The Museum of Non Participation

Jonathan · 01/16/10

Slavs and Tatars / Ooga Booga

Slavs and Tatars & Ooga Booga present the west coast debut of Kidnapping Mountains. Featuring a selection and sale of Slavs and Tatars posters, editions, and printed matter.

Ooga Booga
943 N Broadway #203
Los Angeles CA 90012
14 January — 7 February 2010

Textfield · 01/15/10

Thanks Kathy

Jonathan · 01/12/10

Ooga Booga Reading Room

Ooga Booga is a concept shop vital to the creative life-blood of Los Angeles. It gathers an eclectic range of products. Spearheaded by Wendy Yao, Ooga Booga fosters a vibrant community of independent producers. For Swiss Institute, Yao installs a lounge in which one may read over 300 titles — from self to professionally published. The room contains contributions by:

38th Street, Alex Klein, Alex Olson, Alice Konitz, Amy Yao, Andrea Longacre-White, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Apartamento, Art Since Summer of ’69, Arthure Ou, Asher Penn, B’Ling, Barry Johnston, Becca Albee, Benjamin Trogdon, Black Dog Publishing, Bookworks, Brian Kennon, Claudine Auguste, Cynthia Connolly, Cynthia Leung, David Benjamin Sherry, Dexter Sinister, Dorothee Perret, Drag City, Duncan Hamilton, Ethan Swan, Eva Svennung, Fillip, Form Content, Free Association Press, FR David, Frances Stark, Gloria Pedemonte, Goodiepal, Greene Naftali, Hanne Mugaas, Harsh Patel, Ingo Giezendanner, Isabel Asha Penzlien, Jim Drain, Joseph Mosconi, JRP, K8 Hardy, Leif Goldberg, Leopard Press, Lisa Farjam, Margaret Lee, Matt Wobensmith, Megawords, Melissa Ip, Michael & Lucena Valle-Rey, Mylinh Trieu Nguyen, Nick Relph + Oliver Payne, Nieves, Oliver Payne, Ooga Booga, Paige Johnston, Peres Projects, Picturebox, Phil Chang, Poppy Books, Primary Information, RE/Search publications, Semiotext(e), Slavs and Tatars, Sumi Ink Club, Taro Nettleton, Textfield, Ugly Duckling Presse, Wendy Yao, William E. Jones, and White Columns.

Swiss Institute
Ooga Booga Reading Room
1 December — 13 February 2010

Textfield · 01/11/10

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Excerpted from this [3.6mb] interview PDF.

Harsh · 01/09/10

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Making my way through a short stack of new reading material given to me by my generous, mostly confused family members. First on the list, Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher of the blog kpunk. As clear-eyed an assessment of our current post-Fordist predicament as you’ll find just about anywhere, and at a brisk 80 pages, the perfect way to get back into gear after a lazy holiday.

Available from Zero Books.

Mark · 01/08/10

Beatrice Valenzuela

“I always collected moccasins. I would get vintage ones, Canadian moccasins, Pueblo moccasins…I studied anthropology, so I have this fascination with anything indigenous — just how basic things can be, and how beautiful. So I had this obsession with moccasins and handmade shoes. And I found I couldn’t find a good pair of shoes out there that were good for every day that I really loved the design of, that were comfortable and that were affordable.”

— Beatrice Valenzuela

Jonathan · 01/07/10

I recommend his last book, as well as his best pal Norm Macdonald’s “Ridiculous” comedy album.

Harsh · 01/07/10

Everything, Nothing, Something, Always (Walla!), is a time-based installation that takes the form of a one-act live theatrical play that repeats nine times over a period of three hours. This documentation is a sampling of all nine runs. Filmed during Performa 09 at X initiative on November 11th & 12th 2009. By Emily Mast.

Jonathan · 01/06/10

Harsh · 01/06/10

Shannon Ebner, Shrouded
Shrouded Monument, 2008, C-print, 48.5 x 40.5 inches

Shannon Ebner, Signal Hill
7 January — 13 February 2010
Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco

Images point to what is in the world; that is the problem with representation. I think that is why there has been so much activity around abstraction — it offers one possible way around the problem of pictures. I am looking for a way out of the problems of representation but I am not satisfied to leave the world of representation all together. I am somehow looking to stay in the world of depictive images by simply asking for more from them through developing a different system, idea or model of how they might function.

—Shannon Ebner

Textfield · 01/05/10

I think he, more than any one person or thing, crafted my mental image of LA when I didn’t live here.

