Join CAAM and our partners at the Chinatown Media Arts Collective and Edge on the Square for the third annual Contemporary Art Festival on Saturday, September 7, 2024. This year’s theme, High Five: Exploring the Elemental Forces of Chinatown, centers on the five elements: Earth土, Fire火, Metal金, Water水, and Air气, and invites us to uncover new realms of Chinatown through the prism of these fundamental forces. CAAM has curated AstraLogik, a Bay Area Queer Pinay musical duo, to bring their healing sounds to this event.
Charito and Chen (best known by mononyms) make up AstraLogik, a group known for their chill-folk-R&B-soul music reflecting their Filipino American, queer, and healing identities. They discovered soundbaths as a healing modality, blending digitally produced frequencies with traditional sound bath instruments. Charito focuses on trauma and mental health in her music, while Chen, an experienced body worker, emphasizes energy and holistic body health.
AstraLogik is just one of dozens of artists who will fill this historic Asian American neighborhood during the festival. Five Chinatown alleyways and streets will represent an element that is interpreted by artists in their activations:
Earth 土 | Grant Avenue
Fire 火 | Waverly Place
Metal 金 | Ross Alley
Water 水 | Wentworth Place
Air 气 | Joice Street
AstraLogik uses sound healing tools made of metal like gongs, chimes, brass bowls, handpans, and ocean drum with metal beads. In keeping with the theme of metal, AstraLogik will take the stage on Ross Alley at 7:30 p.m.
“It’s been a dream to work with the inspiring duo, Charito and Chen, behind AstraLogik,” says CAAM Festival and Exhibitions Director Thúy Tran, who curated this presentation. “We will transform Ross Alley into an immersive and resonant audioscape, utilizing soundbath and the metal-infused instruments associated as a healing modality to encourage our community to connect with oneself and each other.”
This is the third annual SF Chinatown Contemporary Arts Festival, organized by Edge on the Square, which sits at the corner of Grant Avenue and Clay Street in the heart of the city’s oldest Asian American neighborhood. The community and contemporary arts-focused facility is the first project of the Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative (CMAC), a unique joint collaboration of six leading cultural and community non-profit organizations in San Francisco, including CAAM. Other CMAC founding partners include the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, Chinese Culture Foundation, Chinese Historic Society of America, Chinatown Community Development Center, and Chinese for Affirmative Action.
“CAAM is excited to continue to find new ways to share programming that conveys the richness and diversity of Asian American perspectives in storytelling within that vibrant setting of Chinatown,” says CAAM Executive Director Stephen Gong, who also chairs CMAC’s board of directors.
High Five: Exploring the Elemental Forces of Chinatown takes place in San Francisco Chinatown from 3-10 p.m. on Saturday, September 7. The event is free to the public. For full details, visit the Edge on the Square website.
