You See LA: Fall 2014
5 things to see and do in L.A. handpicked by CAP UCLA Executive and Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds
Five things to see and do in and around Los Angeles this fall.
FALL 2014 EVENTS HANDPICKED BY KRISTY EDMUNDS
Kristy Edmunds is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
JIM HODGES: GIVE MORE THAN YOU TAKE
Years ago, when I ran the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, I had the life changing experience of working with Jim Hodges. I invited a collaborative installation project between Hodges and the composer, Shelley Hirsh. At the time, I didn’t have the resources to adequately support the ideas they were developing, however passionate I was about their work. Being exceedingly generous of spirit – they agreed, persevered, and created an acutely honest insight into their artistic motives and long friendship. The installation was likely not a career-changing highlight in their accomplished and remarkable bodies of work, but for me it wisened and altered the direction of mine. As Jim was heading off to a vastly larger next project, he casually but pointedly gave me a book that he thought ‘I might like.’ He did this in that way that implies something personally relevant might be contained within. Something ‘kindred’ and worthy of slowing down to consider. The book was Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift.” I read it some months later. It articulated why Jim had agreed to do this small, radically underfunded project in the first place. It illuminated that he was investing in potential –mine, the organization’s, and in our ethos and emergent place in an arts ecology. Jim lives his creative life and makes his exceptional art work in tandem with an underlying principle: GIVE MORE THAN YOU TAKE. I cannot wait to see this aptly entitled exhibition surveying his work to date. That it is at the Hammer, which as a point of principle has become a ‘free’ admission museum ever engaged in our cultural commons, is a perfect storm of goodness (and panache)!
Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Can Take runs from October 3, 2014 – January 18, 2015 at the Hammer Museum at UCLA.
Show Box L.A. is a ‘DIY’ hyper smart organization that presents collaborative and artist-led projects. They have cultivated an active community of followers and, in collaboration with the artists, are an important platform for experimentation in dance. Think of it as an umbrella for artists to share work and ideas (usually on a shoe-string budget), that adds depth to the larger conversations about the art and legacy of dance practitioners. They partner with other like-minded and similarly passionate entities to bring artists to L.A. (like Live Arts Exchange/LAX and Los Angeles Performance Practice) that you would likely not see if they didn’t, and they are a hot bed for connecting people in relevant exploration. Much of it happens at the Bootleg Theater in Echo Park. You really need to go to their website (all mentioned). If I were a UCLA art student – in ANY discipline – I would be beating a path to join the real time conversation through Show Box L.A. You will end up finding some fascinating places and neighborhoods around Los Angles as you follow their lead, and you will meet artists who are committed to forging creative hubs for one another along the way.
Show Box L.A.: Itinerant around Los Angeles. See site for additional performances and details.
We just had a concert featuring Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer at Royce Hall, which was stunning. The UCLA Bluegrass Band played beforehand, and it made me think of how many exceptional musicians, ensembles and groups are formed here at UCLA. One place that I am sure these artists, and many others, spend significant time is Largo. Flannie is the owner/operator with an exceptional depth and range of music tastes – in fact, he is indefatigable, and taking a look across the upcoming concert calendar alone is proof enough. Largo has a great vibe, and is a launching point where many musicians had their first real start. It is where audiences flock to see what are likely to be top shelf bands emerging in jazz, folk, Americana and the heady mix of indie innovation. I, for one, am not going to miss Sam Amidon – a banjo, fiddle and guitar player who also draws and makes comics. He is as comfortable collaborating with the likes of a Laurie Anderson, or a Nico Muhly, or Ben Frost, as he is with long time collaborator, Shahzad Ismaily. Sam can move as easily in the venerated places like Carnegie Hall as he can in a tiny back porch area in Vermont, or a music club in Brooklyn. This is a perfect moment to catch his music, in a beloved L.A. music hotspot where casual is fully welcomed and great listening is what gets done.
Sam Amidon performs at Largo (Largo at the Coronet Theater) on October 14, 2014 at 8:00 pm.
ROBERT WILSON’S THE OLD WOMAN & RONNIE BURKETT THEATER OF MARIONETTES: THE DAISY THEATER
O.K., so this may seem like shameless self-promotion, but these two theater projects (which could not be more different in vibe, range, aesthetics and scale) are by artists that people travel far and wide in order to catch. The Old Woman, directed by legendary artist Robert Wilson, is based on a story by Russian author Daniil Kharms. The story revolves around a struggling young writer, with brilliant and sly political undertones that echo the work of Samuel Beckett. In the hands of Wilson, the story is held in a world of towering visual and scenic design, deadpan humor, and a lighting palette that quite literally envelops the full color spectrum to haunting and beautiful effect. Somehow this is a production where architecture, color theory, literature, social justice and abstraction conjoin into something breathtaking. Oh, it’s probably worth mentioning that, the cast includes Willem DaFoe and Mikhail Baryshnikov whose performances have garnered rave reviews.
Down the road in Culver City, is Ronnie Burkett’s latest work, The Daisy Theater. Burkett is a theater maker of fantastical productions. He writes his material, makes each of his marionette puppets, designs his sets, performs all of the roles and manages to be a provocateur of re-thinking the daily headlines as a kind of cabaret commentator - all at the same time. This production will land at a local actor’s hub and where “The Actors’ Gang” makes its home.
The Old Woman plays November 14 and 15 at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
The Daisy Theater plays November 11, 2014 – November 16, 2014 at the Actors’ Gang at Ivy Substation in Culver City.
I am going to pick an afternoon in, say, mid-November and spend it at the Fowler Museum. There will be two exhibitions up at the same time that I am completely intrigued by: World Share: Installations by Pascale Marthine Tayou and Bearing Witness: Embroidery as History in Post-Apartheid South Africa. I have only ever read about Tayou’s installations – the imagery of his accumulations and how he puts them into these mass aggregated works of art have always stayed with me. The Bearing Witness exhibition comes from community groups, and their use of embroidery as a tactile and embodied form to document eloquent and complex histories. I know already, it will be unlike anything I have experienced before. In fact, that happens to me a lot at the Fowler - I find myself regularly grateful for what they exhibit and how wide ranging their expertise is. I spend a lot of time in art museums around the world - it is extremely rare when a museum is able to meld aesthetic excellence in a way that does not leave behind aspects of the spiritual within traditions and contemporary work. The Fowler is at a “human scale” and I never feel dwarfed or overwhelmed upon entering. The overwhelm for me comes from the work itself, and when that happens – which it invariably does - there are small areas to sit, and a courtyard to retreat to that is truly rejuvenating. Don’t get me wrong, I love big radical design and humongous museums – but somehow here, the works and their contexts are direct and resonant. Mid-November, both exhibitions and one sublime afternoon!
Bearing Witness: Embroidery as History in Post-Apartheid South Africa runs through December 7, 2014.
World Share: Installations by Pascale Marthine Tayou runs from November 2, 2014 – March 1, 2015.