Nomadic Nights: Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe

 

R.M. Schindler’s Buck House
805 S. Genesee Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
6:30 – 9:00 PM

The October Nomadic Night took place on Thursday, October 7th from 6:30-9pm at Jonah Freeman’s and Justin Lowe’s installation, Bright White Underground, at R.M. Schindler’s Buck House and featured a special performance by Dead Meadow.

7pm
Jonah Freeman reprised his slide lecture about the history of The San San International, the mega-convention that overtakes the southern province of The San San metroplex every May, and his experience as a two-year attendee.

8pm
Special performance by neo-psychedelic band Dead Meadow with video accompaniment by Justin Lowe.

Nothing Beside Remains

Nothing Beside Remains was a suite of commissioned public projects, presented by LAND, which opened in September 2011. Sited in Marfa, Texas – a rural town of 1,800 residents and a site of seminal art historical import – the exhibition featured new commissions ranging from large-scale installations to discreet interventions.

Integrated into the boundless West Texas landscape, and connected by the thematic evoked in the exhibition’s titular reference, P.B. Shelley’s Ozymandias, the projects addressed the beauty and poetry in decay, the inevitable decline of the monumental, and the fleeting presence of legacy in the face of the erosion of time.

Exhibiting artists included Andrea Bowers & Shizu Saldamando, Sarah Cain, Sue de Beer, Rob Fischer, Karl Haendel, Ry Rocklen, Mungo Thomson, and Garth Weiser.

Ongoing Projects

Past Projects

tnmap

This project made possible with support from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

OCA

Frame Rate: Harry Dodge & Justin Cole

Dinner House M
1263 W. Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
January 25, 2011
jazzclubm.com

For the second Frame Rate, Harry Dodge presented a new video: Unkillable (2011), a perverse, black comedy that investigates the potency of images made from language. Performing alone, in a mask, Dodge renders in obsessive detail – shots, cuts, audio – a would-be film, a “text-story” made up of progressively appalling events. While critiquing conventional film grammar and tropes, Unkillable also manages to explore the queasy coexistence of tenderness and brutality, the nature of momentum (narrative and otherwise), and the often incomprehensible wretchedness of irreversibility itself.

Cole presented a lecture, field recordings, and photographic documents that illuminate the rich musical history of Detroit. Focusing specifically on 1967, Cole told the story of The Algiers Motel, the epicenter for the city’s recording studios and clubs, where soul musicians The Dramatics were sequestered during the height of the ‘67 riots. The lecture was followed by Cole’s recreation of some hits from Motown and a DJ set culled from the city’s extensive musical output.

Justin Cole is a Los Angeles-based artist working in drawing, photography, sculpture, and audio – his multi-disciplinary practice addressing the complexities of the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, Cole’s native Detroit, and the United States in general. Cole’s work has been exhibited at Five Thirty Three, Los Angeles; The Project, Los Angeles; Lizabeth Olivera Gallery, Los Angeles; Co-Lab, Copenhagen; LA><Art, Los Angeles; Queens Nails, San Francisco; and Centre Pour l’Art et le Culture, Aix-en-Provence, among others. Most recently, Cole presented a solo exhibition, entitled Historical Impulse, at Pepin Moore, Los Angeles. Additionally, Cole performs as part of the collaborative art and music group OJO.

Harry Dodge is a Los Angeles-based visual artist, writer, and director whose videos, sculptures, and installations focus around the exploration of materiality, the unnamable, between-ness, and post-binary possibility. Dodge’s work has been exhibited at Elizabeth Dee, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and at the Sundance Film Festival, among others. Other recent activities include a talk and video program at Light Industry in Brooklyn and a curated room at the Hessel Museum in upstate New York.

the island

Flagler Memorial Island
Miami Beach, FL

 

they say that twin lovers were lured there once.1

that they came on a boat of cloth.2

that they still hold hands on the bank.

a message:

“the earth seemed unearthly. we are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there – there you could look at a thing monstrous and free.” i

they say that their spirits remain.3

multiplied. infinite. ever moving.4

that she makes her way to the wilderness, deliberately5, and others, aware that they are there only – ghosts – ensuring the world does not fall apart.4

that yet another still walks and receives a transmittal from below.6

a message:

“nobody needs to go anywhere else. we are all, if we only knew it, already there.” ii

they say that the sounds of time grow out of the earth there.7

that they reveal. and hide.

that there is music, movement. hold still to see it, or not hear it.8

a message:

“conditioned from the cradle, unceasingly distracted, mesmerized systematically…and yet in spite of the entirely justified refusal to take yes for an answer, the fact remained and would remain always…that there was this capacity even in a paranoiac for intelligence, even in a devil worshipper for love.” iii

is that where they rest? near the monument?9

an illuminated path guiding them to the beach10 and a golden bough to mark their return.11

it’s strange to see the relics of a man made animal. hidden refuse.12 a broken instrument.8 memories from the past projected.

have you been there before?

a place. a beacon. a reflection drawing you to the shore.

the island

as the sun hangs lower in the sky, and coincidences and actions intersect, the clocks will strike four. and we will all be there. on the dock. waiting to never be there again.

