Mark Your Calendars for MOCA Grand Prix

THURSDAY, MAY 7, 7–10pm
MOCA Grand Avenue

For their final Engagement Party event, Knifeandfork invites participants to race remote-control cars through MOCA’s current exhibition, A Changing Ratio: Painting and Sculpture from the Collection. Using mounted cameras, each Wi-Fi–enabled car is driven remotely through a video game interface that shows the car’s point of view. Through the lens of 1980s American gaming culture, this project offers an alternative perspective on the permanent collection exhibition. Awards will be presented for the fastest times of the evening. Hot dogs and hamburgers will be available for purchase.

Game voice by Nathan Phillips
DJ set by Wendy Yao
Blogging by Guthrie Lonergan

Engagement Party presents new artworks in the form of dynamic social events and performances by LA–based artist collectives, occurring the first Thursday of every month from 7 to 10pm at MOCA Grand Avenue.

INFO 213/621-1745 or moca.org/party
FREE; no reservations required; cash bar

Sculpture Plaza
250 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012

More Here...

Richard Neutra, Architect: Sketches and Drawings

At the Central Library’s Getty Gallery

An Exhibition of Works by One of Modernism’s Most Important Architects Opens May 3, 2009, Central Library’s Getty Gallery

An outstanding selection of travel sketches, figure drawings and building renderings by one of modernism’s most important architects, Richard Neutra (1892- 1970), will be on display in the exhibit Richard Neutra, Architect: Sketches and Drawings . The exhibit is free and open to the public during regular library hours. The exhibition features choice selections at the Charles E. Young Research Library’s Department of Special Collections, UCLA. The pieces range from early pencil sketches from Neutra’s student wandering in 1913 to later pastel renderings of his Los Angeles houses from the 1950s. Selected for their artistic quality, the works illustrate Neutra’s skill in traditional notions of composition combined with his innovative techniques of architectural representation. “Not only was Richard Neutra an imaginative and innovative architect, he was also a remarkable draughtsman, and the Department of Special Collections is pleased to have the chance to share its collection of his sketches with visitors to this exhibition,” says Department Director Victoria Steele. Neutra’s work in Southern California – characterized by the post and beam structure, cantilevered roof slabs extending into space and an emphasis on the interpenetration of inner and outer space – developed a regional architecture that gained international prominence.

May 3 to Sept. 6, 2009, at Central Library’s Getty Gallery, 630 W. Fifth St., downtown Los Angeles.

More Here

Tomorrow Night at Royce Hall

UCLA Live Presents

David Sedaris

Author, radio star, and retired elf David Sedaris returns to Royce Hall in another hilarious evening featuring new work, conversation and readings culled from his many best-selling books including Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

8p Royce Hall

more here

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS - Weds., 4/29, at the American Cinematheque

They don't make them like they used to. Sweet Smell of Success is the kind of perfectly cool film you imagine all films made in 1957 should be - black and white, thin ties, hair that stays in place, a jazz soundtrack, and all the shadows and light the city of Manhattan has to offer. Tony Curtis is Sidney Falco: cruel, desperate, has a bed in his office, a press agent trying to cash in on any one of the talents he represents. Burt Lancaster is J.J. Hunsecker: crueler, never needs to light his own cigarette, and the powerful newspaper columnist that Falco needs to achieve success. Falco would do anything to have Hunsecker write up the performers on his roster...including sell out some innocent lovers and pimping out a waitress. The dialogue (by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman) is snappy, beyond hip, the put-downs lower than the street - you only wish you could talk like that. At the American Cinematheque Howard Bragman will be signing his new book, Where's My Fifteen Minutes, before the screening with a panel discussion following.

