Media Arts Preview: Recall, Revise, Remix
Media art this week reflects on - and reconceives - the past with projects that are based on earlier works, including compositions created by John Cage and Lou Reed's 1975 album, Metal Machine Music.
Thursday, January 26
Young Projects Gallery presents Suspension, a show of recent films by acclaimed filmmaker Reynold Reynolds and an installation by Kevin Cooley. The show will include three dual-channel works by Reynolds, including Secret Life, Secret Machine and Six Easy Pieces, as well as a five-channel work, Seven Days Till Sunday. Cooley's project is titled Skyward, which is a projection onto the ceiling showing a single, uninterrupted tracking shot from downtown L.A. to the Palisades.
The American Cinemathequeat the Egyptian Theatre is presenting a tribute to the great filmmaker Ken Russell through January 29. Tonight's feature is The Music Lovers, which tells the story of Tchaikovsky, who struggles with his suppressed homosexuality and a failed marriage; the film is described as "visually dazzling and emotionally wrenching." It screens tonight at 7:30 p.m., and the series continues through Sunday.
For eight years, between 1967 and 1975, the performance group Single Wing Turquoise Bird led the world of light show events in Los Angeles. The group staged light shows for bands, including The Velvet Underground and The Grateful Dead, and created visuals with film, slides and liquid projections. The group has reformed recently to perform new work, and will partner with Miroslav Tadic for an evening of real-time projection and live music at UCLA's Broad Art Center. The earlier shows have already sold out, but an additional performance is now scheduled for 11:00 p.m. tonight.
Friday, January 27
RE:COMPOSITION is an evening of four performances curated by Julie Lazar and dedicated to John Cage. The event "considers how current compositional practices and tools enable artists from all disciplines to reconceive or reconstitute aspects of their art production to honor California-native John Cage's centenary and liberating influence." Participating artists, musicians and writers include Marc Barrite, JD Beltran, Paul de Jong, Sandro Duckic, Joan Jeanrenaud, Scott Minneman, Joan Retallack and Michael Ives. The performances take place tonight and tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. at SCI-arc in downtown L.A. Co-presented by LA Freewaves.
Artist Brody Condon visits Machine Project tonight to present Future Gestalt, which presents a 1970s group encounter session set in the far future. The performance starts at 8:00 p.m.
Metal Machine Trio: Creation of the Universe is a project based on Lou Reed's groundbreaking 1975 album Metal Machine Music. The project is based on a 2009 live performance of the album featuring John Zorn at the Blender Theatre in New York, which has been recreated as an "ambisonic" 3-D sound installation. "In collaboration with the acoustic specialists at the Arup Engineering SoundLab in New York, Reed has been able to recreate, for museum visitors, this groundbreaking composition from exactly the same acoustic perspective he had while performing it on stage." The exhibition opens tonight at 6:00 p.m. with a reception and panel discussion.
Saturday, January 28
Los Angeles Filmforum and Cinefamily present Visions, Memory, and a Machine: Optical Manipulations today at 4:00 p.m. at Cinefamily. The show, part of the Alternative Projections series celebrating film in L.A. between 1945 and 1980, features work made with the optical printer, a device that "played a crucial role not only in the Hollywood special effects industry, but in certain strains of experimental cinema as well." The show features work by Pat O'Neill, David Wilson, Daina Krumins, Beth Block, Fred Worden and others; Block and O'Neill will be in attendance.
Larry Edmunds Bookshop presents Monsters, Movies and Trailers From Hell, an event celebrating John Landis' new book, Monsters in the Movies, and Joe Dante's DVD Trailers From Hell; both will be on hand to sign copies of their projects today at 7:00 p.m.