IAS faculty organize and perform at “Still/Hear: A Healing Concert”

On Friday, May 14, 2021 IAS faculty members Anida Yoeu Ali, Masahiro Sugano, and Naomi Macalalad Bragin co-organized alongside students of Global Media Lab a healing concert to demand an end to Anti-Asian violence.

The healing concert titled “Still/Hear” was a response to the Asian American community’s experiences of erasure, exclusion, and violence through music, song, and poetry. The program served as an alternative event to the annual Alive Performance Festival (cancelled this year due to COVID-19 restrictions). The concert was co-sponsored by UW Bothell’s Diversity Center and received funding from the Critical Acts Artist Residency Program.

The concert featured guest artists including Silong Chhun (DJ Press Play), Chera Amlag, Ching-In Chen, Robert Farid Karimi, Anida Yoeu Ali, and Naomi Macalalad Bragin.

The event was held in Tacoma where Ali and Sugano allowed students from Global Media Lab to transform their garage studio into a concert hall. The event streamed live via Zoom to an audience of 100 participants from around the country.

One student who experienced the concert over Zoom remarked,

“Given that the event was hosted through Zoom, my expectations for quality were not very high. However, I think everyone who hosted the technical part of the event did an incredible job. I was not expecting the many different camera angles we were shown, music being played during break time and in between artists, and the fact that there was a large monitor for the artists to see us too! There were no connection issues, or audio problems, so the performance was portrayed perfectly, it felt almost like I was actually there.”

As part of their final editing assignments, Global Media Lab students edited the multi-camera footage into video documentation, archiving the concert for others to experience.