MEET OUR ALUMNI!
BUILDING 180 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE ALUMNI
Over the years a changing cast of extraordinary people have contributed to the building of our Residency Programs. From our first summer, living and working in unison with the construction of the developing community, to creating sister-programs only miles away, this tribe has moved with creative urgency and remarkable dedication of purpose. Many of these dedicated people who have made great contributions and have gone on to do extraordinary things all over the world. While these alumni are no longer within our immediate reach, many are still apart of the Building 180 family.
Building 180 is constructed by us: not just those who are directly involved in its day to day operation, it has and continues to be built by everyone who sets foot within these communities. It is being constructed by and between us. This aspect of Agapolis & Ananta is foundational. We would like to acknowledge the critical contributions of all the alumni, interns and community members. Our offered programs would not exist without them, and they will always be part of our family.
Meet our incredible alumni below (in chronological order), and we are so excited for those we have yet to meet!
WINTER, 2019, AGAPOLIS
Trevor Bahnson
SUMMER 2019, AGAPOLIS
Johnna Arnold
Taliesin Gilkes-Bower
Taro Hattori
Ala Mohseni
SPRING 2019, ANANTA
Jon Gold
Viktor Kastro
Camilla Magrane
FALL 2018, AGAPOLIS
Raylene Gorum
“Capt.” James Stovall
Tory Teasley
Summer 2018, Agapolis
Zach Herbert
Nasim Nahavandi Moghadam
YUSTINA SALNIKOVA
Joel Dean Stockdill
Lauren Szabo
WINTER, 2019, AGAPOLIS
Trevor Bahnson
Agapolis, Fall 2019
Possessing the voice of an angel, folk/americana-inspired singer and songwriter Trevor Bahnson weaves tune and word to create energy that lingers in the soul. From playing in a math-metal band and in an Americana trio to busking in Berlin, Trevor takes takes inspiration from a wide net of musical experience. Having adapted to a semi-nomadic lifestyle, Trevor constantly writes new material while on the move, in flux, and in stillness. He is also part of Oakland, California’s group “Whiskerman”, a soulful act versed in multiple styles.
At Agapolis, Trevor worked towards completing a new album, and writing and recording a new music video to boot. Follow Trevor’s journey at https://www.trevorbahnson.com/
SUMMER 2019, AGAPOLIS
Johnna Arnold
Agapolis, Summer 2019
Johnna Arnold uses photography, mixed media, and immersive environments to analyze our society’s current relationship with our environment at the crux of human nature, individual perception, and capitalism. Steady in the belief that a new philosophy based on a greater sense of interconnectedness and an awe for the refined and crude aspects of life is necessary to build a path through our current crisis of humanity, Johnna works to build space for people to expand their imagination and solidify otherworldly ideas and possibilities.
At Agapolis, Johnna designed and developed the form and function of “Expanding Space”, a participatory experience that combines photography, meditation, and social practice that considers how much perceptions frame thoughts and actions. Participants are guided through a meditation-journey, asked to capture an image of their imagined place during that journey, and are returned with an interpretation and recreation of this imagined place by Johnna.
Johnna is currently building on “Expanding Space”, continuing to create sculptures of people’s journey-meditations. She also has pieces up in exhibition and a billboard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reminding people of our total interconnectedness.
Taliesin Gilkes-Bower
Agapolis, Summer 2019
Taliesin is a film and mixed media artist documenting and highlighting oppressive power systems and the creativity and resilience that impacted communities respond with in working towards collective liberation.
In residency at Agapolis, Taliesin produced “Orion Sound Station (17° 58' N 76°48' W)”, a multichannel video, photography, and sculptural sound system installation that explores the intersection of Jamaican dancehall culture and the DEA and CIA’s history of contribution to endemic Jamaican political violence. The installation doubled as a stage set for live performance and as an avenue through film and audio to elucidate on the complexities of the intersections of African and Afro-Diasporic culture and state violence.
Taliesin has been touring the Orion Sound Station and working on new documentary and installation projects. He is also the creative director and founder of VISIONS & CO, an artist driven advertising agency.
Enlighten yourself to more of Taliesin’s work at http://www.realmsmanifest.com/.
