate San Jose’s structural deficit or fill all the potholes? No. Of course not. Nobody anywhere is saying it will. That isn’t the point. The important thing is that this festival at least helps foster a creative class and makes people actually want to be here and create here and work here and stay here. A healthy city needs such things. A healthy economy is at least somewhat intertwined with a healthy cultural environment. A lot of smart people live here and we deserve a better culture than what we already have.
Congratulations to 01SJ and everyone who worked on the festival. By all accounts, this year’s event was a success.
However, your perspective that the City “is finally taking an interest in having a cultural signature of any kind” is a bit misleading. The City actively supports many festivals and at least three of them also help to differentiate San Jose as a unique place where arts and culture thrives within a community-based, innovative context:
Cinequest
Mariachi Festival
Tamale Festival
Cinequest has been pushing the envelope in the area of independent film for years. As a former film and TV producer, and current consultant to the entertainment community, I can attest to the fact that it has become a venue where emerging filmmakers and new technology, especially relative to content distribution, are celebrated and discussed and where indy filmmakers have an opportunity to secure distribution in a marketplace where digital distribution was invented. I’m not aware of any other film festival that tackles the emerging issues that daily impact content distribution the way Cinequest did and does. Sundance was a jonny come lately in that regard compared to Cinequest.
On the other side of the scale is the Tamale Festival, located in San Jose’s East Side. It’s a smaller affair, but in just a few years it has taken off, and folks from all over the Bay Area, as well as the local neighborhood community, have discovered their inner tamale there. It has the potential to grow into a unique culinary event, similar to Gilroy’s Garlic festival, and to introduce San Jose’s vibrant East Side neighborhood to a larger community of Bay Area ethnic food afficionados and the general population.
The mariachi festival has grown into a destination event that celebrates performance, music and dance education, and Mexico’s cultural diversity within a production framework that emphasizes innovation in progamming, outreach and instruction. Here are a few examples:
This year the festival’s creative theme is a celebration of the women pioneers of the genre and the “cancion ranchera” which some liken to Mexico’s version of country music. Whether in the concert hall, in our educational workshops or at our outdoor festival, the accomplishments of the women of mariachi, as musicians within the ensemble, singers in front of the ensemble, teachers of the genre or producers, will be explored, discussed and celebrated. And the unique musicality and poetry of the “cancion racnhera” will also be celebrated in performance and through a more academic lense at our educational workshops.
Another example is in the are of outreach—this year the Festival is launching a new website—http://www.sanjosemariachifestival.com
—that was designed by some of the smartest techies in the valley. The site was constructed after a thorough research into other festival internet venues and combines, we hope, the best of what we saw. Its goal is not only to provide information but to connect the festival’s artists and educational programming to a broader community on the internet and vice versa.
The festival also provides people with an opportunity to enjoy the music and dance performances of local artists (this year in local venues such as hotels and restaurants and at indoor concert venues as well as the outdoor festival) as well as international headliners.
Finally the festival offers something no other cultural festival does in the Bay Area—it gives young performers an outstanding educational experience through our workshops and the opportunity to actually perform what they have learned during the festival on the same stage with some of the best professional artists on the planet. This is always the highlight of the festival—the moment when our workshop students take the stage—several hundred strong—and play and dance their hearts out in front of an audiance of thousands at San Jose State Center’s Arena is always a show stopper—not only because it’s a beautiful expression of everything good about our community but because it reminds all of us—the veteran artists who are back stage and who come out to see what these kids do—the parents, patrons and politicians in the audience, and the festival staff—that the torch can be passed to a new generation and that tradition and heritage is never out of style, especially when it is in the hands of our youth.
All of these festivals, including 01SJ and others such as Jazz—and the City’s other performance cultural organizations such as the ballet (touring in China no less), Teatro Vision, Symphony, Opera, MACLA etc make San Jose unique, because they constantly strive to stretch within their craft and achieve excellance. And their dedication and achievements are being heard and discussed well beyond San Jose.