Organized by Shamim M. Momin (LAND) and Aaron Bondaroff/Al Moran (OHWOW)

Participating artists included: Terence Koh, Justin Lowe, Jack Pierson, Brody Condon, Naomi Fisher, Kate Levant & Michael E. Smith, Bozidar Brazda, Marina Rosenfeld, Adler Guerrier, Kori Newkirk, Luis Gispert, Hanna Liden, Rona Yefman, Stefan Brüggemann, and David Benjamin Sherry.

i Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902
ii Aldous Huxley, Island, 1962
iii Aldous Huxley, Island, 1962

 

PRESS RELEASE

DOWNLOADABLE MAP

MARINA ROSENFELD RECORDING

the island ebook

Support for this project provided by:

whyqdeleonhavianas

Nomadic Nights: Michele O’Marah

8822 Cynthia Street
West Hollywood, CA 90069
petitermitage.com
6:00 – 9:00 PM

Using pop culture references and the genre conventions of Hollywood cinema as a starting point, the videos of Los Angeles-based artist Michele O’Marah explore the socio-political subtexts present in popular narratives. Both reverent and critically deconstructive, her work reflects on the pleasures of popular film with an exuberant sense of style – one that does not hide its low-tech handcrafted illusion. At a time of ever-present sequels and remakes, O’Marah shows us how to revel in the pleasures of remaking and re-watching.

For this Nomadic Night, O’Marah presented excerpts from an ongoing project, based on the Warhol Screen Tests, comprised of three-minute portraits of artists from the Los Angeles art community. The artist also shot Screen Tests of this evening’s attendees on site.

Michele O’Marah received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and currently resides in Los Angeles. O’Marah has had Solo Exhibitions at Cottage Home, Los Angeles, Sister, Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, as well as two person exhibitions at Rental, New York and Peres Projects, Berlin. Her work has been featured in Exhibitions at the CCAC Wattis Institute in San Francisco, White Columns, New York, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, the London Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and The Station, Art Basel Miami Beach.

Frame Rate: Brendan Fowler

Dinner House M
1263 W. Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
jazzclubm.com
10:00 PM – 12:00 AM

Brendan Fowler is a Los Angeles-based artist with a multidisciplinary practice focusing around sculpture and performance. For this Frame Rate he presented a selection of videos (below) and an audio performance by Stephen/Steven.

Misha Mengelberg & Han Bennick Duo – Improvisation (4:18)
Misha Mengel: Piano, Han Bennick: Drums
Live at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 2, 2004.

Susie Ibarra Drum Solos (0:43)
Avant-garde percussionist Susie Ibarra demonstrates innovative techniques for solo drumset performance. This was from a clinic at Musicplayer Live in 2005.

Autechre Live 26.4.2008 Osaka Japan (3:28)
bits of footage (of a band that plays in complete darkness…) the red lights are sean’s seqencer/drum machines. he did beats and rob did melodic stuff from what i could tell. a quick bit of massonix too, but he was thoroughly rubbish. some (very blurry) shots of said drum mchines too, pretty sure they were by elektron.

The English Language In 24 Accents (8:14)
Me attempting to do 24 different accents from my own country and from other countries around the world. Hopefully I got most of them right but I may have made mistakes and I can do some better than others. However, I made this video for my friends because I promised them I would do an accent video. I mean no offence to anyone and please don’t be upset if I have not included your specific accent or got it wrong.

BARR The B-Side Is Silent (4:26)
b-side to the song is the single

BARR at Rhinoceropolis (0:52)
barr performing live inside of rhinoceropolis in denver colorado

BARR First (2:32)
Video for the BARR song First. Directed by David Horvitz

Guyton \ Walker (6:08)
The team Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker (Guyton \ Walker) is presented and showing their work in the Ladonia Biennial 2009. http://www.ladonia.net

Sexy Thoughts – Tomtomtime Season 1 Episode 2 (2:24)
Sexy Thoughts (Kevin Shea) – Talibam! from Tomtomtime Season 1 Episode

Frame Rate: Eamon Ore-Giron

Royal/T
8910 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232
7:00 – 10:00 PM

For Frame Rate, Eamon Ore-Giron presented two video works wherein the artist manipulated the visual materials that accompanied music to construct an abstract soundscape, “playing” records with a box cutter rigged with a contact microphone. A DJ and musician presenting work under a number of names including Los Jaichackers, DJ Lengua, and Ojo, Ore-Giron followed this presentation with a particapatory audio performance.