Taro Hattori
Agapolis, Summer 2019
Taro Hattori is a mixed media and immersive installation artist that works to provide in the public sphere a poetic experience where each participant becomes aware of how they survive when faced with a sense of conflict. Using material and aesthetic choice to illustrate disjunction in human actions and sociopolitical contexts, Taro creates environments that place the viewer in front of a conflicting issue, a question to ponder, and an experience to grapple with. His work has more recently focused on using music and conversations as tools to integrate into the art complex relational dynamics and to invite people to explore ideas of desire, power, self-destructive tendencies, conflict, and resolution.
During his stay at Agapolis, Taro created “If you dive in, it’s there”, an installation in tribute to Ohlone culture where participants were able to listen to traditional Ohlone songs while underwater in a swimming pool. In this installation, Taro created a poetic experience to help participants understand the history that lies beneath the ground and the land we live on.
Taro has just finished exhibiting his most current project “Exinclusivity - Space of Inclusion” in which he highlights how there are certain labor classes that constitute essential parts of our society, yet are concurrently considered societal outcasts and excluded from everyday life. As an illustration of a failure to integrate conflict, Taro shows the societal tendency to exclude dissonances while continuing to exploit them.
Ala Mohseni
Agapolis, Summer 2019
Multimedia artist Ala Mohseni takes from his professional roots in theater and advertising and from his Iranian roots and creates experimental films, documentaries, and productions that explore the idiosyncrasies and the layered complexities of life. Ala draws upon familiar cultural stories and practices and deconstructs and reconstructs them to incorporate themes of identity, politics, freedom, and personal journey. In his project “Metamorphosis, Iranian Style”, Ala borrows thematic elements from Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and tells the very personal story of one artist’s experience of exile, censorship, and grief, and his fight to protect not only his creative freedom but also his sense of self”
While in residency at Agapolis, Ala produced “Red minus 2”, an experimental multimedia performance staging based on the life of Reza Abdoh, a homosexual avant-garde Iranian playwright and director, who died of AIDS in 1995 at the age of 32. The film project is inspired by Iranian traditional theater genres that include Takht-e Hozi, Zoorkhaneh rituals, and Ta’zieh, with a drop of Ala’s personal touch, and is the first stage in the larger vision for an experimental feature-length film about Abdoh.
Ala holds an MFA in film at the California College of the Arts and his work has been exhibited in film festivals around the world, with several films winning various awards.
Experience more of Ala Mohseni’s work at www.alamohseni.com
SPRING 2019, ANANTA
Jon Gold
Ananta, 2019
Jon Gold is an artist, musician, and technologist that blends artificial intelligence with traditional graphic design techniques to create projects that explore and explain the ethics of technology in our society. He uses AI as an artistic tool to build creative augmentations and work towards socioeconomic liberation.
During his time at Ananta, among other projects, Jon created “Astral Projections” by molding together his favorite computer vision techniques to visualize what Artificial Neural Networks might see when they look upon us. What goes on behind the scenes when our smartphones automatically categorize albums of our friends, when self-driving cars navigate busy cities, and when facial recognition technology scans your face at the airport? “Astral Projections” explores one possibility.
Jon is currently growing the Comsic Computation Laboratory, a technology research studio exploring the difficult questions and consulting with ethical companies actively building a more equitable world.
Keep up with Jon at https://jon.gold/
Viktor Kastro
Ananta, 2019
Viktor Kastro is an immersive installation artist interested in how object lines, light, and shadow mix to inspire movement and depth. Viktor’s work is a new experience upon each viewing; people can lose themselves and see new parts of a piece each time they return. At Ananta, Viktor created “The Spirit Box”, an amalgamation of art, technology, and consciousness that words cannot describe. The Spirit Box can only be experienced to be fully understood.
Viktor’s most recent work is leading the creative laboratory “Shamanic Labs”. Shamanic labs manifests Viktor’s unique vision of ancestral futurism and creates 3-D art installations by combining technology and classical art techniques. Shamanic Labs’ crowning achievement is the interactive installation ‘Deities of Yesteryear’, a multimedia experience that takes viewers into a place that cannot be reached without the aid of ancient shamanic methods.
Follow Viktor’s journey into the future at https://www.shamaniclabs.com/
Camilla Magrane
Camilla Magrane is a multimedia artist that uses digital tools and creative coding to explore the intersection of technology, interactivity, and art. How have we changed as people and as a society with the rapid introduction of and dependency on technology?
