October 6 – December 16, 2005
Voiceovers is a series of performances, readings and screenings exploring the voice as a physical utterance and carrier of meaning rather than a tool of language to be learned and controlled.
In the Gallery
5 October through 6 November
Chuck Jones : 3 Isolation Studies and The Butthole Tree
Chuck Jones plays with the nooks, crannies, gurgles, burbs, tangs, foibles, and prejudices that make us human. His Isolation Studies cut our language to its raspy ingredients. Jones makes apparent the repetitions that underlay our speaking; more so, he also reveals the traumas that make necessary human communication. This is especially apparent in regards to the Loveline Isolation Studies, where those who call in, mostly teenagers, expose their raw need for contact, and then sadly met by the aloof, sardonic nature of the hosts. In The Butthole Tree, the folks interviewed go through a litany of the sounds, body functions, and human frailty that drive a wedge in our ability to communicate with one another. Our prejudices define us and limit us. Chuck Jones enables us to tell who we are.
Born and raised inside the beltway (I-495) of our nations capital, Chuck Jones lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. His Isolation Series has been “featured” on WFMU more than once and this surprised him a great deal and forced him to pay extra for bandwidth use on his website, baby gorilla. Chuck made The Butthole Tree during his graduate program at The School of Art and Design at The University of Illinois where it was received very, very poorly. He currently “teaches” at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
9 November through 30 November
Natalie Zimmerman : Therapeutic Spaces and Others
In 1999, Zimmerman sent five different psychiatrists and mental health professionals a tape on which they could record a description of their office space. The only parameters were that the recordings must take place (1) in their office and (2) alone. The results were quite varying, and much more intimate than the visual details found in photos of these spaces. The doctors’ honesty is startling, as is theamount of personal detail they reveal. Sometimes it even seemed to be an unconscious process. It seems that this was a chance for them to switch roles – becoming the teller and not the listener – and being alone allowed them to retreat even further.
Natalie Zimmerman’s video, audio, and photographic works address the physical and psychological dynamics of the contemporary body in relation to social, cultural and institutional structures. Her work has been featured at various international venues including; The Moscow International Film Festival, La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Spain, and Mediaterra International Art and Technology Festival in Athens, Greece. This past spring, she exhibited a 4-channel video installation (a collaboration with Michael Wilson) at UC Riverside’s Sweeney Gallery, and most recently completed a 47-minute film titled “Islands,” which explores the Los Angeles landscape through an intimate portrait of its inhabitants. Natalie lives in Los Angeles where she teaches digital cinema and photography at California Institute of the Arts.
EVENTS
15 and 16 October | 6PM
Off-site Production!
Krysten Cunningham : Untitled Play, about Gravity
Untitled Play, about Gravity will be performed at 3616 ½ W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90018.
Enter from the alley behind the building, south of Washington Boulevard, between 6th & 7th Avenues.
Admission $5
Please call 323-957-1777 to RSVP.
Seating is limited.
The performance will start promptly at 6PM.
Please arrive by 5:45 to ensure seating.
Untitled Play, about Gravity is a site-specific performance written and directed by Krysten Cunningham.The geometrical issues of time are more relevant than you can imagine. In a match of the ancient game of Puna, Isaac Newton and Virginia Woolf illuminate the history of gravity as perceived through occult forces and scientific objectivity. A Basketball Player delivers the gravitational conditions of the present, questioning the repercussions of quantum space. He is interrupted & mesmerized by the future.
Krysten Cunningham spent her first years on a commune with Neo-plagicites in the Blue Ridge Mountains, USA. During the 80s, she was kidnapped by the CFL and forced to make rope with Bedouins in the Yemenite desert. This was to come in handy later when she created her God’s Eyes for the UCLA Hammer exhibition THING. She escaped in 1994 and fell in with the prominent Danish physicist, Mads Plaaten and under his tutelage, Krysten became adept at finding gravity leaks. She currently holds a masters degree in art, makes sculpture & hosts magic shows in her infamous parking lot in Los Angeles, California.
October 21 | 7 PM
Carnivorous Birds : No Rules Tour 2005
Dude Dogg : Dude Dogg Pilot TV Show Test Screening
$5 General
Free to LACE Members
Carnivorous Birds No Rules Tour
“studio-monster-hair guitarist with brains of carniverous birds, romulus spinter and his gypsy performers doing a full on extreme solo x 5 clothed in full rocker , with hair and rabid transients that bite. my cousin clint will be on snake charmer minus snake flute, marie on sound effects with voice overs keyboards and drum, andrew on bass, Lee (from L.A. based spiritual/folk band, Fireworks) picking up the slack, and a special welcome to Brett Erickson guest studio rocker guitarist and friend of my dad’s. it will be impossable to keep from vomiting, do it im my mouth. i love it.”
