Distant Lands, Blowups, Quiet Whispers: the First Five Days of the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival

Richard Jackson – Accidents in Abstract Painting

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The first five days of the jam-packed Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival have passed, and I’ve survived, albeit barely. Since Thursday, it seems like I’ve spent a lot of time driving to the farthest reaches of Greater Los Angeles to watch stuff get blown up, lit up, and shot at. Crowd-pleasing spectacles have definitely dominated the game.

On Saturday, hundreds of people came out to Pomona College to see a trio of “performances” (the pieces by Judy Chicago and James Turrell would be more accurately described as temporary public art installations) that took place at strategic locations on campus. They were all nice, although not exactly mind-blowing. I didn’t quite see what was so nifty about John White’s Preparation F, which made a spectacle out of college football players getting dressed and scrimmaging; modern dance works have done this sort of thing better. Chicago’s ejaculatory fireworks in A Butterfly for Pomona were certainly entertaining, and Turrell’s Burning Bridges was a nostalgic and humorous evocation of his then-developing interest in light and the framing of environments. The most remarkable thing about the whole event, however, was seeing so many people turn out for performance—the most I’ve ever seen in one sitting.

Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival Launches Tonight!

Niki de Saint Phalle

The art world has gotten off to an uncharacteristically early and eager start this year. I’ve barely had time to catch my breath since getting off the plane from my vacation—and that was on New Year’s Eve.

As I write this, we’re only a couple of hours away from the official launch of the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival. Like all things PST, the festival, which runs through January 29 (with a few events continuing past that date), seeks to overwhelm. During a preview event at SoHo House last month, organizers Glenn Phillips and Lauri Firstenberg even said that they purposely overloaded the program so that people would have to choose between amazing events that conflict with each other. Evil, I tell you! Luckily the hardworking folks at ForYourArt have thoughtfully organized a team of correspondents, including yours truly, to report on the festival as it happens. This will include blog posts, reviews, live tweets, and so on.

I’ve already done a practice run of live tweeting to make sure I can actually use my new smartphone (yes I know, I was really late to that table). Check out my coverage of Tuesday night’s Kim Jones / Barbara Smith talk at LAXART, complete with photos, on my Twitter page. Last night I even downloaded Twitvid so that I can post videos of some events as they happen, woo!

There are a lot of great events coming up, but probably the one I’m most excited about is Tirs: Reloaded, a recreation of Niki de Saint Phalle’s shooting paintings organized by Yael Lipschutz. In 1962, Virginia Dwan invited de Saint Phalle to Los Angeles to create the first Tirs series outside of Europe. Enacted in Malibu and the Sunset Strip, the LA Tirs performances, which involved many artists and even Jane Fonda, were popular and emphasized the social and communal aspects of the piece.

Three Things Not to Miss

CamLab occupies the steps of City Hall, October 2011.
Courtesy of CamLab.

In between spending time with family and friends over the holidays, I had the distinct pleasure of working on #OccupyArt21, a two-week guest stint on the Art21 blog that began this past Monday and continues through next Friday. Ten LA-based artists/writers—ARLA (Elana Mann & Juliana Snapper), Teresa Carmody, myself, Dorit Cypis, Mikal Czech, Robby Herbst, Anna Mayer, Christy Roberts, Mathew Timmons, and Matias Viegener—each contribute a post a day that reflects on and embodies the Occupy movement, which we all support. The works are amazingly brilliant, reflecting the deep well of talent that thrives in Los Angeles. Of all the art projects I’ve worked on to date, I have to say this is the one that I am the most proud of.

I am also excited that CamLab, a performance collective for whom I’ve always had a special fondness, begins its MOCA Engagement Party residency this Thursday night at 7pm, at the Grand Avenue location. CamLab’s work blends visual and social engagement in provocative explorations of language, embodiment, and intimacy. Two more events are scheduled for February 2 and March 1.

Following on the heels of a highly successful public forum addressing the controversy stirred up by Marina Abramović and Yvonne Rainer around the 2011 MOCA Gala, Jennifer Doyle is organizing a three-part Feminist Seminar on Politics and Performance, taking place over three Sundays beginning this Sunday, 1-4pm, at Human Resources in Chinatown. Doyle, along with Dino Dinco and Matias Viegener, did a fantastic job of moderating the forum at LACE, keeping things on track while also providing provocative theoretical overlays to the discussion. The Feminist Seminar will definitely be a Don’t Miss event.

