Analog is about getting your hands on something and experiencing it for yourself. That’s why we’ll be peppering Chat Room: Analog on November 19 with people and things to delight and engage our audience.
From crochet jamming to interactive typewriter art, spontaneous verse to decades of DIY and punk books and magazines for perusal and purchase, we hope these embodiments of analog San Francisco inspire attendees to make and do their own amazing things.
Ramekon O’Arwisters: Crochet Jammer
In 2012, Ramekon O’Arwisters founded Crochet Jam, a community-art event steeped in the African-American tradition of weaving in a calm and non-judgemental environment without rules or limitations. Crochet Jam uses the folk-art tradition of crocheting strips of fabric into free-form and organic soft sculptures to foster social interaction, creativity, and liberation. There aren't any rules nor patterns. Crochet Jam is an opportunity for play, experimentation, and for allowing the material to transform naturally without any expectations nor any attempt to control the outcome.
Attendees are invited to join O’Arwisters and create their own open-ended fabric artworks.
V. Vale: Punk Publisher
V. Vale is the legendary San Francisco-based publishing entrepreneur behind the RE/Search Publications book imprint, which has been documenting underground and unknown subcultures of all stripes for over 40 years. Before founding RE/Search, Vale launched a ground-breaking Punk zine called Search & Destroy, which is still considered one of the most important cultural punk publications ever.
Vale will be selling his books and zines covering topics like body modification, pranks as social commentary, and writers including William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard.
Benjamin Bernthal: Typewriter Artist
Ben Bernthal is the founder of Strangers’ Poems, a micro publisher of poetic art objects and an art activation agency which utilizes analog means to create meaningful and memorable experiences. Since 2017, he has written thousands of poems for strangers across 18 states and 5 countries, engaging through curiosity and shared vulnerability. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, CBS, Mission Local, and Axios. Strangers’ Poems has performed activations for the de Young Museum, the Legion of Honor, SFMOMA, SFPL, and Google Cloud, among others.
For Chat Room: Analog, Bernthal will be showing Feedback Loop (2025), an interactive, ready-made sculpture that re-physicalizes the flow of questions, answers, and currency to re-examine value, ideas, and personal information. One typewriter is labeled “questions only,” while the other reads “answers only.” A möbius strip of US dollars connects the two machines, lengthening and shrinking depending on the frequency of questions and answers typed by participants.
Attendees are invited to ask and answer questions on Feedback Loop and learn more about Bernthal’s typewriter art.
Holly Zimbert: Absurdist Instructor
Holly Juliet Zimbert is a poet and multimedia artist from LA. Since 2022, she has traveled with her typewriter and typed custom poetry on the spot for strangers, using her abstract watercolor paintings as the canvas for the poem to be typed upon.
Absurdist Instructions is an activation inspired by Yoko Ono's classic work, Grapefruit, and the Fluxus Art movement. Guests choose an original watercolor painting and share three words. Holly types three absurdist instructions onto the watercolored bookmark of their choice. Once complete, she reads the instructions out loud and presents them in a personalized envelope for safekeeping.
Attendees can participate in this absurdist celebration of type and interaction.
DJ Tangerine Meadows & DJ Trippy Chris of Here and There Records: Vinyl DJs
Music enthusiasts DJ Tangerine Meadows (aka Molly) and Trippy Chris (aka Chris) bring their vibrant energy to night markets like First Thursdays, the Alameda Rock and Roll Flea Market, Valencia Live, and other local events. Their sets mostly tap into sounds from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s with psychedelic rock, soul, funk, and jazz — a nostalgic yet fresh mix that keeps the vibes high all night long.
