e+l at the office

Perpetual Present

A series of new photographs related to the question of "habitation" is featured at the L.A. Forum website.

DRUGSTORE BEETLE (Sitodrepa Paniceum) at RAID projects

DRUGSTORE KIOSK
Organized by David Horvitz
April 3-8, 2010

Opening Reception April 3, 7-10 pm

DRUGSTORE BEETLE (Sitodrepa Paniceum) aims to infiltrate into a closed circulatory system: the library. Using the process of the library donation, 30 exhibitions-in-a-box were donated by artist David Horvitz to various art libraries around the world. From Los Angeles to New York to Tehran to Shanghai to Denver. Before these exhibitions were gifted, Horvitz purchased an ISBN and coordinated the meta-data for the exhibition to be uploaded into Worldcat, the database librarians use to input and receive a publication’s information. Since the information will exist in two digital databases, the hope is that this exhibition can slip with ease, like a sly fox, into collections around the world (the title refers to the most notorious of book-worms, burrowing into books and shelves).

RAID Projects
602 Moulton Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90031
raidprojects@yahoo.com

Academic freedom in question at UCSD

In the past few weeks, a number of developments have occurred in relation to the art/research practices of b.a.n.g. lab at UCSD and Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT). Follow the link to learn more about the harassment of Ricardo Dominguez and the troubling situation that artists and researchers are facing in the UC system.

Strings in Tokyo

Each participant chooses a length of string.
Holding one end, the participant gives the other end to another participant next to them.
The participants form a chain, a circle, a collective.
Walking through the streets of the city, they stay attached, negotiating the built environment, strangers, trying to work together.
To be a social sculpture.



Working with students at the Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo.

Textiles in Newcastle

Walking through Newcastle, on a sunny spring day, my attention was grabbed by this textile addition: a hand-sewn cloth sleeve slipped over a signpost. The knitted intervention softly interrupted the hard-edged geometry of the urban, inviting my touch onto the surrounding surfaces: I couldn't help but fondle the cloth, following its weave and wondering as to its origin, its catalyst, its design. Such sensual tactilities bring to the fore a consideration of all the surfaces and materials lining the streets, the buildings, the steps and benches through which we come to know the city. A moment of domestic softness seemed to fall from the sky and wrap itself around the signpost, to texture my own meandering thoughts with warmth.

Resonator, AV Festival, Newcastle

Resonator is a procedural performance-workshop and idea exchange which investigates diverse artistic, materialist and spiritualist practices that converge around the importance of vibration as a means of making sense of the universe. Vibration is a phenomenon that affects all matter yet is also understood as passing beyond matter, affecting the soul. Resonator aims to investigate the points of contact, convergence and dissonance surrounding the scope of vibrations in different thought and belief structures through working with sound and related practices.
Participants:

Nurit Bar-Shai
James D'Angelo
Yolande Harris
Martin Howse
Brandon LaBelle
Kanta Horio
John Stuart Reid
Ann Rosén
Ryu Hankil
Will Schrimshaw
Jamie Allen

http://largervibrationalcontinuum.org/

Continental Drift comes to L.A.

