SATURDAY 1.30 - X-TRA's 1 IMAGE 1 MINUTE -

Art Los Angeles Contemporary presents...
X-TRA's 1 IMAGE 1 MINUTE

Angelenos Present Significant Photographs


TILLAGE is thrilled about the the second “1 Image 1 Minute” live event. This year’s version will be a fundraiser for X-TRA sponsored by the new Art Los Angeles Contemporary art fair at the Pacific Design Center.

Over 45 Artists, Curators, and Historians each present a personally significant image for 1 minute. Participants from all over the LA art community will come together for this live presentation of short stories and anecdotes tied to images.

Last year’s 1 IMAGE 1 MINUTE was an incredible success, and sold out the RedCat theater. This year we’ll be at the beautiful Silver Screen Theater, with more seating to accommodate everyone. And, with the support of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, you’ll have a chance to check out the art fair before or after the event.

The 1 IMAGE 1 MINUTE event is based on Micol Hebron’s column in X-TRA, which is a recreation of a project produced by Belgian director Agnès Varda. Varda invited various people in and outside the art world to respond to photographic images for one minute. She presented the results on French television in 1983.

Saturday 1.30.10
4p

Pacific Design Center, WeHo

Silver Screen Theater
 


Get your tickets now! All proceeds benefit X-TRA.

Participants (more to follow ) include :


Scoli Acosta / Benjamin Ball / Andrew Berardini / Delia Brown / Julia Bryan-Wilson / Annie Buckley / David Bunn / Dorit Cypis / Tony de los Reyes / Shannon Ebner / Tim Ebner / Janet Fitch / Tim Fleming / Kianga Ford / Brendan Fowler / Piero Golia / Judith Jack Halberstam / Stanya Kahn / Dawn Kasper / Peter Kirby / Bettina Korek / Liz Kotz / Brandon Lattu / Thomas Lawson / Karen Moss / Aram Moshayedi / Dave Muller / Leonard Nimoy / Shana Nys-Dambrot / Karthik Pandian / Christopher Pate / Lucas Reiner / Britt Salvesen / Kim Schoenstadt / Mohamed Sharif / Aandrea Stang / Sally Stein / Catherine Taft / Geoff Tuck / Margaret Wappler / Christine Wertheim / Carlin Wing / Josh White / Mark Wyse / Habib Zamani / Peter Zellner /

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Stage Review : PROJECT: WONDERLAND - @ The BOOTLEG

What is Alice In Wonderland about? I never read it. Is there some overriding metaphor that I don't know about? The passage from childhood to adolescence? How old is Alice anyway? I don't know. The story never captured my imagination. Maybe because of my gender. Is it more a girls story? I mean I know it's about a girl but...whatever.

Project: Wonderland doesn't offer any particular insight. It just delivers the story really well. It's beautiful to look at, It works great with a live band and some wonderful live voices. It surrounds you with sensation. Pulls you into the looking glass along with Alice and spits you back out later with no intermission and it feels like no real time has passed at all.

I took a five year old and an eight year old and they didn't flinch. They loved it. It is a perfect introduction to the sensory pleasures of theater and a vividly told story.

I still don't know what the point is but i really don't care.

- JK

J.D. Salinger Dies At 91

What do say at a moment like this? In a way, we’ve felt Salinger’s loss for years — the great author in seclusion in rural New England. Occasionally, though, evidence of his existence seeped out — a photograph of him at the supermarket, maybe, pushing a cart like a mortal, like a person who needed milk and carrots. He gave the world four books and assorted short stories, but his legacy far outweighs the volume of his output. His novel Catcher in the Rye, as I’ve noted before, served as many people’s entry into the world of literary fiction. It was that rare novel that everyone read, either in school or on their own. For many, it was a watershed moment that led to a lifetime of reading. For others still it was the beginning of something else, a life spent trying to create something like it.

Start where most of us did: with the iconic covers. Catcher in the Rye, depending on when one found it, featured a brilliant red-orange carousel. It looked to me like an angry book at the time, and of course it is. And his other paperbacks were studies in simplicity. All white, with those rainbow stripes in the corner. They were striking; they stood out from the other cluttered books on the school library shelves, with their illustrations, their boasting. A Salinger book didn’t need to boast, it didn’t need to announce itself. If one were to encounter them now, the comparison would be easy to make: they’re like the Google homepage.

And what was inside those books was incredible. I was, maybe, an atypical reader, in that I didn’t devour the young adult literature of the time. I can’t recall reading and enjoying a book before my sophomore year of high school, and Salinger’s work — not just Catcher, but the dazzling, wonderful story collection Nine Stories — was one of the first books to turn me on to reading. For that, I’m forever grateful. Salinger’s characters weren’t like me, per se, but they were identifiable as people, often extraordinary people. His books had a meaning that wasn’t immediately apparent; they resisted my teenage insistence on simplicity — either this or that. They were simultaneously funny and sad, a combination that would prove to be a favorite of mine ever after.