Wednesday, April 29

SPOTLIGHT ON PUBLICITY: The Evolution of the Industry… 50 Years Ago to Today

Book signing starts at 6:00 p.m.
Film screening at 7:30 p.m.
American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater
6712 Hollywood Blvd.
323-466-3456

At REDCAT - Zoe Beloff

Zoe Beloff: Conjuring Specters

New York artist Zoe Beloff's unique and mesmerizing films are philosophical toys-objects with which to think. Her work has especially focused on "phantoms," on images that are "not there," and on a precinematic version of the virtual-created by means of a stereoscopic Bolex camera that produces spectral 3-D images. Shadowland Or Light From The Other Side (2000, 32 min., 3-D 16mm, b/w), starring Kate Valk of The Wooster Group, locates a link between Victorian spiritualism and the birth of cinema in late-19th century "Ghost Shows," where actors interacted with magic lantern slides and stereoscopic views. Charming Augustine (2004, 40 min., 3-D 16mm film, b/w) is an experimental narrative inspired by one of Charcot's most famous patients at the Salpétrière in turn-of-the-century Paris. It explores connections between photographic documentation of hysteria and the prehistory of narrative film: Augustine captivates the doctors with her theatrical and photogenic hysterical attacks and in the process becomes a star-the "Sarah Bernhardt" of the asylum.

*Zoe Beloff will be there in person

Tonight at 8:30p

More Here...

What's Going on Sunday? Visual Acoustics: The Modernism Of Julius Shulman

Newport Beach Film Festival
Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 2p

Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics explores the monumental career of 98-year-old architectural photographer, Julius Shulman. Populating his photos with human models and striking landscapes, Shulman combined the organic with the synthetic, melding nature with revolutionary urban design. The resulting images helped to shape the careers of some of the greatest architects of the 20th Century, with Shulman documenting the work of Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner, and many others.

More Here...

Echo Park Dreamer

By our very own John Albert
via the LA WEEKLY

Movies have always been about dreams. This story is no different. Except this particular dream doesn’t lead to a self-congratulatory speech and a limousine ride into the Malibu Colony, but to a cluttered storefront on a busy Echo Park street not fully succumbed to gentrification. Paolo Davanzo definitely looks the part of a dreamer with his unruly mad-scientist hair and mischievous smile.

The 38-year-old is standing in what appears to be a small makeshift theater or a cluttered classroom. The space is called The Echo Park Film Center, and it is all of that and more. As the afternoon sunlight filters in through an open door, a group of local seniors sit before computers editing images under the tutelage of an instructor named Shauna McGarry. They are learning to make short films. A man named Jamie says he is making a film about a summer camp in Ecuador for low-income kids. An elderly electrician named Enrique works a keyboard with his calloused hands, trying to master the editing software. He says he wants to make a short promotional film about his business so he can advertise on the Internet. They have been coming to the class for several weeks and say they heard about the free workshop through fliers and word of mouth. As the seniors finish up, Davanzo and McGarry rearrange chairs in preparation for the night’s public screening of an underground documentary about local jazz musicians.

Davanzo’s dream, which would eventually become the nonprofit Film Center, was born out of death. Sitting at a table as the sun fades outside, he says the impetus started when his fervently progressive parents passed away. “My father and mother would always talk about the Black Panthers,” he says. “My mom worked in homeless shelters and was very active in the community. They instilled those values in me when I was growing up.” His father was from Italy and the family lived there until Paolo was 7. They then relocated to, of all places, Irvine, California. “It was a very surreal existence,” he says with a laugh. “My father romanticized the United States but it was kind of bizarre because they were these bohemians. They had lived in Paris and Venezuela and then suddenly we were in a middle-class suburban house in Irvine. But I grew up in alternative culture, playing in punk bands and doing zines. I never was part of the status quo.”

Davanzo says he became interested in non-narrative film while visiting relatives in Italy during the first Iraq war.

Continue Reading Here

At Cinefamily Tonight!

The Pleasure of Being Robbed

A carefree, pixie-haired kleptomaniac named Eleonore breathlessly traipses around city streets, stealing purses, cars and kisses just for the fun (and thrill) of it in this jazzy ode to reckless youth and the joys of New York. Shot guerrilla-style in grainy, beautiful 16mm, Pleasure of Being Robbed is 24-year-old New York writer-director Josh Safdie first film, and was the Closing Night film of the 2008 Cannes Directors' Fortnight and the only film from the U.S. to play in that section. Harkening back to the exciting, off-the-cuff school of '60s American independent and French New Wave filmmaking, while adding a charming and magical sensibility all its own, Safdie has given the audience a gift--a wonderful day in good company that, like it's heroine, is styas with you with more depth than you'd at first expect. The Cinefamily is proud to share work from a bright new talent from the Independent film world, and hopes to see more films like it!

