The Welcome Inn Time Machine

In conjunction with the Pacific Standard Time series of events organized under the leadership of the Getty, a performance and public art festival took place over the last couple of weeks in various Los Angeles institutions.
Now, performance art and public art are, IMHO, way too trendy in Los Angeles right now, and clearly not my cup of tea in general, so I wasn't planning to attend any of it. The only exception being the Welcome Inn Time Machine, organized by SASSAS on Sunday. If you don't know SASSAS already, their main focus is sound art and experimental art linked to music.
They've been active for a while and operate at a level where I'd love to see most non-profits work in Los Angeles: they're trying to do pioneering and experimental events while being linked to the century-long tradition of sound art, and they are also very conscious of the archival aspect of what they do, meaning they document all their events. The meeting of sound, music and visual art is really a fringe interest in contemporary art, unfortunately, because if you study its history it is not only very rich but also epoch-changing when it comes to historical movements such as Futurism or Fluxus, and I'm not speaking about the happy meeting of the Velvet Underground and Warhol, etc.


The Welcome Inn Time Machine took over an entire motel on Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock on Sunday, January 29th, from 4 to 10 PM. It was a rather successful event, as evidenced by the difficulty to park in a 4-blocks radius.  In accordance with the PST theme of SoCal artists in the Mid-Century (roughly), the events staged in various hotel rooms were re-creation of sound/dance/musical experiments originating in and around Los Angeles between 1965 and 1978, many of them influenced by John Cage who, incidentally, grew up a couple of blocks away from the motel. Kudos to the organizers because they had to coordinate to keep the motel empty, organize security, etc. Their hard work clearly paid off because around 1,400 people attended the event (and maybe more, it wasn't easy to keep track). It certainly was packed when I was there, between 5 and 7.30 PM.

 Here you have a musician from I believe the Calder Quartet about to set up for Bruce Nauman's Violin Tuned D.E.A.D.

 During the performance of the piece, the bow's horsehair started to come loose and untied. I have no idea if it's the result of the way the piece is played* or if it means the violinist hadn't tightened his bow enough, but he valiantly played on throughout. I tried to catch a picture of the horsehair starting to form loops around the bow but was unsuccessful.

 Here in the center is Scott Benzel performing John Cage's Variation IV in a bedroom located on the balcony, while downstairs Dave Muller was doing the same piece, but this being Cage, in a different way.

Pyramid Headphones from the Los Angeles Free Music Society. It was really fun to look at, the music/piece you could hear in the build-in headphones kept on skipping, and we wondered if it was part of the piece or an accident? If anybody from LAFMS reads it, please let us know!

 The Calder Quartet, a gem of a contemporary music ensemble, played and interpreted an unfinished piece left by Arnold Schoenberg after his death. This is the lovely graphic score.

The cello and score left by the Calder Quartet after they played on the balcony. Earlier I had seen someone carrying an LP of the Calder Quartet playing Terry Riley, but I couldn't find where it was sold.

I missed a few things, like Anita Pace performing Merce Cunningham, not that I totally missed it but the space was so crowded - the balcony was at capacity - that I could barely see anything of it.
The one thing I didn't enjoy was the Something Else! ensemble freely performing Ornette Colman, because unfortunately Jazz is totally impenetrable to me.  They performed on the balcony and they nearly drowned what was for me the highlight of the evening, James Tenney's Postal Pieces. I wasn't aware of Tenney at all - he did perform the Satie Vexations with John Cale, David Tudor, John Cage and some other in 1963 - and I was blown away by Cellogram. Here's somebody else performing the piece at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

I was so enthralled by it I've spend some time looking for Tenney pieces on YouTube, and I leave you with my favorite piece of his below:




Enjoy!


*if you've been following FBC! for a while, you must have noticed that not only I like music very much, but I actually know nothing about it. Yours truly has zero musical abilities, is tone deaf and cannot sing to save my life. Ergo, everything you read on this blog that is music-related is totally amateurish, and I am not proud of it. But hey, what can you do?

Happy New Year, FBC! Readers

Dear Adored, Beloved Readership,

FBC! is back briefly to wish you a Happy New Year, hopefully a much better one than last for everybody, and while I'm at it, let me wish everybody a fabulous new decade as well. With a saved planet, hopefully with less people on it (I'm working very actively at not procreating, and if LA drivers keep on ramming into me I should also personally contribute in lowering the overall mortality age), less poverty, more education, more arts, etc. etc. "imagine all the people, la la laaaaa la la".

