UPCOMING EVENTS
FRIDAYS 8-MIDNIGHT BESOS NOT BOMBS POP UP SHOP
besos streetwear, dj lucha mix cds, posters, art and more besos studio, 25th and B street in golden hill. look for the "PAZ" lights upstairs
SAT JUNE 28 6-10pm Happy Birthday Frida: Art! Life! Tequila!
live bands and traditional dance performances, a Frida Kahlo look-a-like contest, food, drink, and multiple art and craft exhibits of Latino/a artists! $10-15 The Center SD 3909 Centre Street (hillcrest) visit The Center website
TUES JULY 1 7-midnight bar basic trunk show - besos gear, art show, djs bar basic, 410 tenth ave sd
TUES JULY 22 7-midnight bar basic trunk show - besos gear, art show, djs bar basic, 410 tenth ave sd
***to book dj lucha for private parties events or shows***
*email [email protected] *
RECENT EVENTS
SAT june 28 6-10pm event celebrating the 101st birthday of frida kahlo the center, san diego
SAT may 17 11-5pm mamacitas market. fashion designers spring festival feat. besos not bombs avenue 50 studio , 131 N ave 50, highland park
FRI may 9 10pm-2 big bombazo. areito boricano performs live bomba and dj lucha spins kadan 4696 30th street, san diego
SUN may 4 12-6pm a weekend of women in hip hop - BESOS GEAR
discussion on women in hip hop with ursula rucker and more the rubber rose 3812 ray street san diego
FRI may 2 1-3pm a weekend of women in hip hop feat. DJ LUCHA SPINS. performnces by Ursula rucker, mystic, sister haero, mélange lavonne, kuttin kandi + more kadan 4696 30th street, san diego
TUES april 29 tba bar basic trunk show - dj lucha spins bar basic, sd
SAT march 22 pm BIG BOMBAZO. dj lucha spins areito borincano perform live afro-rican bomba BIG BOMBAZO. dj lucha spins areito borincano perform live afro-rican bomba big bombazo. dj lucha spins, areito boricano performs live bomba the rosary room, dtsd
SUN march 16 noon to 4pm Chicano Park Fundraiser. besos not bombs art donation, live music by Acteal, Los Romanticos y mas calacalandia, 502 rose dr, national city
SAT march 8 5p MUJERES: fuerte como el amor
dj lucha spins this major event. events workshops y mas run all month. art opening on friday march 7 THE FRONT
147 w. san ysidro blvd, cali
Andi
Michele Brandenburg
Street
photographer / mixed media artist +
owner Besos Not Bombs
Latina,
Armenian American adopted into a German Jewish family raised on the border
later to spend adult life living between SF and Asia. Growing up with
a mixed race and cross-cultural background lead Andi to speak a language
she calls "Jaspanglish," a combination of Japanese, English,
and Spanish. Language plays an important role in her work.
Andi grew up during the height of the hip hop and punk rock era influenced
by street culture, graffiti, raw photos from glen e friedman and art from
jean-michel basquiat. Subjects of her work range from identity, roots,
race, genocide, and marginalized people struggles to the documentation
of breakin, skateboarding , and underground street culture worldwide.
She combines the street element with that of the village.
A
completely untrained artist, she creates from the corazon. She has a love
for anything Latin especially musicians such as willie colon y hector
lavoe. She feels these are her true roots and something that has been
with her since before time. She has a degree in cultural anthropology
and Southeast Asian studies from UCSC where she completed her year long
thesis while living in a village before the uprisings in Indonesia in
the nineties. While living in Java, she documented ghost stories and their
relation to contemporary Indonesian religion and played gamelon music
with the village elders..
In the late nineties, she spent several years living in Tokyo writing
about street fashion and underground Tokyo trends and working as a hip
hop photographer for Tommy Boy Records, Tokyo with English photographer
Andy Beezer. In addition, she worked as a VJ in a mix of Japanese hip
hop and punk rock clubs for Kazenohito Bito, her crew in Tokyo. Due to
illness, she returned to SD at a time when "Blackmarket" was
a strong presence in the city and street art shows like "modest behaviour"
were on the rize....
Shortly after, the war on Iraq broke out. Fighting illness, she continued
to attend the local anti war protests. With no end in sight and discouraged
by American conservatism, she left the country to live in the political
Gracia District of Spain, where anti-war protests and anti-war sentiment
filled the walls and streets. There, she spent several months creating
a new body of work and the clothing line "besos not bombs."
" If the atmosphere of America is waging war on terrorism and feeding consumerism, the most direct way to get messages through to the average person is to make signs out of what it is people want to consume, cultural ammunition on cloth! The average person here is so blind to what is really going on in the world - they still think that el Salvador was Americans going in to save the people from communism, they don't realize that hundreds of women have been violently murdered at our borders for the past decade, and they think that the holocaust is the only genocide. What they don't see is that the current situation is all a mask for indigenous genocide so the man can get his cash. History just keeps repeating itself. Humanity has taken on this sense of helplessness and loss of hope. Those of us who have an opportunity have to use our voice "voz alta." Artists shouldn't just masturbate on canvas. They have a responsibility to the people to educate and reveal the secrets and the history the media hides. We can be our own media. History has always had this! Look at Frida, she wasn't this sickly macabre artist that she is often portrayed as, she was a revolutionary marching in the streets until the day she died. She expressed her pain, but she also felt a sense of responsibility for the people. Ok, So I have a bleeding heart, shoot me!"
-andiandi's xhibition history *flyer version*
besosnotbombs.com cultural ammunition on cloth