More Here...

At Family Tonight - Mike Mills

Mike Mills Launches New Retrospective Monograph
'Graphics Films' Thursday, April 23, 7:30pm - Free! Join Family for an intimate slide show and discussion with designer/filmmaker/artist Mike Mills to launch his new retrospective book, 'Graphics Films'. The presentation and q+a will be hosted by editor, Aaron Rose. Mills will also be taking audience questions and signing books. Graphics Films is the first retrospective monograph on one of the hardest-working men in contemporary creative culture.

For more than 15 years, Mike Mills' works in the fields of design and film have determined the visual landscape of our times. Graphics Films is a painstakingly produced document of Mills' career to date, including many never-before-seen examples of his works in graphic design, installation, publications and film projects. Past projects by Mills include music videos for Air ("Sexy Boy"), Blonde Redhead ("Top Ranking"), Yoko Ono ("Walking on Thin Ice") and Bran Van 3000 ("Afrodiziak") and album cover designs for the Beastie Boys (the Root Down EP), Sonic Youth (Washing Machine), Air (Moon Safari and Kelly Watch the Stars) and others.

He has designed graphics and textiles for Marc Jacobs and created the identity for X- Girl Clothing, and has exhibited his unique graphic installations worldwide, with solo shows at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York and Colette in Paris, among others.

In 1996 Mills cofounded The Directors Bureau, a multidisciplinary production company, with Roman Coppola. Since then, he has directed an impressive slew of music videos and films including The Architecture of Reassurance (2000) and Paperboys (2001), both of which were official selections at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004 he completed his first feature film, Thumbsucker (starring Keanu Reeves and Tilda Swinton), and he is currently at work on his second.

Family - 436 N Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, 90036

mikemillsweb.com
allegedpress.com

Now At REDCAT - Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Now Thru April,26, 2009

Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project
the break/s: a mixtape for stage Directed by Michael John Garcés

Deftly combining his trademark rapid-fire wordplay and poetic reveries with phenomenal physical movement, Marc Joseph Bamuthi leaves it all on stage in the break/s, his multimedia journey across Planet Hip-Hop.The former National Poetry Slam champion takes inspiration from Jeff Chang's seminal account in Can't Stop Won't Stop and looks to his own personal narrative to play out a living history of the hip-hop generation.

At turns self-deprecatingly funny and unsparingly frank, his dynamic, deeply felt stories track the rise of hip-hop from its homegrown local roots to a global cultural force--and the personal costs, chafing identity crises, and exacting racial and cultural expectations that came with this transformation.

Directed by Michael John Garcés, the break/s: a mixtape for stage is performed by the magnetic Bamuthi in a percussive call-and-response format with turntablist DJ Excess and multi-instrumentalist Ajayi Jackson, accompanied by video by Eli Jacobs Fantauzzi.

More Here...

Earth Day 2009 - Los Angeles

Los Angeles

Open Earth Day 2009
Exposition Park in the Rose Garden
April 22 – July 23, 2009

The beautiful and temperate locale of Los Angeles will be home to over 50 Cool Globes. The globes will be displayed in Exposition Park. Not only will the globes beautify an already lovely city, but residents of and visitors to Los Angeles will benefit from the ideas and discussions inspired by the globes.

Join in on the official grand opening on Earth Day, April 22 at 11 a.m. at Exposition Park.

More info Here...

John Waters at Gagosian Gallery

Now Through May 23

There is no such thing as a bad movie frame.
-John Waters

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce “Rear Projection”, an exhibition of new photographs and sculpture by John Waters. “Rear projection” is a movie term for the process whereby a foreground action is combined with a background scene filmed earlier to give the impression the actors are on location when they are, in fact, working inside a studio. In Waters’ latest work, this artificial and outdated visual effect is embraced, attacked and taken to extremes.

