WhO WE ARE
Community Milpa grown by Charlotte Saenz and others in Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland (photo by Charlotte)
the techno-tamaladas are
Many, many named & unnamed human and more than human participants, collaborators & volunteers; tamale makers & tamale lovers; community members, advisors, activists, artists & tech folks; future, past, & present knowledge bearers; photographers, & videographers; water, soil, compost, ants, bees & other pollinators; sun & rain; alkaline ash, slaked lime & cal; site hosts, funders & general contributors
Community Milpa grown by Praba Pilar, Vickie Jo Sowell and others at Big Daddy’s Rejuvenating Community Garden (photo by Praba)
Praba Pilar
Founder, project director, and lead artist Praba Pilar is a diasporic Colombian mestiza/Muisca artist disrupting the contemporary ‘Cult of the Techno-Logic’ through performances, digital and electronic installations, participatory workshops, and experimental public talks.
The Techno-Tamaladas are part of Queercornu(c/t)opia - a series of works with corn that queer the utopic, the planetary, entanglements, desire, and the ethics of care. These projects embrace temporary states: of utopias and cornucopias; of wonder; of dystopias, alienation and horror; of refusals, emergences, and possibilities. For more info, please visit her website at https://www.prabapilar.com/
Photograph from Milpa Webinar, October 2020
Charlotte Sáenz
Project collaborator Charlotte Maria Sáenz joined the Techno-Tamaladas in 2020 as a collaborator and advisor.
Sáenz seeks to dislodge dominant narratives, expand perspectives, and grow common sense with her human and non-human communities. Towards these ends she tends an urban milpa, makes tortillas, and researches Zapatista pedagogies of the seed as a doctoral researcher at ECOSUR in Chiapas, Mexico. She also teaches Interdisciplinary studies in an alternative Bachelors Completion Program at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. Over the past 25 years she’s worked in diverse media arts, cultural, and political education programs in refugee camps, schools, streets, and traveling programs.
Photograph from Milpa Webinar, October 2020
BEN SIMMONS
Project collaborator Ben Simmons joined the Techno-Tamaladas in 2020 as a collaborator and advisor.
Simmons is an Oakland based gay African-American video and media artist originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a long term HIV+ survivor, was trained in medical surgical nursing in a short stint with the Navy, and before retiring, worked for 10 years at John George Psychiatric Hospital in San Leandro as the night charge nurse.
Photograph from Milpa Webinar, October 2020
PARTNERS
From April - September of 2021, The Techno-Tamaladas are working with MACLA/Movimiento de Arte Latino Americano, through their inaugural Cultura Power Fellowship. We’ll be engaging the community in San Jose and the larger Bay area every month.
This project is co-produced with Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS. Our other partners include working with Big Daddy’s Rejuvenating Community Garden in Emeryville, California and artist/master gardener Vickie Jo Sowell over 2020, and with ECAP Food Bank on San Pablo Avenue, Emeryville, California over 2019. The Techno-Tamaladas were seeded at a Grace Performance Space residency in upstate New York in May 2018, many thanks to Adam Zaretsky for support.
~ si se puede ~
when doing the Techno-Tamaladas with ECAP food bank on the Emeryville/Oakland border, ECAP let us know that what they most needed was unrestricted cash donations to repair and do maintenance on vehicles, pay for gas to deliver food, and much more so they could continue giving away tons of food to low income people weekly. Together with artist Vickie Jo Sowell, we formed an ad hoc fundraising committee to bring in unrestricted cash. Working with director Bobby Miller, founder Nellie Hansen, and many others including volunteers and Emeryville City Council members, the ad hoc committee was able to bring in $80,000 in unrestricted cash by the end of December, 2020. No one should go hungry in the Bay Area, and ECAP is doing it’s part sharing food as a fully volunteer organization.
GRACIAS, GRACIAS, GRACIAS
Generous support for this project has been awarded by:
2021, MACLA/Movimiento de Arte Latino Americano’s Cultura Power Fellowship
2020, Headlands Center for the Arts’ Community Rapid Response Fund
2019, California Arts Council’s Local Impact Award
2019, City of Emeryville’s Community Grants Program
2019, funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.