– Romulus Spinter, Carnivorous Bird
Dude Dogg Pilot TV Show and Test Screening
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions is proud to host the official test screening of the television pilot by Los Angeles based musical group and entertainment phenomenon Dude Dogg. Arguably the most famous mutants in the history of show business, the band are heirs to a legacy that spans from late 19th century counting horse Clever Hans through the Monkees to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The series is a ‘true-to-life’ look into the lives of Dude Dogg members (Waggz, Chico, Skat Dog, and DJ Wrmz) as they battle the pressures of life on the road, drug abuse, the entertainment industry, the pharmaceutical industry, carbohydrates, and face-eating monkeys. Questionnaires will follow the screening.
October 28 | 7 PM
Trinie Dalton, Jessica Hutchins and Rachel Kushner
Trinie Dalton : Wide Eyed
In Trinie Dalton’s tweaked vision of reality, psychic communications between herself and Mick Jagger, The Flaming Lips, Marc Bolan, Lou Reed, and Pavement are daily occurrences. Animals also populate this book; beavers, hamsters, salamanders, black widows, owls, llamas, bats, and many more are characters who befriend the narrator. This collection of stories is told by a woman compelled to divulge her secrets, fantasies, and obsessions with native Californian animals, glam rock icons, and horror movies, among other things. With a setting rooted in urban Los Angeles but colored by mythic tales of beauty borrowed from medieval times, Shakespeare, and Grimm’s fairy tales, Wide Eyed makes the difficulties of surviving in a contemporary American city more palatable by showing the reader that magic and escape is always possible.
Jessica Hutchins: Jessica Z. Hutchins is an artist and a writer. Her sculptures and stories express insights into the dark humor of American masculinity, naturophilia and the paranoiac. She received an M.F.A from California Institute of the Arts. She is a member of the new media cooperative C-Level, with whom she has collaborated on the interactive game projects “Cockfight Arena” and “Waco Resurrection“. A collection of her short stories, “Dark Pastoral” was published by Machine Project Press in 2004. She currently lives and works off Highway 138 at the edge of the Mojave Desert. You can find her online at www.jessicahutchins.com
Rachel Kushner: Rachel Kushner is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her fiction and nonfiction can be found, most recently, in Fence, Artforum, ArtUS and Bomb Magazine, where she is a contributing editor. She is currently at work on a novel about, among other things, colonial folly and the Zazou aesthetic.
November 11 | 7 PM
“VOICEOVERS AND GUEST STARS” Video Screening
$5 General
Free to LACE Members
This screening series looks at how the voice-over and the guest-appearance disrupt continuity and shape meaning, from Alan Calpe’s and Lucas Michael’s exploration of drag icons Linda Ronstadt and Liza Minelli to Terry Chatkupt’s documentary of his Thai parents relocation to small town Missouri to Michael’s Wilson’s insertion of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh into Star War’s Death Star via video game manipulation.
–Featuring–
Lucas Michael : LM², 2002
Jeannie Simms : 1974 in California, 2005
Martin Kersels: Attempt To Raise The Temperature Of A Container Of Water By Yelling At It, 1996
Sterling Ruby : Landscape Annihilates Consciousness, 2004
Michael Wilson : INVICTUS, 2005
Terry Chatkupt : Home Grown Folks, 2001
Julie Lequin : Speech Lesson, 2005
Alan Calpe : Perfidia, 2005
B&T : PONY BALLET, 2003
November 18 | 7 PM
The Elizabeths, Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction
The Elizabeths : ELIZABETH SPEAKS
The Elizabeths are proud to present the premiere performance of Elizabeth Speaks. In a provocative and revolutionary act of oration, translation and interpretation, the Elizabeths will present political speeches both past and present. In an engaging, audience participatory forum, the Elizabeths’ new performance will underscore the correlations between historical political rhetoric and the governmental agendas that are often camouflaged with doublespeak. Amplifying the need for continued free speech, public debate, and individual contributions, the Elizabeths will also give voice to any audience member who wishes to participate in this public address. Let the Elizabeths be your megaphone!