Susan Mogul and Ilene Segalove, Pacific Standard Time focus weekend, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, December 3, 2011

Ilene Segalove, right, with her mom Elaine

The Orange County Museum of Art was abuzz with history this past Saturday. After an excellent tour of the State of Mind exhibition, in which curator Karen Moss neatly relayed the story of California conceptualism in just under 45 minutes, two special Pacific Standard Time programs dynamically connected history with the present day.

First, almost all of Ilene Segalove’s The Mom Tapes (1974–78) were screened in the museum’s auditorium; they were introduced by Segalove herself and followed by a Q&A with the artist and her mom, Elaine. The Mom Tapes are on view in the galleries as part of State of Mind, but it was great to be able to sit down and focus my attention on this body of work, created over a period of four years. The episodic tapes, which are really charming and funny, capture aspects of Segalove’s relationship to her mom as well as their upper-middle class family life in a posh Beverly Hills house—it’s a classic instance of the personal playing into a larger political concern of valuing women’s daily contributions.

Here’s a short snippet of Segalove’s introduction to The Mom Tapes:

“I always knew that real life was material for art. I always was kind of a spy in my own life. I would spend hours leaning against the door to my parents’ bedroom, overhearing their loud conversations. And sometimes I would turn them into cartoons and entertain my younger brother with illustrations of what they said, and how they said it. My brother later became a psychiatrist. I don’t know if there’s a connection, it’s possible.”

Liz Glynn, All the Arms We Need…A Dinner Party in Three Acts (Part III of Loving You Is Like Fucking the Dead), Engagement Party residency, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, December 1, 2011

All the Arms We Need…A Dinner Party in Three Acts, following close on the heels of the controversial Marina Abramović gala dinner at MOCA, was a fitting end to Liz Glynn’s Engagement Party residency in a few different ways. A celebratory affair, it invited favorable comparisons to the ostentatious Abramović event: the food and wine were exquisite, probably comparable to what was served at the gala, and yet this dinner was entirely free of charge to guests. More importantly, the concepts at work in Glynn’s piece were subtle and unfolding instead of over-ripe and overdone; the work offered an ironic, yet generous, conclusion to Glynn’s inquiries into the functions of the museum.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about the Abramović debacle, and I’ve listened to a lot of comments from people who were there. After cycling through a variety of possible responses, I’ve settled on the conclusion that Abramović was basically continuing her depressing trajectory of self-canonization and complicity with establishment forces at the expense of her own work, which was at one time daring and thrilling. The New York Times, while obeying the unspoken dictum of focusing on the glittery, gossipy aspects of the evening, did let out a brief critical comment: “…at times the whole event seemed like an involuntarily comedic medley of the greatest hits of her own life as a performance artist.” That pretty much summed it all up for me.

Open Letter to Artists from Sara Wookey

Sara Wookey performing "Trio A"
(1966) by Yvonne Rainer at VIVA! Performance Festival in Montreal.
Photo: Guy L'Heureux.

I participated in an audition on November 7th for performance artist Marina Abramović’s production for the annual gala of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. I auditioned because I wanted to participate in the project of an artist whose work I have followed with interest for many years and because it was affiliated with MOCA, an institution that I have a connection with as a Los Angeles-based artist. Out of approximately eight hundred applicants, I was one of two hundred selected to audition. Ultimately, I was offered the role of one of six nude females to re-enact Abramović’s signature work, Nude with Skeleton (2002), at the center of tables with seats priced at up to $100,000 each. For reasons I detail here—reasons that I strongly believe need to be made public—I turned it down.

I am writing to address three main points: One, to add my voice to the discourse around this event as an artist who was critical of the experience and decided to walk away, a voice which I feel has been absent thus far in the LA Times and New York Times coverage; Two, to clarify my identity as the informant about the conditions being asked of artists and make clear why I chose, up till now, to be anonymous in regards to my email to Yvonne Rainer; And three, to prompt a shift of thinking of cultural workers to consider, when either accepting or rejecting work of any kind, the short- and long-term impact of our personal choices on the entire field. Each point is to support my overriding interest in organizing and forming a union that secures labor standards and fair wages for fine and performing artists in Los Angeles and beyond.

An Artist Speaks Out About the MOCA Gala

This morning I decided to take down my post on the recent MOCA Gala. Basically, I concluded that commenting on Twitpics and gossip rag accounts was bullshit and a waste of space. I’ll never know how I would have felt if I had actually attended the gala – whether I would have been moved by Abramović’s actions, or thought they were stupid, or something in between – and that’s just the way it is.

I am happy, however, to see that Carrie McIlwain, one of the artists who participated in the gala, has stepped forward and provided a thoughtful, detailed account of her experiences, via Geoff Tuck’s Notes on Looking blog. This is a huge breath of fresh air after the deluge of shallow, celebrity-oriented coverage from the mainstream media. McIlwain is also brave enough to cut through a lot of the bullshit behind Yvonne Rainer’s protest.