Glorifying the struggle, humiliation, and wild excitement of a life in show business, Waters uses an insider’s bag of film tricks and trade lingo to celebrate the excess of the movie industry. Rewriting and redirecting existing film imagery snapped off the TV screen, he assaults, elevates, subtitles, and startlingly alters these one time classic, respected, even honored movies to attain a new kind of equality: a cult film that only needs one viewer – John Waters himself. Child stars are given bad habits (Children Who Smoke); innocent movies are perverted by editing out just a few frames (Santa Molester); even traditionally beautiful movie stars are glamorously deformed by suspiciously overbudgeted charity advertising campaigns (Hollywood Smile Train).

The cult of religion and the religion of cult are the same in Waters’s world, as in The Process (a cult that worshipped both Satan and Jesus) and Idol #2, Waters’s un-ironic beatification of singer Johnny Mathis. He sneaks into other movies like a spy to photograph the very details that their original directors didn’t notice. Waters revels in the terrible frustrations of today’s film business combined with the hostility that outsiders feel towards the contemporary art world, hoping to bring into focus a fresh breed of humor, cheap (but satisfying) sexual thrills, and a shabbily elevated artistic appreciation that must always start from the back of the line.

Gagosian Gallery

Stage Review: LYDIA at the Mark Taper Forum

The family in LYDIA has a lot of problems. A lot. Some we might consider man made and some are gifts from God. Now there are those who would make the argument that all problems and all blessings, if you will, are gifts from God but let's just say there is a difference.

It's the early 1970's so you've got the Vietnam war. Man made problem I think. The patriarch is an illegal immigrant. Laws-- man made. The daughter is brain damaged and incapacitated as the result of a car accident. Gotta be man. The family in general is poor, ignorant and barely functional.

However at the core of this dysfunction are two issues that I think most would agree are a result of genetics, fate, and destiny: in short non-returnable gifts from you know who.

The first issue is alcoholism. The theatrical gift that never stops giving. Tough to find a great American play or any country's great play that doesn't lean on good old tongue-loosening, behavior warping alcohol and/or drug use to help move a plot along. Playwrights from Shakespeare to Sam Shepard have availed themselves of the veritas that vino provides.

The second issue in LYDIA is somewhat less common as a catalyst for tragedy if not completely unprecedented. Homosexuality. Sure there are plenty of homoerotic elements in Shakespeare and the great art of previous and more overtly patriarchal cultures. But I'm hard pressed to remember how those relationships led directly to the defining tragedy of the work. I guess Achilles did get it in the end and the heel because the Spartans knocked off his beautiful young cousin. But really, it's a fairly recent phenomena certainly in American theater. I think of Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee and the great closeted men at the center of much of their work.

Well there it is and I hope I didn't spoil anything for you. It's not a real big shock if your paying attention and by the time it comes along as a plot point, if your like me, it just takes you a little bit further away from true engagement.

But enough about LYDIA.

I've got a buddy who I think is going to die because he is gay. And I mean that in just about every possible manifestation. The guilt. The closet. The disease. It sucks. And it's a perfect marriage. A gift from God and a man made curse. And I wonder how it ends. Because it will. Another friend is going to meet Albee tomorrow and asked me to suggest a question she might ask. "When do we get our first gay president"?

-J.Kamal

TOMORROW NIGHT! EQUATOR BOOKS BENEFIT IN VENICE

A gentle reminder to go by tomorrow night, -Saturday, 7 to Midnight- to support Equator Books and keep them right there in Venice!

Tillage is told that they're going to have a great bar and Live Jazz... and also, They just put hundreds of new records in the bins, and there are a lot of new books on the shelves including their all-new section of Cookbooks. There are amazing Rock Photographs and lots of one-night only artwork available for purchase. Please stop by, bring a friend and ten bucks, have a drink, buy a book or record and help us help you by staying a part of Abbot Kinney community for many years to come. If you can't make it but love what they're doing, please buy a gift card or donate to the cause Here...

