eXHIBIT AYe is a monthly sonic gallery hosted by Def Sound and curated by a guest. eXHIBIT AYe is a way of seeing without seeing each other. It’s a gathering of innerviews w/ artists and the music that made them. We explore via musical narration and conversation through sharing stories and songs. Every episode is an exhibition in vulnerability and learning to play time and space as an instrument.

BEN CALDWELL

Ben Caldwell is a Los Angeles-based arts educator and independent filmmaker.

A native of New Mexico, Caldwell studied filmmaking at UCLA, at the same time as Charles Burnett, Julie Dash and Billy Woodberry, as part of a group of young artists who were to change African American independent filmmaking — a cultural phenomenon sometimes called “The L.A. Rebellion.” Caldwell taught for 15 years at CalArts.

In 1984, he founded KAOS Network, a community arts center dedicated to providing training on digital arts, media arts and multi-media, at the heart of Leimert Park, historic center of the Los Angeles jazz culture, now hosting a diverse multi-ethnic multimedia arts center. KAOS Network was designed to empower the youth of the community and is the only organization of its kind in South Central Los Angeles where inner-city youths can participate in hands-on courses in video production, animation, web-site development, video teleconferencing, CD ROM production, and use of the Internet. KAOS is also home to WORDshop, a weekly workshop for hip-hop artists, dancers, singers and visual artists. Each week over 150 youths participate in workshops and programs at the center. In addition to these workshops, KAOS Network has videotaped community events and produced documentaries for the state of California. KAOS Network is committed to creating a community of young people who are dedicated to learning new technologies, acquiring employable skills and participating in digital arts and new media training.

TAJ FRAZIER

Robeson Taj P. Frazier is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at USC Annenberg. His research and teaching examine race, cross cultural exchange and traffic, social movements, and popular culture. Frazier traces how articulations and representations of race and gender travel globally through performance, media, art, athletics, diplomacy, and activism. He is currently considering these questions by scrutinizing African American activist intellectuals’ cross-cultural exchanges with the People’s Republic of China from 1949-1976. Prior to coming to USC, Frazier taught courses at New York University, Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, and the City University of New York. He has had work published in African Americans in Global Affairs (forthcoming 2010), as well as in academic journals and periodicals such as Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Black Arts Quarterly.