The Elizabeths consist of: Kristin Elizabeth Calabrese, Elizabeth Tremante, and Micol Elisabeth Hebron.
Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction: Info Booth
Renown for its motivational seminars in Psychic Disobedience™, Evangelical Onanism™ and Ontological Diuretics™ as well as it’s expertly-choreographed public demonstrations, the Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction is widely considered a leading force for research into the neoliberal sublime and its accompanying networks of Religio-Corporate-Renal Control. The Institute can fairly claim prescience and influence in the global renal arena, and a proven track record in disseminating Urologic™ to both influential and popular audiences. Representatives will be on hand to provide an intensive introduction to the Institute, its operatives, its aspirations and the arsenal of techniques it aims to employ in the ongoing struggle for Social Satisfaction. P.I.S.S. consists of Natalie Zimmerman, Michael Wilson, Jennifer Nelson, Melissa Longenecker, M.T. Karthik and others anonymous.
22 November | 6PM
Sustaining Human Values in a Globalized World
featuring a roundtable discussion hosted by the Paris based Charles-Léopold Mayer Foundation
This event is an opportunity to engage in dialogue to address challenges we face in a globalized world. It is the concluding gathering of Building Bridges and Dialogue, a traveling tour undertaken by a group of 9 international community leaders, activists and scholars that has featured dynamic meetings with individuals and community organizations in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. The project is led by Linda Pollack, based in Los Angeles and Arnuad Blin, based in Grenoble France.
Building Bridges and Dialogue is an initiative of the Charles-Léopold Mayer Foundation, a French-Swiss foundation based in Paris (fph). It is part of the Foundation’s effort to increase its ties with other groups and individuals in the United States.
Please join us for a reception at 6PM
Followed by a roundtable discussion at 7PM
Please RSVP by 10 AM Tuesday 22 November at 323.957.1777 x10
8, 9, 10 December | 8PM
Shrimps : HACK
$15 General
$10 LACE Members
Seating is limited
Doors open at 7:30PM
HACK
Hack will reunite key members of Shrimps at their former stomping grounds, LACE. The occasion will mark the first time the original collaborators will have performed together in over ten years.
16 December | 7 PM
Ultra-Red, Slanguage, Jeff Cain and Adam Overton
7 PM Doors Open, Performances start at 7:30 PM
$5 General
Free to LACE Members
Performances by Ultra-red, Slanguage and Adam Overton, and a presentation of Jeff Cain’s LAPD radio project.
Ultra-Red: S I L E N T | L I S T E N (the object voice)
“A non-partisan group of individuals united in anger to end the AIDS crisis through direct action,” served as the opening words for each meeting of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) chapters around the country. Admittedly, it’s an uncanny place to begin a performance at LACE circa 2005. But, hell, if pop music can dissolve into Reagan-era nostalgia without the revolt, then Ultra-red can at least permit the dead to have a word with the living.
Taking a break from their SILENT|LISTEN performances, Ultra-red review the record accumulating from their inquiry into the state of the AIDS epidemic in Bushnation. From Baltimore to Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, Ultra-red have staged conversations with AIDS activists and organizers on the ground. For this special performance, Ultra-red consider to what extent the voice itself functions as an object. Dangerously wandering off script, liberated from the delusions of the ego, the voice becomes an object of desire and anxiety. Ultra-red unleash “The Object Voice,” integrating real-time sound-processing and spoken reflection. The object voice par excellence, is silence.
SLANGUAGE
“sound video spoken word dj vj on subject of space travel and hamburger stands that kill us slowly refineries that pollute us and the only city on the entire west coast that has no beach access that is on the pacific ocean called wilmington wilmas.”
Jeff Cain: Radio LAPD
Radio LAPD is a lecture/demo that outlines the historical and simultaneous growth of the The Los Angeles Police Department communications system in parallel with the concurrent growth of Hollywood, culminating in the creation of a one night radio station designed for use in the immediate neighborhood.
Adam Overton
Adam Overton is a performance artist, composer, sound artist, and curator currently based in Los Angeles. His work is an investigation of invisible performance, a look into the hidden or overlooked performative worlds of the body, the mind, and the medium, and he has been busy developing two parallel streams of work – his recent Medi[t]ations series which uses biometric sensors and interactive sound software, and a series of body-based performance texts for instrumentalists or spectators in acoustic settings. This latter stream is serving as the basis for a book and DVD project entitled i am sediment, set to be published sometime in 2006 with the help of Fifth Planet Press.
For more information about Adam Overton