Nomadic Nights: Lisa Anne Auerbach and Karl Haendel


7463 Mullholand Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90046
6:30 – 9:00 PM

This Nomadic Night took place at the John Lautner Garcia House. Built in 1962 by influential American architect John Lautner, the Garcia House combines progressive engineering, humane design, and a dramatic, space-age flair. Lautner approached architecture with the notion of a building as a “total concept,” his constructions rooted in the idea that a “home” should be integrated completely into its particular site. The translation of this idea is direct when observing the Garcia House, and Lautner’s other work in Southern California: an organic flow between in- and outdoor space that links both elements inseparably.

The evening featured artists Lisa Anne Auerbach and Karl Haendel:

Lisa Anne Auerbach invited guests to “pattern their enemies,” a collective effort to create the pattern for a knitted blanket inscribing the names of personal adversaries within. A nod to Madame Defarge, the villain in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities that relentlessly knits the names of those to be executed in the French Revolution, Auerbach sees the process of transforming language into fabric as one of a strengthening of resolve, a battle cry, a means to harbor a host of metaphysical “bad energy,” and, perhaps on that specific day, an action in parallel to the inscription of the “righteous” in the “book of life.”

Karl Haendel demonstrated how to cook beef bourguignon, a traditional French recipe often thought to be a major achievement for a chef-in-training. Haendel sees the gesture not just as a kind of educational effort, but as a way to share a communal activity with his guests, something he describes as more “about other people than the way making art often feels.”

Secret Spill 2010

LAB
2622 South La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
9:00 – 10:30 PM

Mark Verabioff’s Secret Spill 2010 inaugurated the Los Angeles-based artist’s new body of performances in, “stealth perversion and suspicious hypnosis towards the philanthropic odyssey of obsequious cultural discovery and/or disaster.” The artist’s homeless representation of a “loser cultural insurgent” is armed with, “signature style, oinking pull-quotes from American demigods Glenn Beck and/or Ann Coulter peppered with The Golden Girls zingers that are sutured with art historical texts.” Speaking backwards in what the artist coined “reverse vocalized mutations” of site- and situationist-based politically incorrect jokes (originally written by author Blanche Knott) metaphorically drill into unwelcoming territories, collectively provoking contemporary thought judgments and questions, however uncomfortable, on the ricocheted terminology spilling out from the culture wars perpetuated from and between the fanatical right and left.

Untitled

LAB
2622 South La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
6:00 – 8:00 PM

As part of The Secret (Still) Knows Exhibition, Meredith Danluck presented Untitled, a site-specific performance piece which consisted of two individuals embracing in the corner of the gallery for the duration of the opening reception.

The Secret (Still) Knows

LAB

2622 South La Cienega Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA 90034

Tuesday – Saturday

10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Initially presented in Austin, TX as The Secret Knows and re-presented in Los Angeles, CA as The Secret (Still) Knows, the following artists were commissioned to create unique works, each finding inspiration in the following Robert Frost couplet: “We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”

Artists included Pierre Bismuth, Slater Bradley, Brian Bress, Olaf Breuning, Jedediah Caesar, Ian Campbell, José León Cerrillo, Matt Chambers, Brody Condon, Kate Costello, Alex Da Corte, Meredith Danluck, Sue de Beer, Christoph Draeger, Tyler Drosdeck, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Matias Faldbakken, Rob Fischer, Eve Fowler, Jonah Freeman, Luis Gispert, Piero Golia, Matt Greene, Katie Grinnan, Skylar Haskard, Drew Heitzler, Patrick Hill, Evan Holloway, Anna Sew Hoy, Patrick Jackson, Barry Johnston, Jesper Just, Alice Könitz, Terence Koh, Jeff Kopp, Hanna Liden, Justin Lowe, Nate Lowman, Robert Melee, Matt Murphy, New Humans, Not Cooperative, Michele O’Marah, Eamon Ore-Giron, Rob Pruitt, Adam Putnam, David Ratcliff, Matthew Ronay, Sterling Ruby, Christopher Russell, Melanie Schiff, Agathe Snow, Mateo Tannatt, Mungo Thomson, Mark Verabioff, Landon Wiggs, and Ezra Woods.