It doesn't start too well here in sunny SoCal, what with LAUSD planning to eliminate elementary arts education, and Michael Brand stepping down at the Getty. I'm not going to conjecture why and how Michael Brand is leaving, because the Getty recent endowment troubles and subsequent knee-jerk reaction in implementing drastic cuts have been well-documented elsewhere.
No, I just wanted to remind you that Michael Brand was the other museum director in LA named Michael who wears cowboy boots.
He and Govan are about the same height, and I guess the similarity ends here, though both arrived in LA roughly at the same time, to take the helm of museums (seemingly) in crisis. Whatever the reasons of his departure, FBC! wishes Michael Brand the very best for the future, and wants to remind everybody that one of the best shows in LA last year was the French Bronzes one at the Getty.

As for the LAUSD cuts, they are really regrettable, but what can you expect from an administration that cannot even train its students to spell and write correctly at the end of 12 years of formal education, as any instructor in local community colleges and in the Cal State system can witness?
FBC! also wishes the best of luck to governor Schwarzenegger in trying to shift the budget in California from privileging prisons to favoring higher education instead. If he succeeds, our hope is that funding will go into loads of remedial classes to teach students how to write, count, and maybe eventually learn to do research without using the internet. We also hope that this change will allow the Higher Ed. various faculties to destroy the illusions of all these poor American children who have been told that their self-esteem was much, much more important than doing a great job at any given assignment (we wish them the best of luck in their professional life as well).

With this, best wishes to you, beloved readers, and a few more posts later.

Your Social Life: A Very Busy Week in LA!

Wow, it's not the moment to come down with a cold or the flu, as tons of things are happening in LA.
Let me start with the LA art fair, Art LA 2008. There's only 2 reasons to go, and here they are: my very, very good friend Matthieu Laurette who also happens to be a very good French artist has a one-man show at the Blow De La Barra booth! Matthieu has been infiltrating media and making comments about "The Society of Spectacle" (Debord and Situationist fiends you know what I'm speaking about) for a long time. His practice his not restricted to guerrilla-type actions live on the Today Show, but I'm posting an image for you to see. Matthieu will spend some time on the booth, so please stop by and say hi. Better yet, buy his work or curate a show with him!
Now it's all very well are you going to say, but what is the other reason to stop by the fair? The second reason is called Julie Lequin, who's volunteering at the booth of her publisher Second Cannons on Friday evening. Please go say hi to Julie, make sure to buy a copy of her book/DVD and look up upcoming publications including one on FBC! fav' Michael Smith (with Doug Skinner).

So tomorrow there's a talk a the Getty, along with an upcoming symposium Friday and Saturday, both events for which you need to register. FBC! will be at the panel tomorrow, but has too bad a cold to go to the conference, even though I would really need to go see it.

UPDATE: FBC! keeps on forgetting, but on Friday evening is the opening of Michael Asher at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. I like the SMMOA a lot (hi Elsa and Lisa!) and I'm delighted they are showing a great LA artist who hasn't been seen that much around lately.

And then what? Then things are not over, but there will sadly be a scheduling conflict for me, as Saturday I'll be attending the Patriot Acts opening at 18th St. complex in Santa Monica. I would have loved to be able to also attend Chris Lipomi's project (see details thereafter) but I doubt I will be able to make it on time. It's too bad because it is right next to my house.


Uzihektakta Wakipi
by Chris Lipomi

Saturday, January 26, 2008 9pm

1021 South Orange Dr.
Los Angeles, CA. 90019


Los Angeles based artist Chris Lipomi invites you on a
personalized tour through an off-site art
installation. A new project encapsulating 10 years of
art production, Uzihektakta Wakipi (loosely translated
meaning "the backwards dance") functions as a
subterranean pre-career retrospective.

Opening Reception at 9pm. with tours leaving every 15
minutes.
RSVP for preferred tour placement.

RSVP at: caveproject@gmail.com

It's Classical Antiquity Central!

So things are moving on up fast in Classical Antiquity news! Please click on link to have the LAT full story.
[Apologies for my weak link skills BTW, but learning all the code tricks is difficult in the present state of my brain and neck and back and shoulders.]

I suggest now the Greek government sues the Italian one to get all these Greek finds returned to their original soil.
Including all these Greek colonies temples in Sicily. And the vases found in Etruscan tombs too, now that I think of it. It's not because they have been bought legitimately 2,500 years ago that they are any less Greek, after all.
The German and Russian can sue each other for all the art looting that occurred at the end of WWII, all the African nations that have been plundered during the 20th century should sue every single Western country with African Art collections, etc. The Irakis can sue each others as well as Donald Rumsfeld for all the Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian looting and destructions, and how is the state of the Al Mutawakil minaret in Samara? I've been wondering for the longest time.