Tonight at LACMA

A Tribute to Norman Jewison

April 17 - April 18

On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Canadian Film Centre by Canadian-born director Norman Jewison, LACMA will host an evening of tributes by some of Mr. Jewison’s closest collaborators plus an on-stage discussion of his career moderated by Leonard Maltin. One of Hollywood's greatest storytellers and proficient in a range of genres, Jewison was the director of such legendary films as In the Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, Moonstruck, and The Hurricane. Confirmed guest speakers to date are Cher, Faye Dunaway, Eva Marie Saint, Carl Reiner, renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and Marilyn and Alan Bergman, the legendary Hollywood composers who provided memorable theme songs to many Jewison films over the years.

LACMA

At UCLA LIVE May 1-2- Ballet Preljocaj

Les 4 Saison

Daring, passionately sensual, and provocative, the dance works of French-born Albanian Angelin Preljocaj have left an indelible mark on international dance, including his ravishing Near Life Experience (at UCLA Live in 2004), his dramatically modern take on Romeo and Juliet (at UCLA in 1998) and his powerful version of Le Sacre du Printemps. Now Preljocaj takes on one of classical music’s cultural landmarks, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, in a fantastical interpretation bursting with color, playful energy and magic. Featuring irrepressibly vibrant dancing and the surreal and eccentrically beautiful set design of renowned French sculptor Fabrice Hyber, this imaginative work unfolds like a lucid dream as each season evokes primal thoughts and desires in the form of cool femme fatales, bright green Martian-like figures, and a giant prickly hedgehog lurking across the stage.

Fri-Sat, May 1-2 at 8p @ Royce Hall

More Here...

Tonight at Skirball - Alfred Molina in ART

"A nonstop cross-fire of crackling language [and] serious issues of life and art... a marriage of Molière and Woody Allen."-Newsweek

How much would you pay for a painting with nothing on it? Would it be art? Marc's best friend, Serge, has just purchased a very expensive-and very white-painting. To Marc, the painting is a joke, and as battle lines are drawn, old friends use it to settle scores. With friendships hanging in the balance, the question becomes: how much is a painting worth? Winner of the 1998 Tony Award for best play and the 1996 Olivier Award for best comedy.

Wednesday, April 15–Friday, April 17, 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 18, 2:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 19, 4:00 p.m.

More Here...

Giant Robot Presents: PAPERSHAPERS

Octavio Solis' "Lydia" at The Mark Taper Forum

Playwright Octavio Solis has become an overnight sensation, and it took only 25 years. Long respected in theater and Latino arts circles, the writer is having breakthrough success with his play "Lydia."

Set in El Paso in the 1970s, "Lydia" portrays the saga of the Flores family, whose teenage daughter, Ceci, has been disabled in a horrific accident. Into this household of troubled souls and buried secrets enters an undocumented caretaker who shares a mysterious connection with Ceci.

With recent productions at Denver Center Theatre Company, Yale Repertory Theatre and Marin Theatre Company, the drama opens Wednesday at the Mark Taper Forum, directed by Juliette Carrillo. "Lydia" has also been submitted for consideration for the Pulitzer Prize and is a finalist for the 2009 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. "Lydia" is a breakthrough and a departure for Solis, known for poetic, lyrical language in plays typically not tied to any one setting. The heightened language is still present in "Lydia" but so too is realism.

"It's my first real true family play inside a house," the writer says during a recent visit from his Bay Area home. "This is one where everything is happening inside four walls and within a compressed period of time, often real time. I've written the kind of play that I said I would never write.

more from the Jan Breslauer @ the LATimes here

At REDCAT - The Sharon Disney Lund Dance Series

April 15-17

Dance by Neil Greenberg
Really Queer Dance with Harps

This smart, politically charged work from Dance by Neil Greenberg achieves a magical confluence of continuous motion and aligning symmetries as the company explores an exuberant vision of the human body and its movements. Performed by four men and four women to a vivid live score for three harps by Zeena Parkins, the piece refrains from censoring repressed movement--"excessive," "flamboyant," "ambiguous," "illegible"--and instead revels in choreographic choices both queer and Queer. Really Queer Dance builds on Greenberg's Quartet with Three Gay Men--also on the program--in an ongoing venture to reconcile a questioning of the social and aesthetic status quo with a love of fully realized, full-bodied dancing. Featuring movement meticulously recreated from videotaped improvisations, both works set out to uncover the subtle traces, residues and ephemera of lived experience-and the stories carried within the bodies of dancers. Greenberg received the Bessie for the haunting Not-About-AIDS-Dance in 1994