Some highlights:

“Having experienced sexual harassment and emotional and physical abuse in more than one art studio work place, I took Rainer’s allegations very seriously, wondering if my history of abuse from employers made it impossible for me to recognize the conditions that foster abuse. Ultimately I concluded that a group of educated, willing performers do not need to be spoken for; we need to be spoken with.”

“Though I did not recognize any of the people dining at my table, I commend them now for the respectful and intelligent art patrons they revealed themselves to be. Callousness can come from any class, but I truly believe it is important to offer people the opportunity to reveal their nature.”

“If the aim of Rainer’s critique sought to discredit the museum system of funding it was sloppy and hollow. In the end it was an attack on the proposed work of a single artist.”

Although McIlwain had a positive experience at her table, she does not discount the fact that others did not have such a great time with their guests, and gives substantial air time to their stories as well. Throughout, her commentary is clear, well-reasoned, and most important, free of the hysteria and sometimes ungrounded rhetoric that was generated by the pre-gala “scandal.”

ADDENDUM: I’ve now been made aware of this very earnest tale from E.J.Hill, this deliciously bitchy account from Dorian Wood, and this full-blown Facebook pow-wow started by Macklin Kowal.

Chinatown openings, November 5, 2011

Micol Hebron refills her crystal vagina

Just when you thought vagina art had been exhausted, Micol Hebron, the undisputed queen of the genre, steps up and takes it to yet another level. Her new show at Jancar Gallery—titled Sisterhood is Powerful and partially done in collaboration with her sisters Siobhan and Tiernan—is all vaginas, all the time, all in your in face.

There are exquisite vagina portraits in the front gallery and glittery vagina drawings in the basement. There is even one genius painting that repurposes Jackson Pollock’s and Lucio Fontana’s iconic gestures to create an AbEx-Spatialist vagina canvas. But the centerpiece, a true showstopper, was a huge crystal vagina grotto that secreted a steady stream of delicious (and quite strong) piña colada, which guests were invited to help themselves to. I had two cups, garnished with cherries and orange slices, and was buzzed for the rest of the evening. This, on top of the retro-feminist high of hilarity that I always get from Hebron’s cheeky, cheery, and totally unapologetic paeans to the beauty and power of vaginas. Go sisters! (You can read Hebron’s own detailed commentary on this show here.)

3 x 6 x 3 #3, live works curated by Dino Dinco, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), October 20, 2011

Samuel White at LACE

I always love Samuel White’s works. He puts so much of himself into them. From naked conversations with visitors, to wrestling matches with romantic partners, to riding the mechanized bulls of Los Angeles, White always puts his psyche and his flesh on the line, as he probes the boundaries between self and other.

In response to my questions, White sent a description of his LACE performance that is so beautiful, I’m just going to paste it here: “i love LA. this was the inspiration for piece in a sense. this city is so mechanical in way yet controlled by people. as much as the bull is sensual and erotic, it’s still mechanical. and so i thought the LA industrial background would highlight this. a bull ride in the LA sunset. what can be more romantic and real than a physical whirlwind in such a beautiful place. LA has everything this performance did. a sensual ride if chosen, or a crazy spin. the situation is both set-up by the performer yet controlled by the audience. similar to everyone’s experience here in Los Angeles. you can only choose to place your selfhere. the struggle is staying on top op it, often seemingly controlled by outside forces. i say seemingly because in he end, you realize how much control you actually have had the entire journey…”

Dawn Kasper, Karen Adelman, Tara Jane ONeil, Alejandra Herrera, and Marilyn Arsem, Free Clinic #2, curated by The Action Bureau, Human Resources, October 13, 2011

The above image captures one of my favorite things in Free Clinic #2, a suite of three performances by women artists curated by The Action Bureau. It’s the “score” that Karen Adelman worked from as she improvised primal screaming noises to accompany the ongoing OCD hoarding adventures of Dawn Kasper, while musician Tara Jane ONeil worked a drum set, a noise machine, and various objects.

In a sharp departure from her recent series focusing on popular song, Adelman channeled Diamanda Galás and Yoko Ono as she ventured fearlessly into the world of operatic noise. The work, titled Meditations in a Fucked Up Emergency, began powerfully in the dark with Adelman letting out several prolonged shrieks from the outer rungs of hell to announce the start of the piece. ONeil devised mysterious percussive and ambient noises in the background as Adelman continued her wordless sonic venturing, reaching for booming highs as well as moody, irregular lows.