DATE: January 29th, 2006, 2:00 - 7:00
FEATURING: Ewan Branda, Fallen Fruit, Hjärta Smärta, Otto Karvonen , Shed Research Institute, ROR, Sissi Westerberg, Muungano, r a k e t a, Kelly Marie Martin, The Extrodinaires, Asdis sif Gunnarsdottir
A gathering of visiting Scandinavian artists and designers from Civic Matters with their Angeleno counterparts
the extrodinaires / passing through l.a. on a west coast tour away from their home of philiy, they make a last-minute command performance in the cave.
fallen fruit / will make guacamole and fruit salad from the neighborhood. While doing so we will talk about food, politics, art, culture, hospitality, guests, global trade and neo-colonialism. Muungano will videotaping us as we do so. Afterward everything will get eaten!
otto, lena & brett - group cooking project. brett (usa) will make something swedish, lena (swe) will make something finnish and otto (fin) will make something american.
muungano / will screen the video "Hip hop in bed with Muungano" they produced during their last ten days in los angeles / 4,5 minutes.
r a k e t a / video projections throughout the house / 'r a k e t a at Fritz's' / 'Everything Matters' / www.raketa.nu/projects/gold_la
sissi westerberg / will bring her portable pink-latex-spray-gun to the sundown salon. she will spray objects she finds as part of her LA-skin project. it will be an ongoing happening throughout the day. she is collecting shapes and fragments from everyday life in los angeles by spraying them with latex and then taking the "skin" off', creating a copy that can be brought back to sweden. she will spray it, let it dry and peal it off.
bicycle kitchen / Kelly Marie Martin, shall be present at the Sundown Salon with copies of her ‘zine, “ideal bicycle rides from the bicipandilla of the bicycle kitchen,” strolling through Sundown Gardens. She and Ben Guzman perform on their guitar & violin.
ewan branda / a presentation at on "Skansen and the informatics of the Open-air Museum".
asdis sif gunnarsdottir / a performance in the dome “Don’t you want to love her”.
civic matters / week in review slideshow & mixed tape.
the shed research institute / presents a live online documentation of 'public sculpture part 1' by alice konitz at http://shedresearch.blogspot.com. is a singular sculpture on view for the duration of 24 hours from 11:00 am Sunday, January 29, 2006 to 11:00am Monday, January 30 at '24 Hour California Donuts' located at 3540 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles (at the corner of 3rd Street and New Hampshire near Vermont Ave). The artist will be present for the duration of the project.In collaboration with the artist, the Shed Research Institute has organized for Koenitz to use a camera phone to upload pictures, audio, and text to blog her experiences automatically on location to http://shedresearch.blogspot.com. Please check into the blog as often as you like to see Koenitz and her sculpture at 24 Hour California Donuts. An SRI kiosk for watching PUBLIC SCULPTURE PART II will be installed at the SCANDINAVIANGELENOS.
civic matters participants:
The Bicycle Kitchen/La Bicicocina is a non-profit, volunteer-run bicycle repair and educational space in Los Angeles dedicated to improving the lives of Angelinos using the bicycle as its tool. They offer what no other bike shop can offer in the greater Los Angeles area: a space for all bicyclists to repair or build their bicycles from donated and recycled parts, to meet other cyclists, enrich their lives through bicycle awareness and find new outlets for bicycle culture. Kelly Martin and Jimmy Lizama are Bicycle Kitchen’s representatives for Civic Matters.
Mike Blockstein is a visual artist and educator in Los Angeles working in community-based art that explores the intersections of artistic process and civic engagement. His interdisciplinary projects utilize a “sense of place” as a mechanism to address social, cultural and built environments. He has developed public art and education programs projects bringing together multi-service agencies throughout the U.S. Among many other current projects, Mike is leading cross-disciplinary art and community-building projects working with youth and young adults in projects that explore neighborhood history, character and context.
Jeff Cain is an LA-based artist who investigates cultural, technological, and natural systems and creates work that intervenes and remodels these structures. His work has been presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Musee D’art Modern de Ville de Paris, Track 16, LAFreewaves, Leefalshalong at the New Chinatown Barbershop, CalArts, the Armory Center for the Arts, and other Southern California venues.
FALLEN FRUIT is an online project run by Dave Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. They spearhead an ongoing community activist artwork that maps all the fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles and other American cities. First published as an artist’s project in The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, FALLEN FRUIT has been included in a variety of art gallery shows.