"What makes Greenberg's work so exhilarating is that the stage space is even more alive than the extraordinary dancers who inhabit it... Endlessly fascinating." The New York Times

Date & time	General Admission	Students with current I.D.	CalArts Students, Faculty and Staff
Wed 4.15.09 8:30 pm	$25	$20	$12
Thurs 4.16.09 8:30 pm	$25	$20	$12
Fri 4.17.09 8:30 pm	$25	$20	$12

More Info Here...

Rabbit Redux: Brandi Milne at ThinkSpace

Opening Reception:
Friday, April 10th 7-11PM
On View: Apr. 10th – May 1st, 2009

Run Rabbit, Run is the first solo exhibition at our gallery from Los Angeles-based artist Brandi Milne. Run Rabbit, Run will feature a new fantastical world of whimsy painted with acrylic on wood panels and a collection of hand-painted antique books that will make up a very special installation. In addition to Run Rabbit, Run in our main gallery, we will also be presenting the debut Los Angeles solo show from Minneapolis based artist Cherri Wood in our project room along with new works on our ‘Fresh Faces’ wall from Los Angeles based artist Alex Garcia.

HAPPY EASTER!

80's Parisian Punk Underground at Cinefamily TONITE

Two films celebrating the early '80s European punk rock diaspora!

Considered to be a "lost" film until its very recent re-discovery, La Brune Et Moi is a whizz-bang tour through the Parisian punk underground, co-starring Pierre Clementi (The Conformist, Belle De Jour) and a long list of energetic Gallic bands like Taxi Girl, the Go-Go Pigalles and Astroflash.

In 1980, director Philippe Puicouyoul "borrowed" the production gear being used on a separate film he was working on, in order to clandestinely knock out this paean to one of the high points in the history of French rock 'n roll. While it has the most threadbare of plotlines, the film is really an effervescent excuse to showcase the best 'n brightest of the scene at the time, which it does in a seriously fun way. Second on the evening's bill is possibly the rarest and coolest film of the entire fest--one that we still can't announce the title of, since we're unsure of the condition of the print we'd like to show--but rest assured, once you've seen it, you'll thank us for having shown it.

La Brune Et Moi Dir. Philippe Puicouyoul, 1980, MiniDV, 50 min.
second film TBA Dir. ??, 198?, 16mm, 90 min.

Tickets - $10

Cirque de So Lame at Royal/T this Friday

PERFORMANCES by...

BOB BAKER and his marionettes
DAVID LIEBEHART (The Tim and Eric Show)
ALFONSO the GIANT Easter Bunny

Experience the CARNIVAL-INSPIRED SPACE and...

Handwriting Analysis Gypsy
- be sure to bring writing samples from your boyfriends/girlfriends, moms, and bosses!
$10 for one or $15 for two
Photobooth
- with vintage props from HBO's Carnivale set
Sideshow personalities
Costume contest
- special prizes
Gourmet Cotton Candy
Fresh Popcorn
Delicious Cupcakes
& MORE!!!

Guests can purchase exclusive vintage and Ringmaster-inspired pillbox hats and items at the Royal/T pop-up store from FG & Company.

$5 entrance fee.
Must be 18+ over to attend.
Circus-Inspired Attire encouraged.
RSVP@royal-t.org with "CIRCUS" in the subject line.