The man was fascinating as well. For one thing, he was gone. After a wildly successful literary career, he retreated from the public eye. A bit of a religious schizophrenic (he even dabbled, briefly, in Scientology), the influence of Vedantic Hinduism can be seen in his work and his life, as he withdrew from many of the obligations and trappings of the modern world, his status as the literary world’s foremost recluse secure. He hid without Thomas Pynchon’s playfulness, without that winking desire to be noticed. Indeed, at times, he seemed to have a disdain for his readers, fighting vociferously, at times, to keep new books from surfacing (as was his right, it should be said). His ambivalence about publishing only enhanced his mythology. It’s difficult to imagine an author pulling the same trick in this day and age. The world has changed too much.

Whatever his beliefs were at the end, I hope Salinger died at peace with his family and friends. I think it’s a safe bet he didn’t worry much about his legacy, and with good reason — he didn’t need to.

- Patrick Brown

MATMOS Lecture TONIGHT @ SCI-ARC

Matmos/Drew Daniel & M.C. Schmidt

Queer Assemblages

TONIGHT @ 7p
W.M. Keck Lecture Hall

The San Francisco-based experimental music group Matmos begins SCI-Arc's Spring 2010 lecture series on January 27. Matmos is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, aided and abetted by many others.

In their recordings and live performances over the last twelve years, Matmos have employed such unlikely objects and instruments as amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the turning pages of Bibles, a bowed five string banjo, slowed down whistles and kisses, and water hitting copper plates.

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MUST SEE: Nick Cave - Meet Me at the Center of the Earth- @ The FOWLER Museum

Now on view thru 5.30.10

Experience the largest presentation of work by Chicago-based artist Nick Cave, featuring thirty-five of his Soundsuits—multi-layered, mixed-media sculptures named for the sounds made when the “suits” are worn. Reminiscent of African, Caribbean and other ceremonial ensembles as well as of haute couture, Cave’s work explores issues of transformation, ritual, myth and identity. His virtuosic constructions incorporate yarn, sequins, bottle caps, vintage toys, rusted iron sticks, hair, and more. Mad, humorous, visionary, glamorous and unexpected, the Soundsuits are created from scavenged ordinary materials that Cave re-contextualizes into extraordinary works of art. The Fowler is the first LA-area museum to feature Cave’s work and the only Southern California venue for this traveling exhibition. - Losanjealous

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GO SEE: Mark Jenkins - Meaning is Overrated - @ Carmichael Gallery now on view thru 2.18

Mark Jenkins is an American self-taught installation artist who uses packing tape as his primary sculpting medium. His first installations were created on the beaches and streets of Rio de Janeiro (2003). He continues today in his native city, Washington DC when he is not traveling around the world to do outdoor installations and conduct workshops to teach his techniques. Jenkins’ projects include the Storker Project, in which small clear tape babies are placed in the urban environment, and the Embed Series, in which hyper realistic anthropomorphic figures are placed on streets to interact with passersby. Indoors he has shown his work in major cities including London, NYC, LA, Tokyo and Sao Paulo.

Carmichael Gallery
1257 N. La Brea Ave
WeHo 90038

Tonight @ The HAMMER - GARY PANTER

Gary Panter

A three-time Emmy Award-winner for his production design on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and the recipient of the 2000 Chrysler Award for Design Excellence, graphic artist Gary Panter is widely known as the “father of punk comics.” His “ratty line” style first came to prominence in the 70s with the comic Jimbo, featured in the Los Angeles hardcore-punk tabloid Slash, and later in Art Spiegelman’s avant-garde comics anthology RAW. Panter’s work has been exhibited widely and he is the subject of a two-volume monograph by PictureBox. For this program, Panter will examine the relationship between comic art and fine art painting in the 20th century.

The program will be followed by a book signing.

ALL HAMMER PUBLIC PROGRAMS ARE FREE. Tickets are required, and are available at the Billy Wilder Theater Box Office one hour prior to start time. Limit one ticket per person on a first come, first served basis. Hammer members receive priority seating, subject to availability. Reservations not accepted, RSVPs not required.

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Go See - GRUPO DE RUA : H3 - Now @ REDCAT

The Sharon Disney Lund Dance Series

Grupo de Rua: H3

“Raw 21st-century expression... Extraordinarily brilliant." The Guardian

Brazilian choreographer Bruno Beltrão and his nine-member Grupo de Rua—all recruited from the lively street dance scene in Rio—open a new physics-defying chapter in their ongoing project to deploy hip-hop as a vibrant dance theater form for our time. In their latest work, H3, Beltrão and company elaborate on a churning, crossover movement style that brings in elements of krumping, popping and breakdance while at the same time deconstructing the clichés of contemporary dance.

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Steven Severin from Siouxsie and the Banshees scores rare silent experimental films for 2 nights @ CINEFAMILY 1.13.-1.14.

