KCHUNG convenes a salon exploring how witches and witch hunts function to social and economic ends. Featuring artists and theorists whose research includes data (divination), A.I. (cunning & conjuring), surveillance and colonization (witch hunters), and the systems in which witches are both a celebrated necessity and an institutional threat.
Sanyu Estelle is a Claircognizant ("clear knowing") Soothsayer ("truth teller") that is also known as "The Word Witch" because of her deep love for word origins (etymology) and word culture (philology). She is known for her straightforward card reading style ("the reading you need, not necessarily the reading you want") and her way with words via writing, speaking, and singing. Sanyu identifies as a pigmented (82%), womoonist (as constant as the tides; word to Alice Walker), cissy (femme and fem), flexible asexual (it's a spectrum, seems unwise to call it), travel-apt (Earth is a country), and fashion forward (Funk Flag Flyage) SSJW (Sarcastic Social Justice Warrior).
Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian-born writer, artist, and researcher residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor of Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. In 2021, she was a Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the Oxy Arts exhibition Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI with Meldia Yesayan. Prior to this, she held a two-year teaching appointment in UCLA’s Department of English. She holds a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania. With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of Research Service, a collective that pursues performative and practice-based forms of scholarship. Performances and projects have been presented at the Palais de Tokyo, Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Drawing Center, Judson Memorial Church, the New Museum (NY) Voice Registers Series, and elsewhere. Her book, Algorithmic Bias Training: Lectures for Intelligent Machines, is forthcoming from X Artists’ Books.
Anuradha Vikram (born 1976, New York, NY; lives in Los Angeles) is a writer, curator, and educator. Vikram’s book Decolonizing Culture (Sming Sming Books, 2017) helped initiate a global movement to decolonize arts institutions and monuments. They have written for art periodicals and publications from Paper Monument, Heyday Press, Routledge, and Oxford University Press. They are an Editorial Board member at X-TRA and an editor at X Artists’ Books. Vikram is faculty in the UCLA Department of Art. They hold an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts and a BS in Studio Art from New York University.
Amanda Yates Garcia is a writer, witch, and the Oracle of Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The LA Times, The SF Chronicle, The London Times, CNN, BRAVO, as well as a viral appearance on FOX. She has led rituals, classes and workshops on witchcraft at UCLA, UC Irvine, MOCA, The Hammer Museum, LACMA, The Getty, and many other venues. Amanda is the host of the popular Between the Worlds podcast and her book, Initiated: Memoir of a Witch, received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus and has been translated into six languages.
Peter Simensky is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Museum 52, Museum 500 meter, Sapporo; The Swiss Institute; and Project Row Houses. Simensky’s performances and installations have been featured at the Wattis Institute, the ICA San Francisco, 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica, Cabinet, and the de Young Museum. He has received grants, residencies and awards including NYFA Fellows Grant, Oregon Arts Commission / Hallie Ford Family Opportunity Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants, MacDowell Colony, La Tallera Proyecto Siqueiros, and Skowhegan to name a few. Selected group exhibitions have been included at The Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Sculpture Center, Palais de Tokyo, Mass Moca, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and Socrates Sculpture Park. Simensky Chairs the Graduate Fine Arts MFA at California College of the Arts.
Self-governed and operated on a shoestring budget, KCHUNG Radio was formed in 2011 as an open forum of artists, musicians, writers, and philosophers. Broadcasting live on 1630 AM from a studio-in-the-sky above a pho restaurant in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, KCHUNG Radio stands apart from other local LA-based stations in its programmatically evolving nature: currently broadcasting over 40 hours weekly of original & uncensored content. With the intention to platform traditionally underrepresented voices, there are talk shows, art reviews, interviews with psychics, scientists, plant life, and ghosts, live music, dressing room gossip, surrealist meditation lessons, advice panels, and unscripted gestures of an economic or performative nature. Functioning as a framework for the expression of local artists as individual contributors, the station is an open portal, accessible to any and all interested parties. It celebrates and promotes the efforts of the dedicated amateur while remaining an autonomous entity for collective expression.
Wonmi’s WAREHOUSE Programs is organized by Alex Sloane, Associate Curator, with Amelia Charter, Producer of Performance and Programs and Brian Dang, Programming Coordinator.
Wonmi's WAREHOUSE Programs is founded by Wonmi & Kihong Kwon and Family.