Does Post-Colonial Theory Make You Hot? Go See Walid Raad @ REDCAT Gallery

Walid Raad, Part I_Chapter 1_Section 79: On Walid Sadek's Love Is Blind

April 10 - June 14, 2009

Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World / Part 1_Volume 1_Chapter 1 (Beirut: 1992-2005)
A project by Walid Raad

Opening reception: Thur Apr 9 | 6-9 pm
Artist talk: 6:30 pm

In 2007, Walid Raad initiated a research and art project about the history of contemporary and modern art in the Arab world. On the one hand, Raad's project explores the recent emergence of a new physical infrastructure for the visual arts in the Middle East and the Gulf in the form of workshops, festivals, funds, art schools, white-cube galleries, large museums, journals, and private and public collections. In a context where cultural tourism has become an instrument of economic growth and power, Raad's project identifies and unpacks the ideological, economic and political dimensions of this phenomenon.

On the other hand, Raad proceeds from the writings of Jalal Toufic and his concept of "the withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster" to also ask whether and how culture and tradition in the Arab world may have been affected, materially and immaterially, by the various wars that have been waged there by native and external powers.

Scratching on Things I Could Disavow expands upon Raad's The Atlas Group, a monumental study that examined the social, political, psychological and aesthetic conditions of the Lebanese wars through the collection, organization and production of archival documentation. This new project marks a critical juncture in Raad's practice, at once a departure from The Atlas Group while expanding its historical and theoretical framework.

DANIEL NEWMAN at EIGHTH VEILOpening Friday, April 10

A few weeks ago Eighth Veil held a delirious party to celebrate their new gallery in the heart of Hollywood. Next door to the notoriously dry Seventh Veil, Eighth Veil is bringing high art back to seedy Sunset Boulevard from the outskirts of Chinatown and Culver City. The inaugural show is Daniel Newman's Charlie Foxtrot, a fascinating series of layered photographs, montages, and drawings that make up Newman's first exhibition in Los Angeles. Housed in a building that was originally home for a lithography press, Eighth Veil promises to add new dimension to L.A.'s art scene by not only hosting exhibits and events but also publishing fine books. And I love the animation on their webpage.

Daniel Newman
CHARLIE FOXTROT
10 April 2009 - 12 May 2009
Opening reception on 10 April from 6-9pm.

Eighth Veil
7174 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Tonite: Happy Birthday Arturo Bandini

Newspaper Pic of young John Fante working as a waiter in Downtown Los Angeles

Arturo', she said. 'Why do we fight all the time?'
I didn't know. I said something about temperaments, but she shook her head and crossed her knees, and a sense of her fine thighs being lifted lay heavily in my mind, thick suffocating sensation, warm lush desire to take them in my hands. Every move she made, the soft turn of her neck, the large breasts swelling under the smock, her fine hands upon the bed, the fingers spread out, these things disturbed me, a sweet painful heaviness dragging me into stupor. Then the sound of her voice, restrained, hinting of mockery, a voice that talked to my blood and bones.

Ask the dust, 1939

Celebrate John Fante's Birthday Tonight at Zocalo's

Quizas, Quizas, Quizas: Lila Downs @ Royce Hall

Thursday, April 9th at 8pm | Royce Hall

Described by the New York Times as “a mezzo-soprano with a three-octave range, a hungry mind, and an arresting stage presence,” Mexican American singer Lila Downs creates a strongly layered music in which blues and jazz cohabitate with rap and ranchera, and honky-tonk swings alongside romantic boleros.

“At a time when Mexico’s rich native styles are being shunned as old-fashioned or irrelevant, Downs offers a fresh, modern document that joyfully reveals the rich well of inspiration” [Los Angeles Times]. Following sold-out Royce Hall appearances in 2004 and 2007, Downs returns to UCLA Live to perform her electrifying, cross-cultural blend of Mexican roots music.

Tickets Here.

Caden Manson/Big Art Group SOS West Coast Premiere

April 8-12 | REDCAT

Caden Manson / Big Art Group SOS

The always-provocative New York ensemble has won an international reputation for pushing the limits of performance and video art by lacing its original hall-of-mirrors multimedia stagecraft with flurries of livewire choreographed action. Its latest opus, SOS, employs nine performers, two musicians, a half-dozen projection surfaces and 22 live-edit cameras to mix the worlds of surveillance, cinema and live performance.

