|
< back to Events
Talk About Acts
Kim Jones and Barbara T. Smith in Conversation Jan 17, 2012
Barbara T. Smith and Kim Jones will discuss their own historic works and the milieu of Los Angeles performance art in a conversation among colleagues. Smith was an important participant in the thriving feminist performance movement that evolved in LA in the early 1970s. Jones’ famous “Mudman” persona was a challenging life-as-art project that brought resonances of an American experience in Vietnam to the streets of Los Angeles. The artists will contextualize their practices in dialogue, and reflect on a trajectory that has brought them to the present. |
Press Release
Talks About Acts is thrilled to present a three-part series in conjunction with the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival. Theses events – a conversation, a reading, and a play – explore different dimensions of Los Angeles performance in the 1960s and 70s, an important time for innovative works whose effects are still being felt in the field of art. Bringing together leading artists, this series invests contemporary energy in these ephemeral, historical, influential performances. Eleanor Antin's Before the Revolution, first performed at the Kitchen in New York in 1979, is a key example of the artist's critical, theatrical practice. The play explores Antin's imaginary character "Eleanora Antinova," a black American ballerina trying to make it in the great modernist Russian company of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, where she encounters the histories and ambiguous realities of performance, racial profiling, and the magical promise of modernism and revolution. Performed by actors who manipulate Antin's original, hand painted, life scale puppets to enact this darkly comic narrative, Before the Revolution is a prime example of the artist's incorporation of a vaudeville sensibility into performance art, and demonstrates a daring attempt to consider race and gender in relation to artistic mastery. Antin directs the production along with Robert Castro. This work is presented as part of LA><ART’s ongoing programmatic collaboration with the Hammer Museum. Artist Ed Bereal was a founding member of the radical street theater group Bodacious Buggerrilla, which performed around LA between the 1960s and 1980s. Members of the original group will reassemble with Bereal for a performance and discussion that revives their politically charged works. The troupe’s plays used humorous narratives and theatrical costumes to satirize figures of American racism, while also critiquing black political movements of the time. In addition to original collaborators, art historian Yael Lipschutz will join the discussion and help contextualize this unique, under-documented project. This particular performance is co-organized by the Getty Research Institute. Barbara T. Smith and Kim Jones will discuss their own historic works and the milieu of Los Angeles performance art in a conversation among colleagues. Smith was an important participant in the thriving feminist performance movement that evolved in LA in the early 1970s. Jones’ famous “Mudman” persona was a challenging life-as-art project that brought resonances of an American experience in Vietnam to the streets of Los Angeles. The artists will contextualize their practices in dialogue, and reflect on a trajectory that has brought them to the present. Developed in 2007 by Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade at LA><ART, Talks About Acts is a series of conversations, presentations and performances that inform the contemporary discussion around performance practices. Previous participants have included Scoli Acosta, Ron Athey, Andrea Fraser, Coco Fusco, Lia Gangitano, Los Super Elegantes, Ann Magnuson, José Muñoz, Mario Ybarra, Jr., and Eleanor Antin, whose keynote talk in 2007 laid the foundation for this year’s project. ABOUT LA><ART Founded in 2005, LA><ART is the leading independent non-profit contemporary art space in Los Angeles, committed to the production of experimental exhibitions and public art initiatives. LA><ART produces and presents new work for all audiences and offers the public access to the next generation of artists and curators. LA><ART supports challenging work, reflecting the diversity of the city and stimulates conversations on contemporary art in Los Angeles, fostering dynamic relationships between art, artists, and their audiences. LA><ART has produced and commissioned over 100 projects in its first five years. ABOUT PACIFIC STANDARD TIME PERFORMANCE AND PUBLIC ART FESTIVAL The Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival will transform Southern California over eleven days from January 19-29. Featuring more than 30 major performances and large-scale outdoor projects, the festival will include new commissions, reinventions, and restagings inspired by works created by artists during the Pacific Standard Time era. The festival is organized by the Getty Research Institute and LA><ART; support provided by the Getty Foundation.  
|