Control Society/Metamorphosis with Brian Holmes
at the Public School in Los Angeles February 27 and 28th
http://occupyeverything.com/events/continental-drift/
Come down and participate in a two-day theory convergence, a “Continental Drift” seminar with the Paris and Chicago based theorist, Brian Holmes.
Though this Drift is situated on the West Coast in a time of University of California occupations and walkouts, it is connected to the budget cuts and "crisis" brought on by changing economies around the world and the emergence of a neoliberal control society over the past few decades. This drift aims to trace these situation and find ways for liberatory culture to supercede the moment.
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1. The Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis
2. On Brian Holmes and the Drift
3. UC Strikes and Beyond
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1. The Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis
Saturday, February 27 –Sunday, Feb. 28
@The Public School 951 Chung King Rd., Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Join us for a mostly horizontal seminar conversation with Brian Holmes, UC strike Organizers and Academics and independent intellectuals.
day 1. 2/27- control society
12 pm: disassociation (psychological effects/desire)
facilitators: Liz Glynn and Marc Herbst
2 pm: financialization & the UC crisis
facilitators: Aaron Benanav and Zen Dochterman
4 pm occupation/ collective speech
facilitators: Cara Baldwin, Nathan Brown, Maya Gonzalez, Evan Calder Williams
7 pm: discussion day one
facilitators: Brian Holmes, Solomon Bothwell
day 2. 2/28- metamorphosis
12pm: Autonomous Space
facilitators: Hector Gallegos, Robby Herbst
2 pm:. Precarity
facilitators: Christina Ulke, Sean Dockray
4 pm: Brian Holmes Lecture
7pm: Sharable Territories/ Bifurcation
facilitators: Jason Smith, Ava Bromberg
occupyeverything.com/events/continental-drift
Note: This is a collaboratively organized event. Organizers include Zen Doctherman, Cara Baldwin, Jason Smith, Sean Dockray, Liz Glynn, Solomon Bothwell, Christina Ulke, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst.
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2. On Brian Holmes and the Drift
Brian Holmes is an art critic, cultural theorist and activist, particularly involved with the mapping of contemporary capitalism.
An article Brian wrote that he asked to read in preparation for the drift:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/guattaris-schizoanalytic-cartographies/#sdfootnote10sym
Holmes on the UC Strikes:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/the-u-c-strike/
Journal interview we did with him from issue 4:
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/4/holmes.html
Some publications by or with Brian Holmes:
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?S=R&wauth=Brian+Holmes&siteID=1JSk6CbYEf0-bBxS9UMaaFGtIjUV42joJA
The Drift has taken a variety of forms in its manifestations at 16 Beaver (2004-2006) in New York, through the Midwest’s Radical Culture Corridor (2008) and in Zagreb Croatia (2008)
Here is An interview with Brian Holmes from the first continental drift in NYC in 2004.
http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001168.php
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3. UC Strikes and Beyond
The Drift was independently organized though occurs in coordination with the
Beyond the UC Strikes working group.
The working group occured when folks who were participating in the strikes and talking about them
decided to meet up the the Los Angeles Public School to see what could be done.
We are promoting these linked events.
http://joaap.org/other/drift/BeyondtheUCStrikes.html
http://occupyeverything.com/
These are not specifically Journal events. The working group includes Organizers include Cara Baldwin, Solomon Bothwell, Micha Cardenas/Adzel Slade, Zen Dochterman, Sean Dockray, Ben Ehrenreich, Ken Ehrlich, Liz Glynn, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst, Elle Mehrmand, Marko Peljhan, Kenneth Rogers, Jason Smith, Cybelle Tondu, Christina Ulke, Caleb Waldorf, Michael Wilson and Kim Yasuda.

What remains of a building... ST_LA

What Remains of a Building...
Surface Tension_Los Angeles

Carmen Argote
Cindy Santos Bravo
Ken Ehrlich
Brandon LaBelle

Exhibition Duration: February 12 – March 28, 2009

Opening Reception: Friday, February 12th, 6:00 – 9:00 pm

g727 is pleased to announce What Remains of a Building... an exhibition organized by Ken Ehrlich and Brandon LaBelle. The exhibition is an extension of the Surface Tension series which generates collaborative projects and publications addressing site-based art practices and questions around the built environment. This exhibition will be the third in the Surface Tension series following previous installments in Curitiba, Brazil (2006) and Copenhagen, Denmark (2007).

For the exhibition, each artist focuses on a specific built space, including the recent new headquarters of the LAPD, a domestic space in downtown, Hollywood motels, and the legendary jazz club, the Cadillac Café. Each site provides a generative platform for examining particular histories, cultures, and politics intertwined within the city of LA. Spatial interventions and inquiry, memory tracing and re-enactments, performative gestures and stagings feature as strategies to query what a building is and what it may become.