Perfectly timed for Easter weekend, the production confronts themes of rebirth, sacrifice and ritual in a supersaturated, hyper-acquisitive society. Collaborators Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson draw on the primal themes of The Rite of Spring--the paradigm-shattering collaboration between Stravinsky and Nijinsky--to stage their own contemporary rite of rebirth through a panoptic "Real Time Film" technique, first seen at REDCAT in their acclaimed piece Flicker.

Everyday rituals of renewal are abstracted and refracted in video, morphed into metaphors of war and environmental degradation--and set into a meditation on sustainability, survivalism, immolation and revolution.

In a nutshell, people in rabbit costumes doing high budget performance art!

LA ART WEEKEND! Culver City Gallery Walk

6:00-8:00pm

Culver City Gallery Walk
Hosted by ForYourArt, LAXART Regroup, X-Tra and Yelp on the occasion of Los Angeles Art Weekend. Participants include Blum & Poe, David Kordansky, Honor Fraser, Kim Light, LAXART, Susanne Vielmetter, Taylor de Cordoba and Western Project
6:30pm: Exhibition walkthrough with Dave Muller at Blum & Poe
7:30pm: Exhibition walkthrough with Walead Beshty at LAXART
Food trucks include Green Truck, Kogi BBQ and Tacos Bevida

9:00pm
Los Angeles Art Weekend After Party
Music by Artist/DJ Dave Muller
RSVP: royalt@laartweekend.com
Royal/T
8910 Washington Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232

Sandow Birk's DANTE'S INFERNO Screening at Farmlab: FREE

Farmlab Public Salon
Friday, April 3, 2009 @ Noon

Free Admission Screening of the film, "Dante's Inferno" -- With a discussion with artist, art director, writer, and producer Sandow Birk

Raised on the beaches of Southern California and currently living and working in Los Angeles, Sandow Birk is a product of California culture. With an emphasis on social issues, frequent themes of his past work have included daily life in L.A.’s barrios, inner city violence, graffiti, various political issues, surfing, and skateboarding. His work has been shown extensively throughout the U.S. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, and a Fulbright Fellow to Rio de Janeiro for 1997.

Melding the seemingly disparate traditions of apocalyptic live-action graphic novel and charming Victoria-era toy theater, Dante’s Inferno is a subversive, darkly satirical update of the original 14th century literary classic. Retold with the use of intricately hand-drawn paper puppets and miniature sets, and without the use of CGI effects, this unusual travelogue takes viewers on a tour of hell. And what we find there, looks a lot like the modern world.

Deadline: Noir City at the Egyptian | April 2-11

Opening Night Noir: OUT OF THE PAST with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer | Thursday, April 2nd at 7:30pm

The streets and alleys keep getting darker, the tough guys tougher and the femmes more fatale. So to prepare you for dealing with the nocturnal netherworld out there (and hold you over till you can glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel), we’ll be screening more grand forays into the heart of darkness.

We kick off with a Jane Greer double bill (the classic OUT OF THE PAST co-starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, and the rare THE COMPANY SHE KEEPS), followed by Robert Siodmak’s impossibly hard-to-see FLY-BY-NIGHT, Fritz Lang’s WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, an Anthony Mann double feature (the rare TWO O’CLOCK COURAGE and DESPERATE), a Newspaper Noir double bill of DEADLINE U.S.A. and ultra-rare CHICAGO DEADLINE, plus THE RACKET, THE ENFORCER, WALK SOFTLY STRANGER, Joseph Losey’s impossible-to-find CHANCE MEETING, NOCTURNE and scarce and forgotten B Noirs SMOOTH AS SILKROSES ARE RED!

There’ll also be new prints of rarities like John Farrow’s Faustian fable ALIAS NICK BEAL, Joseph Losey’s sin-in-the-suburbs masterpiece THE PROWLER (newly restored by UCLA!), heist saga SIX BRIDGES TO CROSS, the delirious Commie-witchhunt classic WOMAN ON PIER 13 and the "Am-I-going-crazy?" gem THE OCTOBER MAN.

Also on the last day of the series, Sunday, April 19, there’ll be a special afternoon memorial tribute to actress Ann Savage with testimonial panels and screenings.

Full schedule, tickets, and info here.