Hjärta Smärta is a graphic design and illustration collective consisting of Samira Bouabana and Angela Tillman, both living and working in Stockholm, Sweden. Hjärta Smärta, which translates as “Heart” and “Pain” mostly works with clients, such as advertising firms, magazines and various cultural institutions in Sweden. Other work often emerges from ideas or opportunities that emerges outside of these client relationships. The collective has produced graphic design in various sizes and material, including books, furniture, graffiti wallpaper, and interior design.
IC-98 (”Iconoclast 1998”) was founded in 1998 by Visa Suonpää and Patrik Söderlund as a reaction to the restrictions of academic writing. Based in Turku, Finland, IC-98’s working methods are often interventions in public spaces to construct situations and create social frameworks. Increasingly, their projects take book form and are distributed for free in public. Past publications include: Theses on the Body Politic, Forays, RUN AND DIE, and A Monument for the Moments of the Living Present (A Proposal), among many others. www.socialtoolbox.com
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest is a Los Angeles-based artist’s collective. The magazine sits at the discursive juncture of fine art, media theory and anti-authoritarian activism. They sculpt projects that challenge hegemonic representations of knowledge, art, activism, and spark situations for community-based social change or creation. They work collaboratively with individuals and collectives on several continents. LA Editorial Team: Marc Herbst (co-founder), Robby Herbst (co-founder), Cara Baldwin, Ryan Griffis, and Christina Ulke.
Otto Karvonen is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Otto’s artistic work consists mainly of temporary performative actions and sculptural installations that are situated in public space. His ideas often start from small, everyday observations. Through discoveries and discussions held along the way, each project follows its own unexpected path. He focuses on the project’s context to explore how well each work responds to the physical, social and political space and time it occupies.
LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design was founded in 1987 and plays a vital role in Los Angeles by initiating and supporting events, publications, and symposia in this city and beyond. The Forum has produced lecture series, special events, a theory reading group, a quarterly newsletter, nine pamphlet-sized books and initiated a number of book projects published with major presses.
Muungano is a Stockholm-based collective of 15 people with different backgrounds ranging from engineering, philosophy, economy, design and architecture. They use design as a social and aesthetical activity in relation to commercial and material conditions. Their name means “alliance” or “union” in Swahili since they use apparent contradictions to create new forms, strategies and situations. www.muungano.com
Outpost for Contemporary Art is a non-profit organization founded in 2004 by Julie Deamer. Their mission is to cultivate creative exploration, international cultural exchange and a social setting conducive to lively discussion. Outpost assists artists in developing interdisciplinary projects that are speculative in nature, where process is emphasized over end result. In seeking to build energetic relationships among diverse communities, Outpost functions as an accessible and informal meeting ground in Los Angeles, where artist and audience alike can engage in dialogue. www.outpost-art.org
r a k e t a is a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and experiments within art, design, architecture and digital media. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Raketa creates spaces outside ordinary art venues. By using public space for their projects and inviting other artists to participate in their efforts, they open up the possibility for new autonomous artistic activity.
ROR is an artist collective based in Helsinki, Finland. Its members are Klaus Nyqvist, Karoliina Taipale, Panu Puolakka and Jiri Geller. Since 1998 ROR has hosted a countless number of guest artists in their shows. The works of its members and guests represent a variety of arts like knitting, electronic music, motorcycle design, textual publications, technological inventions and other visual arts. ROR also acts as a curatorial collective in the spirit of traditional avant-garde groups, the circus and rock'n'roll spectacles. Karoliina Taipale is ROR’s representative for Civic Matters.
Sissi Westerberg is based in Stockholm, Sweden. She has studied metal-craft and jewelry-art. Sissi’s interest for body-adornment has shifted to include experimentation with video, installation and sculpture. Her objects, jewelry and photography aim to imbue a feeling of intimacy and belonging by using body-like shapes in connection with conservative values. In her various collaborative works, she investigates processes and the language of material culture to engage the public in the dialogue of design and mass-production. www.sissiwesterberg.com
text from asdis sif gunnardottir performance “Don’t you want to love her”:
'“Don’t you just want to love her, just love her and forgive her for being jealous, she’s jealous of you, she’s crazy in love with you, .....don’t you want to love her? Don’t you want to be with her for the rest of your life? She’s you dark haired lady, your blonde. She’s the business lady, she knows business, she’s your dark haired woman, the one. She’s suspicious sometimes, sometimes sad, but hopeful, she’s happy, your happy dark haired woman, you blissful red blonde, the thoughtful one, she’s thoughtful, she’s thinking of you, your blonde woman, the business lady, the movie star, charming, she’s happy, your happy lady.”