Walk the Talk 2020 Online Celebration &
Live Launch of Walk the Talk website.
May 30, 2020 Walk The Talk 2020 webinar.
May 30, 2020 Walk The Talk 2020 webinar.
Los Angeles artist Man One is a multi-award winning artist, illustrator, curator, and entrepreneur. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries worldwide and over a dozen solo exhibitions. He has shown internationally at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The Getty, LACMA, Parco Museum in Tokyo, and the Smithsonian Institute Washington D.C. among others. He has conducted workshops fostering mutual respect across ideological lines in Northern Ireland, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Panama, and throughout the US. In 2002, he founded Crewest Gallery in LA to legitimize graffiti art as valuable and collectible and give graffiti artists a professional venue to showcase their work. Man One has been featured on TV and in film including painting live on stages across the country with the Black Eyed Peas, De La Soul, Wyclef Jean, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic to name a few.
Walk the Talk 2020 is the fifth iteration of the Los Angeles Poverty Department’s biennial, peripatetic performance: an on-going chronicle of the accomplishments of Skid Row people and their visionary initiatives. Normally, Walk the Talk is a parade with a New Orleans Second line brass band and attendees dancing down the street from one performance site to the next.
BUT NOW—-WHAT IS HAPPENING: THIS YEAR we celebrate this year’s honorees with new performances and portraits all wrapped inside THE PUBLICATION OF OUR WALK THE TALK WEBSITE. The website will provide on-line access to the 68 people whose real-world accomplishments —-from 1970 until today, have been celebrated in Walk the Talk from 2012-2020. The website, created by artist / technologist Rob Ochshorn, includes: hour-long video interviews and transcripts of the interviews, for each honoree as well as videos and scripts of the scenes distilled from the interviews and performed by Los Angeles Poverty Department in each Walk the Talk performance / parade.
Rob Ochshorn has designed software that offers the viewer unique, surprise means of navigating the content— including the ability of the transcript to follow the honorees speech in the video and the ability to search the entire archive (over 70 hours of interview material): just type in whatever you want: “affordable housing”, “community mental health”, “broken windows policing”, “compassion”, “recovery”, — -and responses from everyone who spoke to that, appear.
The LAUNCH party of the Walk the Talk Website featured acknowledgement of this year’s honorees, portraits of this year’s honorees created by Man One and a guided tour of the website by artist / technologist Rob Ochshorn and meet this year’s LAPD Walk the Talk performers.
Post launch party you will be able to go to the Walk the Talk Website, watch this year’s ZOOM PERFORMANCES by Los Angeles Poverty Department, and the honoree interviews –as well as the performances, interviews and portraits of all past years’ honorees.
This year’s Skid Row visionaries are community organizer, Coach Ron Crockett, a leader of the Skid Row Brigade that is monitoring the City’s Covid-19 deployed port-o-potties and hand washing stations, social entrepreneurs Danny Park and Andrew Kang of Skid Row Coffee and The Skid Row Peoples Market,public interest lawyer Gary Blasi, grass roots advocate Angelia “Big Mama” Harper, informal multi-service provider, Stephanie Arnold Williams, musician and Co-Founding Director of Urban Voices Choir, Leeav Sofer, and deceased, beloved community organizer Leslie Croom.
AND WHAT MORE IS HAPPENING:
Each month for a year, we will invite an activist, scholar or community resident to engage with the archive and record their thematic response, which will be circulated via our social media and added to the Walk the Talk archive. The first thematic response will be ready by the end of June and will be created by UC-R historian Cathy Gudis, current scholar in residence at our Skid Row History Museum & Archive.
AND MORE IS HAPPENING:
We are publishing a limited edition of the 2020 Walk the Talk scripts, that will be given to the 2020 honorees and distributed to their Skid Row friends and neighbors.
Walk the Talk 2020 performances and responses of the honorees.
Walk the Talk 2020 webinar and introduction of the Walk the Talk archive by Rob Ochshorn.
Clarence Powell: I continue to endure my journey on the outer most fringes of life and the entertainment industry.
Lorraine Moreland: I am Lorraine I am a singer. I sing from a place in my heart, a homeless woman that found her way back home by the grace of God.
John Malpede: The future lies ahead. Hold the lies.
Stephanie Bell: Sometimes want to snap but I stop, I’m going to keep on smiling regardless. My smile goes a long way. So smile with me.
Matt Miyahara: Skid Row since 2013, I’d like to thank the Weingart Center, the People’s Concern formerly Lamp, Los Angeles Community Action network, Studio 526 big time and now Los Angeles Poverty Department. I’m living in an apartment now and I’m able to pursue my artistic endeavors, especially the acting. Thank you.
Thaddeus Nagey: Have you ever tried to eat a clock? It’s very time-consuming.
Henriëtte Brouwers: Zoom in to Skid Row and see how compassion is re-invented when the system fails the people. Do it yourself!
Tom Grode: I was really excited about this upcoming Walk The Talk but I’m not complaining about Zoom The Talk.
Lee Maupin: I’m the godfather of Soul, the Skid Row edition. You all come out the see me next time. Thank you very much. I love you all.
Leyla Martinez: This quiet time made me think more about myself. Therefor I made some plans to save money to fix my backpain. Wow, You will see me dancing salsa like a pro!
Iron Angel: Actor, singer, poet, artist, dancer. I’m Iron Angel, I’m a romancer, I cast magical spells with creativity. It gives me my dignity and all those under my spell humanity.
Anthony – ToneTone – Taylor: If you know like I know that there is a bright side to everything in life, you just got to find it. I did. Celebrate life. One love.
Douglas Jessop: Life has thought me that we don’t get to pick all our battles in life, but the ones that pick us elicit the strength of our character. Or that, it’s not that a bad thing is a good thing, but you can be the good that comes from it.
The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs
National Endowment for the Arts-Theater
The Mellon Foundation Community Archives Program
Warhol Foundation