Support for this project provided by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

OCA

Nomadic Nights: Scoli Acosta, Ben Ehrenreich, Piero Golia, Matt Greene, Alexis Teplin

4161 Sea View Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90065

8:00 – 10:00 PM

The inaugural Nomadic Night took place at the home of Veronica Gonzalez, a Jorge Pardo-designed structure that was “exhibited” by the Museum of Contemporary Art for five weeks in 1998.

The evening featured a series of performances and readings, the location of the action rotating throughout the home to create a sort of “orchestral sense”:

Scoli Acosta performed Levitating of the Pentagon: Infrathin Blake-ian Presence in Three-parts.

Ben Ehrenreich read a short piece about the moon entitled The Sky Goes Dark 12 Times a Year.

Matt Greene read a text conceived as a dialogue between a cross dressing alchemist and his inner feminist critic, or vice versa.

Jed Ochmanek and helpers employed unused baking molds, given to Piero Golia for his wedding, to make concrete cakes.

Alexis Teplin read an excerpt from Rachel Kushner’s first play: The Party.

Mi casa es tu casa

LAB
2622 South La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Tuesday – Saturday
10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

From January 30 to April 30, 2010, Mexico City-based artist Moris (a.k.a. Israel Meza Moreno) presented a series of conceptually linked vinyl texts and digital prints at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)’s little Tokyo venue, the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA as part of LAND’s inaugural exhibition VIA/Stage 1.

An enlarged copy of the artist’s recent visa denial letter was installed on the museum’s façade, a letter that he received attempting to visit Los Angeles to conceive his project. Select phrases of text were attached to the canopy support beams, their content ranging from related metaphors to well-known quotes.

Finally, the entryway was covered with a series of initially hidden images, collecting dirt as spectators entered the museum to reveal a group portrait, combinations of the features of Mexican’s who entered American territory illegally, conceived offspring, and were deported – imprinting Latin American features on the American populous despite their absence.

An extension of this portion of the project was re-presented onsite at LAB, specifically reconfigured to engage with the renegotiated site. Moris’s interventions engage spaces of transition – whether describing a conduit hallway from one gallery to the next or defining the site of entrance/exit – while simultaneously evoking individual histories as subject to lived experiences of “invisibility” or “disappearance,” literally and conceptually.

The activated works are available for purchase as an artist multiple.

The Secret Knows

508 8th Street
Austin, TX
3:00 PM – 3:00 AM

Initially presented in Austin, TX as The Secret Knows and re-presented in Los Angeles, CA as The Secret (Still) Knows, the following artists were commissioned to create unique works, each finding inspiration in the following Robert Frost couplet: “We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”

Artists included Pierre Bismuth, Slater Bradley, Brian Bress, Olaf Breuning, Jedediah Caesar, Ian Campbell, José León Cerrillo, Matt Chambers, Brody Condon, Kate Costello, Alex Da Corte, Meredith Danluck, Sue de Beer, Christoph Draeger, Tyler Drosdeck, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Matias Faldbakken, Rob Fischer, Eve Fowler, Jonah Freeman, Luis Gispert, Piero Golia, Matt Greene, Katie Grinnan, Skylar Haskard, Drew Heitzler, Patrick Hill, Evan Holloway, Anna Sew Hoy, Patrick Jackson, Barry Johnston, Jesper Just, Alice Könitz, Terence Koh, Jeff Kopp, Hanna Liden, Justin Lowe, Nate Lowman, Robert Melee, Matt Murphy, New Humans, Not Cooperative, Michele O’Marah, Eamon Ore-Giron, Rob Pruitt, Adam Putnam, David Ratcliff, Matthew Ronay, Sterling Ruby, Christopher Russell, Melanie Schiff, Agathe Snow, Mateo Tannatt, Mungo Thomson, Mark Verabioff, Landon Wiggs, and Ezra Woods.

Jennifer West


8674 Melrose Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90048
January 28, 2010
9PM – 12AM

LAND, in collaboration with the Calvin Klein Collection, presented a special installation of four films, never before screened in Los Angeles, by Los Angeles-based artist Jennifer West. West makes 16mm, 35mm, and 70mm films by manipulating the film celluloid to a level of performance. The film emulsion might be doused with perfume, alcohol, mascara, or pepper spray, skateboarded on, kissed, or dragged through tar pits. West’s practice is characteristically influenced by urban mythology, folklore, and popular culture, and often addresses issues of the body, of gender, and of self-presentation.