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

Thanks Kathy

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:

Excerpted from this [3.6mb] interview PDF.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

eighteen touches, one strike.

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!)

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

Exhibition 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

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!