This Week in Art

April 10, 2009 - April 15, 2009

Thinking about LA Art Weekend now that I have a moment to reflect. I am thinking about how our ideas about LA Art Weekend are similar to those that initially inspired me to found FYA. My interest in getting involved in the Weekend was the same reason I began FYA – to make art more accessible. It's has turned into an interesting microcosm of the layered complexities of cultural life in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. I've been thinking a lot about how these forces might serve to reinforce each other more, line up agendas in an authentic way, fitting of our moment, new kinds of collaboration.

When I studied art history at Princeton, I cried every time I met with my thesis advisor. He made me feel like the dumbest person in the world, but regardless, writing about Warhol was a transformative experience for me, even though I may not have gotten the best grade. My thesis advisor was the quintessential art world insider and could not reach across the barrier that separates the art world insider from the enthusiast. I came back to my hometown with the mission to build bridges between the art and patrons.

This is the second year FYA has co-produced the Weekend. LA Art Weekend was started as a private VIP/Press Event in 2007 to bring New York fashion and media insiders to L.A. and has evolved into an open house for L.A. culture. There is no budget, and it's a big investment of time. I feel that important lessons are learned each time. It's a work in progress. We wanted to utilize the press coverage to encourage a broader audience to know and to participate in all the diverse things going on, and at the same time, bring new things like Postopolis! to L.A. We are really grateful to everyone who worked with us.

FYA worked with NY's Storefront for Art and Architecture and invited six art and architecture bloggers from four continents to host a five-day conference (LA Art Weekend turned into LA Art Week!) on the roof of The Standard, Downtown. It was immediately clear that nights would be chilly, but an instant community of followers borrowed blankets from The Standard, bundled up and gathered around to participate in this meeting of minds, questions and ideas. Postopolis! kicked off with Fritz Haeg and the conversation began immediately both online and off and didn’t pause. Everything was "micro-blogged" on Twitter. A quick glance through the tweets is like CliffsNotes to the conversation about art and architecture www.twitter.com/postopolis. Hundreds of people were watching the live webcast from their warm abodes and part of the conversation from afar. I was inspired and I will sprinkle some tweets from the Weekend throughout this letter.

I co-hosted a breakfast on Wednesday morning with MAK director Kimberli Myers at the Mackey apartments, which are given to visiting artists, architects and students of architecture as part of the MAK Residency program. It was great to hang out with and be able to introduce Bryan Finoki from Subtopia to people like Ed Schad and Jeremy Rosenberg.

Wednesday was also the L.A. premiere of The Last Great Emperor. The subject of the documentary Valentino and Hollywood stars came out for the benefit for the Costume Council. Katherine Ross, LACMA's very own first lady did the Museum proud, bridging two communities – art and fashion – for the screening at LACMA.
Sadly we didn't get to the premiere. We went to Postopolis to participate in the second night of talks.

Architecture is a very slow art, reinforces materiality of world.
- marklee 6:30 PM Apr 1st from twitterrific

On Thursday morning we sent an email with a schedule of events for the Weekend with thoughts on the night before:

I'm sitting on the rooftop of the Standard Downtown, surrounded by buildings and people full of ideas, twittering and disseminating opinions into the blogspere, truly an event of the future, and an inspiring one at that.

Email-subscriber, Stacie Heyen responded:

Can you please explain to me why people sitting next to each other twittering into cyberspace is SO much more important than sharing ideas with the people beside them??? Does twittering really expand, engage ideas and other opinions - or does it further isolate people from the communities right next to them???

I sincerely appreciate these responses. You are inspiring us to speed up the evolution of our website (discussion boards coming soon!). Twitter brings up a host of questions with many subtleties. Twitter expands ideas by getting them out there. It also gives people the chance to open up a conversation and enter while it is going on. In this age of over-saturated media, I'll happily take participating over watching passively. Also, the Internet can serve to draw people out, to do something new. But it's not necessarily easy to talk about art.