UPDATE! Just looked up the Guardian and there we are

Clearasil and the Getty, Part Deux

There's an update about the Getty Antiques Troubles in today's LAT, and some commentaries on Tyler Green's. I'm too tired by the Praxiteles post to comment, so I'll lazily link to MAN.
Kudos to Green for correctly pointing out Marion True real unforgivable sin, the loan she received from a collector. Before this was announced I thought she was paying for the institution longstanding collecting practice (which, BTW, has always been an open secret in the Greek and Roman art history world).
I don't know if True's trial involves this loan too, but that IMHO is the real shocker. I vaguely remember the Fleischmann loan was to repay the first one she got through a lawyer, but I cannot check sources so there you are.

Clearasil and the Getty troubles

In the Wim Wenders movie Der Stand Der Dinge there is a character played by Paul Getty. If my memory serves me right, in one scene on the beach he is talking with these kids.
All his conversation revolves around how when he was 13 his parents were going through this ugly divorce. But his main preoccupation was his atrocious acne that made him unable to attract girls. Luckily Clearasil was introduced during the same era. But unfortunately he got a severe allergy to Clearasil and looked so repulsive no one wanted to talk to him. And he goes on: "What else happened when I was 13? Oh yes! I had cancer too"!

In a way the current Italian (and Greek) governments troubles with the Getty are akin to becoming Clearasil-obsessed in the face of cancer. Yes, having artifacts of questionable provenance in a collection is objectionable. Arguing that "everyone was doing it" doesn't make it more acceptable in any way.
But throwing ethics arguments in the face of the Getty won't solve the Italian antiques looting problems.
If we want to throw ethics in then maybe the Italian government should remember that many of the Greek objects found on its soil were looted by Roman troops. OK it happened 2000 years ago, but does history legitimates ownership status? If yes, then maybe a status of limitation should have also been granted to the Getty, the Met and the Cleveland museums in the name of Realpolitik.

Why not making a deal with cash-rich US institutions to co-organize and co-fund research and excavations on Italian soil? I believe the Egyptian government has been doing this for a long time now, sharing archeological finds of importance with foreigns museums on a prorated share of funding. Yes this didn't solve the smaller artifacts endemic looting that feeds the tourist industry, but at least major archeological sites and finds are escaping the worse.

The Louvre

Full disclosure: I have spent at least 10 years at the Louvre. I still remember my very first visit there when I was about 8 years old, when the entrance was located by the Colonnade de Perrault through the Salle du Manege. Later on I became a student there and later on an instructor at the Ecole du Louvre. I know the collection inside out and it is still my favorite man-made place on the planet (Venice a close second).

If there is one thing for me that embodies what's really good about French culture it is the Louvre. First of all it was created as one of the first public museums in the world. Then during the French Revolution, when France was at war against all of Europe's then-superpowers [England, Austria, Prussia...] the French assemblymen chose to spend some time discussing whether to create zenithal (skylights) lighting for the Grande Galerie or to only have side windows. They chose both in the end, but I am forever proud to think that in time of all-out war the French were thinking first and foremost about culture.

The Bonaparte-lead French revolutionary army later went on to loot and plunder Italy and Flanders to bring back artworks in the name of Liberty. This is a hypocritical trait I am not proud of, but I think it sheds some light on how big museums would later constitute their collection and legitimate some embarassing blunders and oversights. All of today's issues about non-legit items in collections, nationalism, politics and culture are already laid out in Quatremere de Quincy's Lettres A Miranda Sur le Deplacement des Monuments de l'Art En Italie (1796)

Aside from that, I love, love the Louvre and I miss it here in Los Angeles. I always thought that if the Lacma, Getty and Norton Simon collections could be merged together then Los Angeles would have the world-class museum it deserves, at least in term of European Art collections.

Links to the aforementioned museums later, once I start using Firefox.

Today is the day!

Today is the day when I start inflicting gratuitous comments on an unsuspecting and largely un-interested world. Boy, do I feel important!
So how do I start boring you, hapless unknown reader?
Probably by announcing future postings on:

The Praxiteles exhibition at the Louvre. Since I'm using Safari as my browser today, here's the link: http://mini-site.louvre.fr/praxitele/index_flash_en.html

The Getty troubles with Italy

and whenever I have a time, a post in praise of art workers

More later, once I figure out how all of this works...