In his Los Angeles live solo debut, Steven Severin (founding member and longtime bassist for Siouxsie & The Banshees) comes to the Cinefamily for two successive nights of intense, compelling, moody and sensuous live scores to rare silent and experimental films! This first evening is based upon trance-inducing tracks from his 2009 solo album "Music For Silents". The centerpiece of the evening is his new score for Germaine Dulac's The Seashell and The Clergyman (1928), considered to be one of the very first surrealist films. A collaboration between Dulac and the infamous French playwright Antonin Artaud (who was reportedly infuriated by the final product), the film tells of an amorous priest, and the object of his desire whom he never can grasp. Severin's sparkling piano lines, played backwards and forwards, collide headfirst with subtle synthwork to shattering effect.

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SONIC YOUTH - Saturday Night (1.9.10) @ the WILTERN

Sonic Youth were one of the most unlikely success stories of underground American rock in the '80s. Where contemporaries R.E.M. and Hüsker Dü were fairly conventional in terms of song structure and melody, Sonic Youth began their career by abandoning any pretense of traditional rock & roll conventions.

Borrowing heavily from the free-form noise experimentalism of the Velvet Underground and the Stooges, and melding it with a performance art aesthetic borrowed from the New York post-punk avant-garde, Sonic Youth redefined what noise meant within rock & roll. Sonic Youth rarely rocked, though they were inspired directly by hardcore punk, post-punk, and no wave.

Sonic Youth will bring over 20 years of music making together to the Historic Wiltern Theater and will be sure to show how consistently good the band has been and will continue to be for years to come.

PATTI SMITH in-Store @ SKYLIGHT BOOKS JANUARY 30th

Music legend Patti Smith will be at Skylight Books on January 30th to discuss and sign her new book , Just Kids, the story of Smith's extraordinary relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. This is Smith's first book of prose. Smith is a writer, performer, and visual artist.

Patti Smith gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary mergence of poetry and rock. Her seminal album Horses, bearing Robert Mapplethorpe's renowned photograph, has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time.

Punk rock's poet laureate, Patti Smith ranks among the most influential female rock & rollers of all time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday. If that hybrid remained distinctly uncommercial for much of her career, it wasn't a statement against accessibility so much as the simple fact that Smith followed her own muse wherever it took her -- from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism, or even completely out of music at times. Her most avant-garde outings drew a sense of improvisation and interplay from free jazz, though they remained firmly rooted in noisy, primitive three-chord rock & roll. She was a powerful concert presence, singing and chanting her lyrics in an untrained but expressive voice, whirling around the stage like an ecstatic shaman delivering incantations. A regular at CBGB's during the early days of New York punk, she was the first artist of the bunch to land a record deal and release an album, even beating the Ramones to the punch!


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at REDCAT - James Benning: Ruhr

Jack H. Skirball Series

U.S. premiere - James Benning: Ruhr

Jonathan Rosenbaum (Film Comment/Chicago Reader ) calls James Benning “A master framer of landscapes.” Perhaps one of the most fascinating figures in American independent cinema, James Benning makes his eagerly awaited entrance into the digital realm with absolutely stunning effect. Ruhr—which is also the first film Benning has shot entirely outside the United States—is a meditation on the notion of terra incognita. Faced with the unfamiliar landscape of Germany’s Ruhr Valley, the cradle of heavy industry in that country, and a new medium, he turns the film into a process of slow discovery. As Benning uses HD to continue his exploration of duration in seven masterfully composed shots, minute events and nuances of changing light suggest a complex balance between permanence and mutation in the Ruhr’s industrial landscapes, marked, not least, with the ubiquitous presence of immigrant labor.

***James Benning will be there in person

** Jonathan Rosenbaum's 100 alternate film List O' Mania

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Bonnie Prince Billy to Curate a Night of Films for CINEFAMILY this Thursday 1.7.10

Folk troubador Bonnie 'Prince' Billy will be @ the Cinefamily to present a hand-picked double feature of films that explore the wonder and the mystery of the fairer sex. Even diehard music fans out there might not be aware of Billy's intense love of cinema, and Cinefamily more than welcomes the opportunity to let the man give them his favorites!

The evening opens with Nicholas Ray's soapy noir A Woman's Secret (1949), starring the ravishing Maureen O'Hara as a singing teacher blamed for the shooting of her smarmy protégé (Gloria Grahame), "a trollop-minded chirp she has coached into the bigtime." (Variety) Scripted by Herman J. Mankiewicz (Citizen Kane), the film is a chance for Ray to take what could have been an average "woman's picture" and tweak it to suit his slightly perverse sensibilities. Next, Wim Wenders' Alice In The Cities (1974). This German New Wave gem finds a roving reporter who reluctantly takes on the guardianship of Alice, a little girl who needs to be delivered to her grandmother -- a woman whose name and address she doesn't remember, and whose house can only be identified by a single photo of an unmarked front door. Yella Röttlander's stellar performance as the young girl whose journey's end is always one more step away is framed terrifically by Robby Mueller's B&W cinematography, and a moody score by Irmin Schmidt and Michael Karoli (half of Krautrock legends Can).

A Woman's Secret Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1949, 35mm, 84 min.
Alice In The Cities Dir. Wim Wenders, 1974, digital presentation, 110 min.

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