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Anti-Zebra T-Shirts, Printed by Elmo
Short film of Elmo Morales printing Community High School anti-zebra t-shirts for the feature-length documentary Welcome to Commie High from 7 Cylinders Studio.
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AADL Talks to: Jay Stielstra
In this episode, AADL Talks to Ann Arbor playwright, coach, teacher, and songwriter, Jay Stielstra. Jay discusses his life and work as a teacher and a coach in the Ann Arbor Public Schools; how he became a playwright without ever having been backstage; and how a kid from Ludington, Michigan who just wanted to be a football coach ended up being one of Ann Arbor's most prominent singer-songwriters.
Historical articles and photographs about Jay Stielstra in our Community Collections
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AADL Productions Podcast: Lola Jones and Carol Gibson
Lola Jones and Carol Gibson are well-known to anyone familiar with Ann Arbor history. Over the past 30 years they have sought out and documented the history of the African American experience in Ann Arbor through a series of projects under the moniker Another Ann Arbor; it is largely through their work that the Ann Arbor African American story is a part of our shared community identity. Lola and Carol stopped by the library to talk with us one day about the work they have done over the years and where they are headed next. They shared with us some of the interesting people and events they have learned about and brought to the community in their television program, their documentaries, and their book. You can now watch one of their documentaries online at aadl.org in our video collection. A Woman's Town was produced in 1991 and tells the story of Ann Arbor through the voices of prominent African American women.
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Rasa Festival | Music from the East and the West
Well known Indian and western musicians come together to talk about the concepts behind Indian and western music, and how they collaborate to create new music. This is accompanied by a short concert where they will present music based on these concepts.
This event was held in partnership with the 2019 Rasa Festival, an innovative India-themed multi-arts festival, produced by Akshara. The Rasa Festival is held annually in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti in September and is designed to promote a deeper awareness and appreciation for the effulgent richness and abundance of cultural heritage that stems from India. It is multi-arts and multi-disciplinary, presenting traditional as well as cutting edge work in performing, visual, literary, media/films, and culinary arts, in partnership with prominent Ann Arbor arts organizations.
Participating artists in the festival are local, national, and international Indo-American artists, artists from India as well as those who are highly inspired by Indian culture. It is a collaborative initiative, working through partnerships with key local organizations such as the Washtenaw Community College, Kerrytown Concert House, the Riverside Arts Center, and Literati Bookstore.
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Aaron Foley
Aaron Foley is an author, editor, Detroit native and current resident. He is the author of the 2015 book How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass and editor of the 2017 anthology "The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook." Currently, he is the chief storyteller for the City of Detroit government. Previously, he was editor of BLAC Detroit Magazine, and a contributor to several local and national news outlets, including Jalopnik, CNN, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed and Reuters. Foley draws on a wealth of knowledge about the city and discusses his life and career through an insightful perspective that is sure to educate and entertain.
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"Locomotive/Brilliant Corn" | Miles Okazaki
Miles Okazaki is the first artist to record all of Thelonious Monk's music on a solo instrument. In this concert he will be presenting selections from his 2018 album "WORK," a five-hour performance of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk for solo guitar, praised by critic Nate Chinen as “an act of immersive scholarship and exhaustive scope. . . a singular achievement,” and selected by the New York Times as one of the best albums of 2018, a “monumental statement of devotion.”
Check out the Pulp interview with Miles Okazaki.
Okazaki has released four albums of original compositions over the last 12 years; he has taught guitar and rhythmic theory at the University of Michigan for five years.
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Author Event | Bryan Thao Worra
Experience "Before We Remember We Dream"—a performance from the new book of Lao American speculative poetry by Bryan Thao Worra, a 2019 Joyce Fellow and a 2009 National Endowment of the Arts Fellow in Literature.
Bryan Thao Worra's latest collection draws on over 30 years of writing in the Midwest and around the world, covering diverse subjects from CIA Secret Wars to growing up Asian American on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, meditations on Southeast Asian ghosts and mythology, Blade Runner, Buddhist monks and modern romance. And an occasional dinosaur or two.
Bryan Thao Worra is a Minnesota-based writer and the author of over 6 books. The President of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, he holds over 20 awards for his writing and represented the nation of Laos as a Cultural Olympian during the 2012 London Summer Games. He was appointed by the Governor of Minnesota to the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans to advise the state legislature and has presented work for the Smithsonian, the Minneapolis Institute for Art, San Diego Comic Con, the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival, and the national Southeast Asian American Studies Conference, among others.
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Nerd Nite #57 - How to Survive Making a Graphic Novel With Your Spouse
Navigating a relationship with your spouse or partner can be challenging enough–so why would you willingly work together on a project that can take a year or more to complete? Anne and Jerzy Drozd, authors of Science Comics: Rockets, explore how they handled the creative challenges of making a nonfiction comic about science and answer the most important question facing humanity today: WHO. DID. WHAT.
About Anne:
Anne Drozd is a public librarian by day and a cartoonist by night. She’s an avid space exploration enthusiast and a card holding member of the Planetary Society. Her favorite NASA mission is Apollo 12. Anne helps to introduce people to comics through her work at the Ann Arbor District Library and as co-organizer of the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival. Follow her @ethelfred.
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A Conversation With Chef and Writer Tunde Wey
Nigerian-born chef and writer Tunde Wey opened a restaurant in Detroit in 2013. A year later, realizing that the influx of capital to the city was not contributing to an inclusive revival but to the profit of those already "fluent in the language of privilege," Tunde left the restaurant and moved to New Orleans.
He now travels around the country holding dinners, using food as a medium to have conversations about race, equity, and cultural values. Recently, the has received national press for Saarti, his lunch counter in New Orleans where white patrons were asked to pay $30 per plate and people of color were charged $12 per plate as a way to call attention to racial wealth disparity. Participants of color could “opt-in” to receive the profit redistribution.
In this video, artist and Stamps School Professor Rebekah Modrak (whose works, such as Rethink Shinola, critically intervene in consumption) moderates a conversation with Tunde about his work as a chef, his decision to use food as provocation, the possibility of transforming consumptive acts through dinners and pop-up restaurants, discriminatory development, racial wealth disparity, and the importance of self-determination in affecting the outcomes of your life and community. While in Ann Arbor, Wey also hosted two private dinners for local residents and advocates concerned with equity and race and offered food truck conversations for four nights.
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Poetry Event: Marcus Wicker
Marcus Wicker is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, The Missouri Review's Miller Audio Prize, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Join us as he discusses his life, his poetry, and his newest collection Silencer.