Sometimes Presents Experiments in Narrative Acts

some times is pleased to present a public conversation on the evolving approaches of three artists who use performance to move freely between fiction and reality. Weaving personal, public, and historical narrative together, Eleanor Antin, Ann Hirsch, and Rachel Mason use their own bodies to tell stories. Antin, Hirsch, and Mason employ techniques reappropriated from popular culture, oral history traditions, feminist critique, DIY culture, comedy, music, and drag to comment on social and political issues.

Eleanor Antin works in photography, video, film, installation,  drawing, performance, and writing. Many one-woman exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art which traveled to St. Louis and toured the UK. As both a performance and exhibiting artist she has appeared in venues around the world including the Venice Biennale, the Sydney Biennale and Opera House and Documenta 12. She has written, directed and produced many videotapes and films, among them the cult feature, “The Man Without a World”, 1991, (Berlin Film Fest., U.S.A. Film Fest., Ghent Film Fest., London Jewish Film Fest, etc.) She is represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York. She also shows with Diane Rosenstein in LA. Her work is represented in many major public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, the Beaubourg, the Verbund Collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, etc. She has written 5 books, BEING ANTINOVA (Astro Artz), ELEANORA ANTINOVA PLAYS (Sun & Moon), 100 BOOTS (Running Press), “MAN WITHOUT A WORLD: a Screenplay” (Green Integer, Sun&Moon Press) and most recently “CONVERSATIONS WITH STALIN” (Green Integer). She has just completed a new book “An Artist’s Life by Eleanora Antinova” (to be published by Hirmer Verlag, Germany).  Major monographs on her work include The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “ELEANOR ANTIN” and “HISTORICAL TAKES” (Prestel) and “MULTIPLE OCCUPANCY: ELEANOR ANTIN’S SELVES” (Columbia University, N.Y.) She received many awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 from the Women’s Caucus of the College Art Association, 2 Best Show AICA Awards (International Assoc. of Art Critics), a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Media Achievement Award and an honorary doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an emeritus Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California at San Diego.

Ann Hirsch is a video and performance artist who examines the influence of technology on popular culture and gender. Her immersive research has included becoming a YouTube camwhore with over two million video views and an appearance as a contestant on Frank the Entertainer…In a Basement Affair on Vh1. She was awarded a Rhizome commission for her two-person play Playground (2013) which debuted at the New Museum (New York), was premiered by South London Gallery at Goldsmiths College (London) and concluded its tour at JOAN (Los Angeles). The companion ebook Twelve (2013) is available through Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York) after being censored from the iTunes Store. In June, her newest project, hornylilfeminist.com will be presented by The New Museum’s First Looks. Hirsch has been an artist in residence at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs), Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (New York). She is represented by American Medium (New York) and Arcadia Missa (London).

Rachel Mason is an artist, musician and performer. She has been touring a live-performed feature film called The Lives of Hamilton Fish, which is having its Los Angeles premiere at LACMA on June 23. Most of Mason’s projects span music, film and live performance including a two-album song series and sculpture project called The Songs of the Ambassadors in which she sculpted and wrote songs in the imagined minds of political figures. This project has been shown at the Detroit Museum of Art, City University in New York. Mason has a wide presence on Youtube, from various music videos and performances including her 2013 video re-enactment of Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster, in her signature character Futureclown. Mason is also known for a sculpture called Kissing President Bush which was presented during the Republican National Convention in New York, in 2004. While a student at UCLA, Mason scaled an 8-Story Building which formerly housed the art school and she was temporarily expelled. She also interviewed all of the deans at UCLA and gathered them together for a meeting which was intended to be a performance for public display.  She has exhibited and performed at the Whitney Museum, Queens Museum, School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Henry Gallery in Seattle, James Gallery at CUNY, University Art Museum in Buffalo, Sculpture Center, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard and Occidental College, Kunsthalle Zurich, The New Museum, Park Avenue Armory, Art in General, La Mama, Galapagos, Dixon Place, and Empac Center for Performance in Troy among other venues.

Catherine Wagley writes about art and visual culture in Los Angeles. She currently works as an art critic for L.A. Weekly and contributes to a number of other publications, most recently CARLA, Photograph Magazine, East of Borneo and L.A. Review of Books. Over the past two years, she has also taught courses on experimental 20th and 21st century art and music at University of LaVerne in collaboration with concert pianist Dr. Grace Zhao.

some times is a neon sign that can be plugged in anywhere; it is also a performative project space that takes the form of a bar. some times opened in 2014 as a response to artists’ needs at the California Institute of the Arts and reappears frequently to present new artist projects. It recently occupied the office of ltd los angeles for a six month residency and is currently collaborating with Big City Forum on a new salon series called “After Hours.” some times is owned and operated by artist Meghan Gordon.