Harsh · 01/02/10

1940s Studio Organization, 20th Century Fox.

The following diagrams outline the structure of the 20th Century Fox film studio in the 1940s. The charts detail everything from the highest to the most menial of positions at the studio, from the catering through the legal department. They appear in approximately the same order as they appeared in the book they were scanned from.

Sun · 12/31/09

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My friend Mike Watt is an extraordinary person. And who doesn’t love this guy?
He’ll be playing with Kira as Dos, this Sunday at The Prospector in Long Beach.
Hope to see you all.

Sunday, December 20 at 9pm
at The Prospector
2400 E. 7th St.
Long Beach, CA
(562) 438-3839

Photo above by John Eder taken from Hootpage
San Pedro, CA - 1994
Watt with his Les Paul signature bass.

Sandy · 12/19/09

Amir Zaki, Volkswagon Vanogon diptych

James Harris Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Amir Zaki. The artist has been working as a photographer for more than fifteen years, showing work from New York to Los Angles to Seattle. This is his fourth solo exhibit at James Harris Gallery. For this exhibition, Zaki shows a series of color-saturated lifeguard towers that have been digitally manipulated to render them more iconic than real.

Three years ago the artist moved from Los Angles to Orange County, California, prompting a noted shift in his work. Earlier projects captured the pools and mansions common to the Southern California landscape, documenting both the luxury and the cliché embedded in that region’s distinct architecture. Zaki brought a cool eye to these subjects, spying curvy swimming pools from above, and depicting retro-chic living rooms empty of inhabitants. Domestic scenes were rendered as near abstractions, both highlighting their subject’s power over our imagination, and seemingly trying to capture common scenes with an objective approach.

Zaki’s new work explores structures common to his new locale: lifeguard towers and the Volkswagen Vanagon. The beach-side architectural structures seem to float in the sky, as all access to the towers has been digitally erased. Colors in both the skies and the small buildings themselves have been intensified, adding to sense of the fantastic. Several structures read like military outlooks, all streamlined angularity, while others would not seem out of place at nearby Disneyland. The image of the Vanagon presents this beach mobile as both an emblem of 1960s hippiedom, as well as a smooth-edged visual sculpture. On a biographical note, the two vans represent the vehicle Zaki owned as a younger man, and the replacement he sought out more than a decade later. The two mirrored images look at each other nose to nose, perhaps a portrait of youth staring age in the eye.

Amir Zaki, Relics
Reception: 7 January 2010, 6pm
7 January 2010 — 20 February 2010
James Harris Gallery
312 Second Avenue South
Seattle, WA

Jonathan · 12/18/09

eighteen touches, one strike.

Parkside · 12/16/09

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Bidoun and Anthology Film Archives present an encore screening of Ben Hayeem’s unmissable, unfathomable wonder. Born and raised in Bombay, Hayeem (1933-2004) made a number of well-regarded films and was close with experimental film pioneers Maya Deren and Slavko Vorkapich. Early in his career he joined the Living Theater group in New York and became the only Indian Jew to play a Chinese Priest with a Yiddish accent in a Brecht play. This comedic, cross-cultural experience must have set him down the path to the rather incredible and risque happenings in The Black Banana.

The original promotional notes inform us that, “In this zany, ribald Middle Eastern comedy, young Jews, Arabs and Texans revolt against the parental and conventional authority, represented by old-fashioned Jews, Arabs and Texans…Despite its message of peace and good will between Jew and Arab, The Black Banana has the distinction of being the only film ever banned in Israel because its mixture of nudity and religious satire offended the Israeli censorship board.”

The Black Banana will be preceeded by Ben Hayeem short films:
Papillote (1964, 10.5 minutes, 16mm)
Flora (1965, 6 minutes, 16mm)

Tuesday, December 22 at 8:00 PM
Anthology Film Archives: 32 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10003

(This movie absolutely blew my mind, I cannot recommend it enough. DO NOT MISS!)

Tiffany · 12/15/09

Ed Ruscha, Photographer

Bookshop now open — email your order (or order online) and receive 15% off all books, catalogs, editions, magazines, monographs, multiples, and videos, between November 24, 2009 and January 1, 2010. All orders placed by December 11th, will be delivered by December 24th. Orders placed online will receive a 15% refund. Happy Holidays!