During her time with Ananta, Camilla conceived the social experiment “OSMA”, an artificial intelligence with a terrarium “body” that requires instagram “likes” and “followers” to receive water and light and therefore remain alive. When her terrarium boy is dry and her mood is diminishing, Osma posts an AI-generated “selfie” using public #selfie hashtag data in order to acquire more likes and followers. In a time where society has begun to substitute gathering in physical spaces for interacting through the creation and upkeep of a virtual identity, OSMA deliberates the delicate relationship of psychological dependency on social media that can result.
Camilla’s most notable ongoing project “Virtual Mutations” combines traditional darkroom techniques with the use of digital tools to create an interactive postmodern photography experience.
See more of Camilla’s work at https://www.camilamagrane.com/
FALL 2018, AGAPOLIS
Raylene Gorum
Agapolis, Fall 2018
As an architect by training and installation artist by trade, Raylene Gorum is passionate about layering data-enriched patterning in intentionally planned environments to stimulate diverse experiences for visitors of her work. Her installations incorporates the building itself and often utilizes the reflective and transparent properties of glass, windows, and mirrors to animate the art, translate the changing conditions throughout a day, and incorporate viewers themselves and the space around them into the art.
At Agapolis, Raylene created a site-specific abstracted representation of Oshun, Yoruban goddess of water, called “Portrait of a Goddess”. The piece is inspired by the story of Oshun’s pilgrimage as a mortal to talk with god about earthly problems. Raylene’s representation expresses the transfigurational power of a force of nature rather than a fetishized form.
Raylene continues to develop her craft and is working on several commissions. She also helps run an artist community in a new kind of town, a boat town, in the Bay Area.
Learn more about Raylene and her “Artitexture” at https://www.raylenegorum.com/
“Capt.” James Stovall
Agapolis, Fall 2018
There is a constant tension at work in Capt.’s practice. Between the figurative and the abstract, the flat and the unfolding, the whimsical and the grotesque, the primal and the evolved (...or evolving), the dream and reality, the child and the man. Capt. is serious about playing, learning, and having fun killing. Steady floating without the thought of limits while always knowing where the ground is.
At Agapolis, among other projects, Capt. created “64 ‘til”, addressing the 1964 welfare state and the war on poverty. The massive mural traveled along multiple surfaces of the Agapolis building and housed abstracted expressions and faces of the welfare state. Capt. also completed several commissioned murals during and after his stay at Agapolis while working with Building 180.
If you look closely, every piece of Capt.’s work contains a math equation. Math is always undeniably correct, whether a comforting or grim thought, it’s up to you. Learn more about Capt. James Stovall in the Capt.’s Log.
Tory Teasley
Tory Teasley is a soul and RnB singer and dancer and honors the divine feminine through musical work, embodying the message that there are no boundaries or limits in creative expression.
Through art, Tory tells the story of Black, Oakland Native, Queer, Gender non-conforming, and pagan identities. Tory has worked in genres that include neo-soul, opera, and jazz, and has served as a principal vocalist for groups sharing ancestor songs, ring-shout, and Freedom songs. In sharing their story and life narrative through their work, Tory creates with the intention to emanate warmth, love, and spiritual healing. Tory is currently playing as the fronter for a Motown, RnB, Jazz, and Funk inspired group “Tory and the Teasers”.
Tory derives inspiration both from a spiritual honoring of nature and our ancestors and in the sharing of daily laughter and play. Their work is a celebration of the complexities of life, and invites communities to share in the wonder.
Tory is working on a new project titled “Project 121” that sounds of soul, funk, jazz, and hip hop. Keep up with Tory at @toryteasley!
See more of Tory Teasley’s work on instagram @toryteasley.
SUMMER 2018, AGAPOLIS
Zach Herbert
Agapolis, Summer 2018
As a self-dubbed “freak folk” musical artist, Zach Herbert of St. Terrible uses his art to challenge people to examine the finite experience of existence on both a human and cosmic level. Through music, performance, and storytelling, St. Terrible seeks to illuminate the joy and reverence that can be found in even the most bittersweet parts of life. Their performance is meant to create an immersive experience of art and music that subverts the relationship between audience and art to provoke a dialogue with the self.
During his time at Agapolis, Zach developed a style of structured improvisation inspired by the Japanese style of dance called 'Butoh'. He worked to fold in new philosophical and aesthetic approaches to his live performances in order to perform deep emotional work with his art. Zach is currently working on producing a short film that includes material he created and performed during the residency that is slated to be released in December or January.
