“Mobile Light Art Station” on Earth Day (Oakland)

Immersive Arts Alliance (IAA) presents ambitious works of public art in the Bay Area, most recently the first Oakland Festival of Immersive Arts in July 2022. This spring, IAA will be rolling up to a corner near you in San Francisco and Oakland with projectors and audio equipment, displaying works of light art by five Bay Area artists in a program it calls the Mobile Light Art Station. Participating artists include Zeina Barakeh, Elaine Buckholtz, Can Buyukberber, Davey Whitecraft, and Ian Winters.

The selected works by the five artists depict a meeting point of the human enterprise and the natural world with arresting and sometimes unexpected consequences. Davey Whitecraft’s Altogether Now explores a new mode of working with landscape and proposes a world that operates with different physics and impossible geometries. Can Buyukberber, a pioneer of digital art, contributes METAXY, a recent work which functions as a time capsule sent to a distant future.

Free events will take place in March and April with stops on both sides of the Bay and do not require reservations.

• Friday, March 3, 2023 from 7pm to 9pm in downtown Oakland
• Thursday, April 13, 2023, 8-9:30pm, Boeddeker Park in San Francisco’s Tenderloin at Jones and Eddy
• Friday, April 22, 2023, 5pm – 10pm, 1724 7th Street, adjacent to the West Oakland BART Station

Oakland Great Wall – Friday, March 3, 2023
The first stop takes place Friday, March 3, 2023 from 7pm to 9pm in downtown Oakland, on what became known as “The Great Wall of Oakland” when the former ProArts Gallery activated the wall of a building at 415 West Grand. In partnership with Nomadic Press, Oakland Poet Laureate Ayodele Nzinga will perform, and Roberto Bedoya, author of The Ballad of Cholo Dandy and Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Oakland, will read from his work. Oakland School of the Arts will add a Hyphy-inspired Hip hop dance with additional performances from its music and spoken word programs. Oakland Central is generously providing audio equipment for this presentation.

• Friday March 3 – 7pm to 9pm
• 415 W. Grand between Broadway and Telegraph
• DOWNTOWN OAKLAND

San Francisco Tenderloin, Thursday, April 13, 2023
In April, the Mobile Light Art Station moves to Boeddeker Park as part of the Tenderloin Arts Festival. Our partners are CounterPulse, Tenderloin Museum, Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery & Vita Brevis Club. Our MC will be Saharla Vetsch, aka Major Hammy (dancer, performance artist, and drag king). Performers at this event include musician-composer Zachary Watkins (of the Center for New Music), and Hope Mohr (dancer, choreographer) with Tegan Schwab-Alavi (dancer).

• Thursday April 13 – 8pm to 9:30pm
• Boeddeker Park in San Francisco’s
• TENDERLOIN (Jones and Eddy)

West Oakland BART, Saturday, April 22, 2023
Returning to Oakland on Earth Day, the Mobile Light Art Station touches down at Esther’s Orbit Room, a club that hosted Tina Turner, Etta James, B.B. King, and Al Green in its heyday. IAA is partnering with the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) on illumination of the club & an open-air dance party. This party celebrates EB PREC’s acquisition of the Orbit Room and adjacent properties, being renovated as a gathering place & center of activism for the community. The Crucible, also on the 7th St, corridor, adds to the awesomeness. .

• Saturday April 22 (Earth Day) – 5pm – 10pm
• Esther’s Orbit Room
• 1724 7th Street, adjacent to the West Oakland BART Station
• OAKLAND