Born in the Philippines, Oakland-based artist and Assistant Professor in Sculpture at UC Berkeley Stephanie Syjuco creates large-scale spectacles of collected cultural objects, cumulative archives, and temporary vending installations, often with an active public component that invites viewers to directly participate as producers or distributors. At Berkeley, she is working to expand a conceptual and materials-based pedagogy, combining methods of the handcrafted with digital technologies and social engagement in order to speak of the frictions within late-capitalist society.  Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her projects leverage open-source systems, shareware logic, and flows of capital, in order to investigate issues of economies and empire.  Most recently she has been engaged in the research and dissemination of fabric banners, sharing imagery and slogans patterns for protest. Syjuco recently created a 41-page how-to. "I wanted to show how easy it can be to make them," she writes in the introduction.

About California Countercultures
Thinking Through the Arts and Design at Berkeley: California Countercultures is a UC Berkeley course cotaught by Natasha Boas, independent curator and critic of contemporary art and theory, and Michael Cohen, associate teaching professor in the African American studies department. The Wednesday public lecture series is organized by Natasha Boas. California Countercultures is sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Big Ideas program and the Arts + Design Initiative, with additional support from Cal Performances and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.