The History of Mixed Messages Productions

Mixed Messages Productions is a production company designed to bring together, encourage, highlight, and showcase the work of artists in the Mixed Race Arts Program. It is the culmination of a series of artistic projects I have participated in over a number of years beginning in the late 80s when I first became involved, along with many other artists, in the formation of the "Mixed Race Arts Movement"

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A Short History of the Mixed-Race Arts Movement

In 1988, at an Empowering Woman of Color conference at UC Berkeley participants were asked to separate into caucuses according to racial affiliation. In a rare and courageous move, organizers had offered the participants the option of joining a mixed race caucus in addition to the usual five basic race groups (Latino, Black, Asian, Native American, and white). At this caucus most of the women who attended had never been in a group defined as mixed race and it was so empowering that a few of us felt it was important to continue to meet after the conference ended.

A few of us, including mixed race cartoonist and visual artist Kara Yoon Frame, Sabrina Taylor, and myself, formed the group, Women of Mixed Heritage. In this group, I decided to try to compile an anthology of writings by women of mixed heritage and my efforts to do so allowed me to meet many other mixed women artists. I was able to get women to agree to get interviewed for the book but only two people ever submitted works to be published. It was a new idea and very few women had any writing on the subject.

As a poet I had begun doing a lot of readings and the response I got from reading my Mixed Heritage Epic (hot link to excerpt?) inspired me to continue to seek ways of bringing mixed race women together. A number of audience members told me they had never heard any poetry on this subject and that it really spoke to their experiences. In the early 90s, I decided to begin to organize mixed race mixed media shows showcasing the work of mixed race artists. I saw this work as important both for the mirrors it provided for mixed race and for the way it which it challenged notions of racist use to justify racial oppression, the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality as manifested in the peculiar forms of sexual objectification to which we as mixed women found ourselves subject.

In 1993 and 1994 I founded the Four Corners Collective and began to meet with other mixed race artists and to produce shows in San Francisco and Berkeley at venues such as the New School for Social Research, La Pena and UC Berkeley.

In 1996-98 I began work on Melange: A film About the Mixed Race Experience, a short experimental film in conjunction with mixed race filmmaker Aarin Burch, Jilchristina Vest, and Tala Russell. The way I wrote the screenplay, the film was meant to showcase the works of several Bay Area mixed race artists in addition to interrogating racial boundaries, histories of racialization, and the paradoxes of identity.

During this time Mixed Messages was first registered as a business in the city of Oakland and a collaboration between Mixed Messages and ____ was instrumental in the production of several fundraising shows called "IN the Mix" throughout the Bay Area.

From 1994-2000 I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley and became active in the number of newly created mixed race organizations. I was involved in the Multiracial Alternatives Project; a reading group of mixed race scholars from Berkeley and other Bay Area universities. It was through this organization that I first met Dr. Naomi Zack, an important and prolific mixed race philosopher, as well as other scholars such as Dr. Cindy Nakashima, Dr. Kieu Linh Valverde, Dr. Caroline Streeter and Dr. Kim DaCosta.

Between 1995 and 2000, I was also actively involved in conducting workshops at several of the Students of Mixed Heritage conferences held throughout California, including the first annual Mixed heritage conference organized by Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey at San Francisco State, the second annual conference held at and the third annual conference held at University of California, San Francisco, and The Hapa Issues Forum Conference held at UC Berkeley, among others

At this time, I also began performing and conducting lectures on "The Mixed Race Arts Movement" for the UC Berkeley class People of Mixed Race, founded by Terry Wilson and taught first by Dr Wilson and later by Dr. Nakashima.

I also became involved at this time with a community program called the Mixed Race Youth Empowerment Project which was created for mixed race youth, ages 16-22 and run by mixed race activists, artists, educators and students in the Bay Area. It was founded by Roy Harrison and involved a number of community events including artistic programs which I organized with mixed race dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, Ariko Ikehara.

Ariko Ikehara and I subsequently created some two-woman shows on the mixed experience.