Publishers
032c, A&R Press, Bas Morsch, Book Works, Capricious, Charlie White, Christoph Keller Editions, C Magazine, Coins, David Kordansky Gallery, Fillip, FormContent, Four Corners Books, Glen Cummings, Adam Michaels, Harsh Patel, Hassla Books, Hunter and Cook, Hypen Press, JRP|Ringier, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Laura Bartlett Gallery, Laura Palmer Foundation, Manuel Raeder, Mono.Kultur, Museum Paper, Nieves, OK-RM, onestar press, Paperback, Paper Monument, Passenger Books, Peres Projects, Seems, Primary Information, Semiotexte, Slavs and Tatars, Steidl, Textfield, The Power Plant,Tramnesia, True True True, Turner, Vier5, Walker Art Center, Wallspace, Walther König, Wear, and more.

Textfield · 12/14/09

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Harsh · 12/12/09

Keith Bormuth, The Occasion of Fracture

Keith Bormuth, The Occasion of Fracture
Softcover, 28 pp., offset 1/1, 160 x 240 mm
Edition of 500
Published by Keith Bormuth

Keith Bormuth’s The Occasion of Fracture traces the notion that media fulfills itself in a phatic relationship to knowledge. Following a ghost image of Reyner Banham’s seminal text on Los Angeles, Bormuth melds the on-screen laughter of the 1940s Hollywood star Irene Dunne with the show Gossip Girl, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s posthumously published The Crack Up, and the cameo appearance by Georges Bataille as a priest in Jean Renoir’s film Partie de Campagne. Composed in 11 themes, the text seeks to fracture the semblance images have as things.

Distributed in North America by Textfield, Inc.

Textfield · 12/10/09

Shannon Ebner, Not Equal
Not Equal, 2009, Plywood, wood glue and enamel paint, 13.1 x 17.75 inches

Shannon Ebner
Invisible Language Workshop
30 October — 19 December 2009
Opening Reception: Friday 30 October, 6-8pm
Wallspace

Images point to what is in the world; that is the problem with representation. I think that is why there has been so much activity around abstraction — it offers one possible way around the problem of pictures. I am looking for a way out of the problems of representation but I am not satisfied to leave the world of representation all together. I am somehow looking to stay in the world of depictive images by simply asking for more from them through developing a different system, idea or model of how they might function.
—Shannon Ebner

via

Textfield · 12/09/09

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Mark Owens and his cohort of CalArts MFA graphic design students will be in residence this weekend at Kunsthalle Los Angeles to explore the topics of production, distribution and circulation.

Stop by anytime and check out the space and the projects, bring your portable USB flash drive for daily file sharing happy hour, and/or get your conviviality on at the closing reception on Sunday from 6-9PM.

Friday 12/11 – Sunday 12/13
Kunsthalle Los Angeles
932 Chung King Road, Chinatown

Flickr set

Mark · 12/08/09

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You are invited to attend:

CONTRA MUNDUM VII
Sunday, December 6, 2009
7PM

The Sycophancy of the Contemporary Artist and
the Impossibility of Reaching Out to Mark E. Smith

Artist Frances Stark discusses Mark E. Smith,
legendary vocalist for The Fall.

The talk will be followed by a DJ set of related music by Jan Tumlir.

Mandrake
2692 S La Cienega Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90034
(between Venice Blvd and Washington Blvd)

www.mandrakebar.com
www.osloeditions.com

Mark · 11/29/09

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Two good show openings in LA tonight - Arthur Ou and Alice Könitz (information below this post), and Asher Penn (with a performance by Kayla Guthrie).

ASHER MIXTAPE HELL 2
November 21 - December 13, 2009
Young Art
1727 N. Spring Street
Los Angeles, 90012
OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday, November 21, 2009
7-10pm

AFTER PARTY @ JED’S
performance by Kayla Guthrie
11pm
443 S. San Pedro St. #402
Los Angeles, 90013

Harsh · 11/21/09

Alice Konitz and Arthur OuExhibition poster design by Sandy Yang

Resort, A Station for Display
Arthur Ou and Alice Könitz
November 21, 2009 — January 16, 2010
Reception: Saturday, November 21, 2009, 7-9pm

LAXART
2640 S La Cienega Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90034

Jonathan · 11/20/09

Music Video for my brother’s band, Escort, All Through the Night, edited and synched to various Muppets shows by Irvin Coffee, 2007. Miss you Darius!

Jonathan · 11/19/09

Michael · 11/19/09