St. Terrible has performed in venues across the US including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boise, Idaho and London, UK.Sample a St. Terrible track, 'Cosmic Nothings', and learn more about St. Terrible at https://www.stterrible.com
Nasim Nahavandi Moghadam
Agapolis, Summer 2018
Nasim Nahavandi Moghadam communicates the lived experience of female identity in relation to social, cultural, and religious backgrounds. Her work is deeply personal and elegantly synthesizes material and media to exhibit the dimensions of oppression.
At Agapolis Nasim created a site-specific installation of a carpet created out of dirt, broken beer bottles, Iranian female hair and hair from the artist. The carpet depicts a tree, a motif often used in the Quran. Hair is a common material used in her work as a physical reminder of the limited agency females have over their bodies in Middle Eastern culture. The glass also represents the oppressiveness of Sharia law, which prohibits Muslims from consuming alcohol.
Nasim has since shown at the Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland, CA and at the Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, CA.
Learn more about Nasim Nahavandi Moghadam at www.nasimmoghadam.com
Yustina Salnikova
Agapolis, Summer 2018
Yustina Salnikova is an artist, designer, maker, and thinker passionate about investigating the relationship between people, materials, and the space they inhabit.
In her journey studying the effects of design on society and culture, Yustina connected with Joel Dean Stockdill while building an art piece for a festival in Florida and joined his efforts as a Co-Creator. Since then, the team has built several large scale sculptural animal pieces in many countries using recycled materials. As a Co-Creator and Project Manager, Yustina ensures each sculptures is thoroughly connected to our environment and contextually suitable for local communities.
At Agapolis, Yustina project managed the conception and build of “Ethyl” a life-size sculpture of a blue whale made from recycled and repurposed plastic. Ethyl embodies the reality that the weight of a blue whale in plastic pollutes the ocean every minute. Ethyl is currently exhibited at Santa Fe Community College.
Yustina has a Bachelors in Sustainable Environmental Design and Global Environmental Science, Policy, & Management. She seeks to integrate a deep contemplation of environmental impact in the art, designs, and research she is involved in and to inspire action on a personal and community scale.
Joel Dean Stockdill
Agapolis, Summer 2018
Joel Dean Stockdill is a sculptural artist whose work is a conversation with all the elements encountered through the course of paying homage to our animal relatives via waste worship. His work juxtaposes the near eternal lifecycle of waste materials with the lifecycle of living organisms as an absurd state of reality.
Joel’s ongoing project “Wildlife” has birthed 27 large scale animal sculptures made from locally found discarded material. These animals take the form of the installation site’s native animals and evokes conversation between humans and the land and animals. His widespread work in installation and sculpture urges an audience to think deeply about human cultural habits of consumption and waste.
During his residency with Agapolis, Joel collaborated with Yustina Salnikova to build “Ethyl” a life-size sculpture a blue whale made from recycled and repurposed plastic. Ethyl embodies the reality that the weight of a blue whale in plastic pollutes the ocean every minute and is currently exhibited at Santa Fe Community College.
Learn more about Joel Dean Stockdill at www.joeldean.me
Lauren Szabo
Lauren Szabo is an Oakland based artist whose work brings to light the broken relationship between consumerist cultures and the natural environments in which they exist.
Using oil paint as a medium, Lauren analyzes the shift of the western landscape and what has been lost through human corruption and technological advancement. Through the lens of a capitalistic culture, everything produced to be “perfect” becomes dilapidated and imperfect after time has taken its course and nature begins the reclamation process. Her work questions idealized beauty through romanticizing decay and destruction in order to stimulate dialogue about societal priorities. How do we begin to question the way we interact with the environment as our landscape hybridizes?
During her time at Agapolis, Lauren focused on transferring her painting techniques to a 3-dimensional object that was left on the premises. An amphibious Vietnam-era military vehicle had been left on the property when the community moved in. Lauren used this as an opportunity to combine the contemporary themes of her paintings with historical facts about the vehicle. The colors of the agents used in the Vietnam war were juxtaposed against her sky typing text, which read "Friendly" "Fire" amongst other contradictory phrases.
After the residency, the vehicle has remained a part of her work, but into a new trajectory called, The Tracked Project. Lauren has developed a multi-disciplinary performance focused on her work at Agapolis, which debuted at SOMArts. The work was also documented as part of performative shoot by Lisa Vortman. Lauren also continues to paint and shows in galleries across the Bay Area.
Learn more about Lauren at: http://www.laurenjadeszabo.com/