Public Culture in the Visual Sphere

The UC San Diego Visual Arts Department is hosting a series of lectures and panels investigating contemporary theories, practices and debates in the making and reception of public culture as they move through the visual sphere.

http://visarts.ucsd.edu/html/splash.html

Curated by John C. Welchman
In collaboration with the Visiting Artist Lecture Series committee 2009-10 (Anya Gallaccio, Teddy Cruz, Kyong Park, Suzanne Wright); the Public Culture graduate committee (Edward Sterrett, Orianna Cacchione, Cara Baldwin, Katrin Pesch, Sara Mameni, Tara Zepel), and Jordan Crandall.

Supported by the Visual Arts Department, UCSD; Dean of Arts and Humanities, UCSD; SoCCAS [Southern California Consortium of Art Schools]

Collaborations with the Master of Public Art Studies Program, USC Roski School of Fine Arts; English and Comparative Literature, UCLA; the graduate MFA program at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; Calit2 [California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology]; and the Athenaeum, La Jolla.

Schedule of Events: All events take place at the UC San Diego Visual Arts Facility, Performance Space Thursdays @ 6:30 pm unless otherwise noted

Jan. 7 Take off: What is Public Culture? [panel]

Anya Gallaccio "What is Public Culture?"

Kyong Park "Anyang Public Art Project 2010: constructing a research-based, multi-disciplinary, community participation and process-oriented urban project in Korea"

Cauleen Smith "When Documentary Seems Like a Lie"

Teddy Cruz "Practices of Encroachment"

Jordan Crandall "New Media and Public Culture"

Moderated by John C. Welchman

Jan 14 Pros and Cons: Graduate Research in Public Culture [panel]
pros* Issue Zero Launch

Nicole Holland "Private as Public in the USSR"

David Mather "Mass Forms, Mass Agency in the Early 20th Century"

Sheryl Oring "I Wish to Say: Free Speech and Democracy"

David White "'Network' as a Tool for Neighborhood Engagement"

Rayanne Tabet "After the Flood: Reversing the Trans-Arabian Pipeline"

Cara Baldwin "We are the ones we've been waiting for"

Moderated by Edward Sterrett

Jan. 21 Public Culture and Democracy [panel]

Cynthia Truant [UCSD, History]
"Citizenship: constructions and contestation in France, 1700-1900"

Grant Kester [UCSD, Visual Arts]
"Democracy, Virtuality and Public Culture"

Marcel Henaff [UCSD, Literature and Political Science]
"Grace, the work of art, and public space"

Jan. 28 Claire Bishop [City University, New York]
"How do you bring a work of art to life?: Contemporary Art and/as Pedagogy"

Feb. 4 Steven Graham [University of Durham, UK; co-sponsored with Art Center, Pasadena]
"Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism"

Feb. 18 Boris Groys [New York University; co-sponsored with USC]
"Visiting Time: Contemporary Time-based Art"

WEDS Feb. 24 Vito Acconci
"From Words to Actions to Architecture"

Feb. 25 Brian Holmes
"Intellectuals and Social Movements: Doctrine - Debate - Defense - Invention"

March 4 Where is the Public Option? [panel]
[co-sponsored with and hosted by the Athenaeum, 1008 Wall Street La Jolla, CA 92037]

Rebecca Solnit
[writer and essayist, San Francisco]

Rick Lowe
[Project Row House, Houston]

Matt Coolidge
[Founder and Director, Center for Land Use Interpretation]

Suzanne Lacy
[Otis College of Art, Los Angeles]

Moderated by Teddy Cruz

March 11 Town Hall/Manifestos/Open Mic.
Moderated by Kyong Park and John C. Welchman

Modifying LA

Staying in Echo Park in Los Angeles recently, each day passing by this church fitted with some surprising elements, the forms start to supplement the conditions of the building. Nestled into the existing form and shape of the building, the elements function as additional seating, table structures, planting pots, and potential stairs, modifying the existing arrangement.


The insertion of these additional elements unfold a poignant suggestion for acts of modification that append additional forms, stage new configurations, and allow other movements into and around buildings. Urban furniture then may function as means for such elaborations, figuring possible itineraries for what it means to take a seat.