art – LA – performance

Liz Glynn's Verse|Chorus|Verse Amphitheater

This year’s edition of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, taking place at Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar from Thursday night through Sunday, is packed so full of high-caliber performative events that they may as well call it “Art LA Contemporary Performance.” In a wise move, the organizers commissioned the brilliant Liz Glynn to build a performance space within the fair. In her usual beautifully-thought-out fashion, Glynn has created Verse│Chorus│Verse, an installation made out of art handling crates and based on the ancient Greek amphitheater model, whose shape was designed to highlight the continuum between art and the surrounding life of the city. Similarly, Glynn’s amphitheater highlights a few different continuums as it recycles art transport vessels to incorporate performances, readings, and music into the life of an art market. Liz, how about building one of these for our state capitol, to remind Republicans of the integral role that the arts play in the schools and in public life?

Check out the complete ALAC event schedule here. I’m especially looking forward to the Paul Pescador-curated performances on Friday at 5pm, the women’s panel discussion at 4pm on Saturday, Simone Forti and Julien Bismuth at 1pm on Sunday, and Anna Mayer’s WORD THE WORD at 3pm on Sunday. I am disappointed, however, that this year’s installment of X-TRA’s 1 Image 1 Minute series is a benefit that costs $50 to get into. I understand their need to raise money and all, but this prices me and many other people out. (A press badge won’t work as an admission ticket either, so I’m told.)

Why do important events always happen at the same time in this town? Also starting this Thursday and going through Saturday, CalArts hosts the sixth annual Arts in the One World (AOW) conference. This year’s program looks amazing and includes presentations by Guillermo Gómez-Peña, the Beehive Collective, Robby Herbst of Llano del Rio Collective, Hirokazu Kosaka, Casa del Tunel (Tijuana), and Los Angeles Poverty Department, among others.

But wait, that’s still not all. If you can’t afford the X-TRA event on Friday night, you can always hop across town to the Collective Show in Chinatown to catch Lady Noise & Friends, Monstro and Sneaky Snake, billed as a “durational performance” lasting from from 8pm to midnight. Saturday afternoon, 3:30 to 6:30pm, Pieter PASD presents a performance and installation opening by Brooklyn-based Gabriel Rivera of FAÇADE/FASAD. On Saturday night from 7-10pm, photographer Austin Young opens Your Face Here at Pop Tart Gallery, a five-week residency in which the public is invited to sit for portraits (at prices starting at $100), which will then make up the exhibition on the walls. Killsonic will play at the opening.