Photos by Weidong Yang

Weidong Yang is a physicist who invented a method to detect movement as fine as a tenth of an atom. With Kinetech, a collective of artists and scientists he assembled earlier this year, Yang works on a human scale, drawing on years of martial arts and dance training and performance, as well as his skills as an engineer, to produce a tactile and visual experience inspired by fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics, entropy, fractal noise, and infinite loops.

Combining technological contributions by Florian Hoenig, Sachin Deshpande, and Marc Fawzi, and choreography by Bay Area favorites Daiane Lopes da Silva and Karla Quintero, Kinetech presents Open Lab--Sensory Awakening May 20-21 at KUNST-STOFF arts with three modes of aesthetic experimentation: Mosaic, Rag Doll, and Flo, each built of codes, projections, and dancers in motion.

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Photo by Chelsea Rowe

They say it takes three weeks to break a habit, and the third annual KUNST-STOFF Arts Fest gives you three-and-a-half to take dance classes, participate in workshops on choreography and creative-intuition, and attend performances loosely centered on the theme "Inhabit," May 15-June 7. Curated by KUNST-STOFF artistic director Yannis Adoniou, events feature local and visiting artists working in dance, new media, technology, film, and more.

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The Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival kicks off nine days of film, performance, and lectures in an exuberant manner this week. Sex work activist Siouxsie Q is opening the festival with a live version of her acclaimed podcast, The WhoreCast, at the Center for Sex and Culture this Saturday.

Siouxsie and The WhoreCast have been through a lot this year. The show, formerly known as This American Whore, underwent an identity crisis when Chicago Public Media, which produces This American Life, demanded that she change the name.

Although she eventually had to comply, Siouxsie Q didn't come out of it too badly: The WhoreCast is now the only show about whores that has been publicly endorsed by Ira Glass as "charming."

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It was Renoir who said that a work of art "must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, and carry you away." Interviews with artists should have a similar effect. With "Artist's Statement," our weekly interview series with prominent and upcoming visual artists in San Francisco, SF Weekly speaks to the people behind the art you see in the galleries, in the museums, and in the streets.

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In a city that serves as a progressive paragon, it's easy to forget that American women didn't get the right to vote until 1920. And that's just one facet of the tumultuous history and continuing struggle for women's rights -- here and abroad.

The International Museum of Women (IMOW) -- an innovative online museum based in San Francisco -- has been championing female-focused issues since 2006, but its history of fierce feminism has roots stretching back to 1985.

First founded as the Women's Heritage Museum, this nascent organization operated as a museum "without walls" for 10 years, producing exhibits, sponsoring an annual book fair, providing fodder for teachers during Women's History Month, and of course, celebrating the lengthy lineage of women throughout the past, long overlooked for their accomplishments.

Elizabeth Colton, original founder of IMOW

In 1997, a Bay Area woman named Elizabeth Colton was hoping to take her daughter to a museum dedicated to women's contributions to society...but she couldn't find anything. She called up Gloria Steinem, a noted feminist activist, who she didn't know, and asked her if such a place existed.

"Gloria told her 'no, but I think you should [start] one!'" says Catherine King, Vice President of Exhibitions and Programs at IMOW. "Elizabeth took that has a call to arms." Elizabeth soon corralled a group of Bay Area teachers equally disappointed by the current feminist offerings and established the International Museum of Museum.

"She thought, 'lets expand the mission, let's get global.'"

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The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Ben Mirov is the author of two books of poetry, Hider Roser and Ghost Machine, and the chapbooks I is to Vorticism, Vortexts, and Collected Ghosts.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them ... ?

I usually tell them I'm a teacher. I don't usually tell them I write poems. I prefer to think of my relationship to poetry as a completely isolated aspect of my life. It feels good to protect it, like I don't need to incorporate being a poet into my identity to make it a thing. Even though it's integral to who I am, maintaining the illusion that my role as a poet is relegated to its own dimension is important to me for reasons I've never fully explored. I just take the impulse as something of value.

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Michelle Tea

New York City might be home to the big houses, but this scrappy city just happens to be the epicenter of publishing on the Best Coast. Join Alexis Coe every other Wednesday for Read Local, a column about books produced in the Bay Area.

"You guys," Michelle Tea announces into the microphone, "I wrote a book that has amulets in it. Can you handle that?"

The crowd at The Secret Alley, a magical, sinuous forest hidden inside a nondescript building on Capp Street, would happily "handle" anything Tea offered. Three flights up, we sprawled underneath trees, casting the occasional envious glance up at the amorous couple who'd scored the tree house. Our bellies swelled with perogies from the Old World Food Truck, chocolate from Dandelion, and Drambuie cocktails.

See also:
Henri, le Chat Noir
Discrimination is Unacceptable--Unless You're Fat

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Epic battles were waged, blood was spilt, villains vanquished, heroes triumphed and love endured, all on the battlefields conjured in our childhood bedrooms. Action figures from GI Joe to Barbie, just inches high, loomed larger than life in our imagination. But then you grow up. To recapture what he calls "that faded sense of awe," artist Robert Xavier Burden recreates Batman, Spiderman, and Thundercats as he remembers them: bold, bright, magical, and 11 feet high.

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Take a stance with your single self -- get Gutzy and get laid.

As with so many modern innovations (butt-plugs, cellphones, Google glass) we're excited (and terrified) by the implications of Arizona entrepreneur Kari Holt's new Gutzy brand.

Gutzy, "meet-me" wear -- a clothing line for women and men -- is designed to broadcast your single status, letting other romantically untethered people know that you're available ... and most importantly, approachable.

According to statisticbrain.com, there are 54 million, sad-sack, single people in the United States and seemingly not many people can get their shit together enough to couple up, even if only for the night.

With Gutzy, you no longer have to wonder if someone is free and fuckable. Forget the bar, the grocery store, yoga class, or even dating sites -- now you can live your life silently emanating throbbing levels of date-me pheromones with a tricky little t-shirt (tank or "active wear" also available) emblazoned with a pink or white "g."

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Chris Sollars shaving himself with an axe, from his art project "Hairy"

It was Renoir who said that a work of art "must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, and carry you away." Interviews with artists should have a similar effect. With "Artist's Statement," our weekly interview series with prominent and upcoming visual artists in San Francisco, SF Weekly speaks to the people behind the art you see in the galleries, in the museums, and in the streets.

More »