I'll explain:

Thursday night Valentino signed his book at Taschen. There were lines around the block to get him to sign the book. And the red carpet continued as Valentino was inducted into the Rodeo Drive Hall of Fame that day (a press event if there ever was one). It's fascinating the mutually beneficial structure of support between Hollywood and fashion (Anne Hathaway was on hand, dressed in Valentino, for every event). I didn't go but here are the photos.

That same night Elliott Hundley led an engaged group through his celebrated exhibition at Regen Projects II. After all the attention the show had gotten in the press, we hoped to see a lot of people. It was a small and engaged group, but not a crowd. It was the kind of experience generally reserved for patrons, collectors and a lucky, eager public audience turned up.

Meanwhile, Mike Mills launched his most recent book, Mike Mills: Graphics Films, at a private event for Hammer supporters with a conversation with the Rodarte sisters. It sounds like it was a fireside chat.

Mike was greatly influenced by Hans Haacke.
-7:17 PM Apr 2nd from mobile web

Later, forces joined at the official LA Art Weekend launch party where Part-Time Punks DJ and map contributor Michael Stock set up at The Standard Hollywood’s Purple Lounge.

Getting set up in the at the standard, Part time punks DJ michael stock just showed up. Ready to launch
-8:03 PM Apr 2nd from twitterrific

Friday we hosted our first gallery walk with LA><ART REGROUP and X-TRA. Talks at LA><ART (Walead Beshty, Peter Zellner, Aram Moshayedi) and Blum & Poe (Dave Muller) drew crowds of interested people, which pleased me. A local writer told me they didn't recognize many people, which pleased me even more.

Dave Muller: the great thing about records and most pop art, is that there is more than one of them
-5:54 PM Apr 3rd from twitterrific

LAXART is filling up for Walead's talk, get over here before 7:30!
-6:21 PM Apr 3rd from twitterrific

The Kogi BBQ truck seemed to be a big draw. Next time we'll pitch REGROUP to the lines. This might be a good idea for MOCA and JANM, too!

Saturday we had brunch with deLaB after a visit to Alexis Rochas’ rooftop garden SYNTHe. LACMA was also a star Saturday night with Late Night Berlin. We went to the closing of Postopolis. Here's a curation of the final twitters from at Postopolis:

He's talking about hinge points, moments of catastrophe, so to speak, out of which something totally new can emerge.
-3:38 PM Apr 4th from TwitterBerry

Bratton: It's interesting: radical behaviors – even something like running a marathon – are not sustainable. They're precisely limited acts in time.

Christian is talking about "a giant vibrator," but he's referring to a kind of sound-dampening device from the railroad industry.
-4:25 PM Apr 4th from twhirl

Dan Goods created a thing where one grain of sand represented the size of one galaxy. You need 6 rooms full of sand to show size of universe
-5:09 PM Apr 4th from twhirl

Traffic islands "are mostly likely protected under the 1st amendment for assembly and expression," Ari says. They are "public forums."
-5:39 PM Apr 3rd from twhirl

question from audience: where is the critical voice? lets take a moment and survey, digest and create a stance
-6:06 PM Apr 4th from mobile web

Eric Rodenbeck: Wow – Eric is showing us a kind of tiled modular mapping system, better than Google Maps, inspired by Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion map.
-6:45 PM Apr 3rd from twhirl

An online version of Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion map
-6:47 PM Apr 3rd from twhirl

Christopher remarks that the most surreal thing was being in Dubai this and hearing near-complete silence. The construction had ceased.
-8:07 PM Apr 3rd from twhirl

Fallen Fruit: This is amazing: In the process they discovered, within the grid of the city, a different grid. That grid outlined a now-lost fruit orchard.
-9:10 PM Apr 3rd from twhirl

I came away from the Weekend with the feeling that as we do more things there is a struggle to present it simply. How can we have a different attitude that invites engagement, sincerely based on a belief that art is increasingly important in understanding and processing these challenging times. Art for art's sake is a luxury we cannot afford to give up.

12:00 AM

Filed Under: See Conversations Greater L.A.

Posted by: Bettina Korek on April 10, 2009

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