Category Archives: Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

Anti-Graffiti Enforcement Returns to Seattle Streets (and Walls)

The SPD will decide whose public art is or is not a crime.

by Carolyn Bick

Last June, a U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction barring the City of Seattle from enforcing its anti-graffiti ordinance. The case came before the courts as part of an ongoing suit involving protests against police violence in early 2021. The case specifically regards the messages written in chalk and charcoal on the East Precinct during the protests. 

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Arts & Culture

Seattle Black Film Festival Is Back With a Slate of Thought-Provoking Films

by Jas Keimig

A chaotically sweet tale of a couple and their cat. A poetic documentary about creativity and the prison system. A celebration of a classic cowboy comedy. 

Those are some of the stories that will play out on screen at the 21st annual Seattle Black Film Festival (SBFF) from April 25–28. Hosted at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute and Washington Hall in the Central District with a selection of movies available online, this year’s iteration of SBFF will include over 60 feature-length and short films. Organizers have pulled together work centered around the theme of carceral, spiritual, and imaginative liberation. 

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Arts & Culture

dani tirrell’s New Piece ‘Leviticus’ Puts Black Queer Joy on Center Stage

by Jas Keimig

In January 1972, Aretha Franklin took the stage at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

Backed by Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir, Franklin sang the gamut of gospel hymns and spirituals, moving all in attendance to tears, to awe, to ecstatic cries. The sweaty, tearful, emotional affair was captured on the 1972 live album Amazing Grace and subsequently in the long-delayed concert film of the same name.

During the pandemic, choreographer and dancer dani tirrell watched the documentary, moved by Franklin and gospel music’s raw power.

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Arts & Culture

PONGO POETRY | Who I Am and Who I Want to Be

Pongo Poetry Project’s mission is to engage youth in writing poetry to inspire healing and growth. For over 20 years, Pongo has mentored poetry with youth at the Clark Children & Family Justice Center (CCFJC), King County’s juvenile detention facility.

Many CCFJC residents are Youth of Color who have endured traumatic experiences in the form of abuse, neglect, and exposure to violence. These incidents have been caused and exacerbated by community disinvestment, systemic racism, and other forms of institutional oppression. In collaboration with CCFJC staff, Pongo poetry writing offers CCFJC youth a vehicle for self-discovery and creative expression that inspires recovery and healing.

Through this special bimonthly column in partnership with the South Seattle Emerald, Pongo invites readers to bear witness to the pain, resilience, and creative capacity of youth whose voices and perspectives are too often relegated to the periphery. To learn more about Pongo’s work, join its GiveBig campaign today.

Freedom

by a young person at CCFJC

What I can do when I’m a free man.
I could do pretty much whatever I want.
I could leave whenever I want.
I could cook whenever I want.

I could be with my family.
I could play with my dog.
I could just be free.

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Arts & Culture

Q&A: Sasha LaPointe Reflects on Belonging and Genocide in ‘Thunder Song’

The Coast Salish writer’s new book of essays builds on her previous memoir.

by Agueda Pacheco Flores

When Sasha LaPointe looks at iconic places around Puget Sound, whether it’s downtown Seattle or Elliott Bay, her first thoughts aren’t about how they’re the “birthplace” of Nirvana or Starbucks. No. She thinks of things that aren’t immediately apparent to the non-Native eye.

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Arts & Culture

Shin Yu Pai’s Poetry in Place Campaign Brings Poetry to Seattle’s Streets

by Jas Keimig

In the lush greenery of the Central District, a lavender poster on the home-turned-art-gallery Wa Na Wari’s front porch is visible from the sidewalk.

Upon closer inspection, it asks in a giant font, “How you doing?” then beckons, “Come take a seat.” At the bottom of the poster is the poem from which those two lines came — “The Visit” by storyteller and playwright Kathya Alexander. 

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Arts & Culture

‘Problemista’ Captures the Absurdity of the Immigrant Experience in the U.S.

by Agueda Pacheco Flores

There’s a scene in the movie Problemista when the narrator explains the work visa immigration process in the U.S. When an employer stops sponsoring a worker, that person has a limited amount of time to find a new sponsor before getting deported. In the film, when their time runs out, that person simply fades away wherever they are, doing whatever they may be doing. Everything they were working toward is instantly taken away from them, or, rather, they are taken away from their dreams.

For Alejandro, this is the problem. 

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Arts & Culture

Reagan E.J. Jackson’s ‘Still True’ Is a Snapshot of Seattle During a Decade of Great Change

The writer and activist’s new book brings together 10 years of articles reporting on various facets of the city and the world.

by Jas Keimig

Late last month, writer, artist, and activist Reagan E.J. Jackson released Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist, an expansive book published by Hinton Publishing that brings together a decade’s worth of stories Jackson has written for outlets like The Seattle Globalist, the South Seattle Emerald, and Crosscut. 

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Arts & Culture

Learn About Washington’s Nuclear Waste at the International Uranium Film Festival

‘Richland’ delves into Hanford’s lasting legacy: an overwhelming radioactive cleanup challenge.

by Glen Milner

The International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) — dedicated to nuclear issues worldwide — runs from Friday, April 12, to Sunday, April 14, at the Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) at 1515 12th Ave. The festival’s 2024 U.S. tour began on March 7 in Window Rock, Arizona, the capital of the Navajo (Diné) Nation, with respect for the Native American Peoples who are suffering most from the consequences of uranium mining and nuclear testing. The IUFF is showing films in over 10 U.S. cities and in Vancouver, B.C. The selection of films is chosen to address nuclear activities in that part of the country — including the use of nuclear mining, nuclear power, nuclear weapons and testing, and nuclear waste.

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Arts & Culture

Arts in the South End: April 2024 Roundup

by Jas Keimig

Ahhh — April! The beautiful first official month of spring and longer daylight hours. Use this burst of energy to get involved in all the cool things going down in the South End this month. There’s Seattle Civic Poet Shin Yu Pai’s public poetry campaign, a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about Iranian English-language learners, as well as a solar eclipse. Protect your eyes! Read on for more!

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