L.A. RELEASE EVENT: The Sundown Salon Unfolding Archive

MAK Center for Art and Architecture, L.A. at the Schindler House / 835 North Kings Road, West Hollywood, CA 90069 / Saturday, June 20 / 4:00 - 7:00pm

The release of "The Sundown Salon Unfolding Archive" by Evil Twin Publications will be celebrated with an event at the Schindler House in West Hollywood, California on June 20th. This will also be the first public viewing of the book documenting the thirty Sundown Salon events from 2001-2006. One continuous 140 foot long sheet of paper folds up to become the 380 page volume with color photos on one side and text on the other. A 150 foot long table will be set up in the Schindler House driveway with copies of the book fully unfurled providing the unique opportunity to view the entirety of the book at once. Contributors to the book, including Trinie Dalton, Ken Ehrlich, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst, Kelly Martin, and Matias Viegener will read passages from their stories and essays, and a few Los Angeles artists and performers including John Barlog & John Burtle, Bodycity, Hawkwind Screenprinting, John P Hogan, Hot Knives, and L.A. Fog will lead activities for the afternoon, each stationed in a geodesic tent headquarters located in the gardens...

L.A. FOG will make music roaming the gardens. LA Fog will explore the acoustical features of the outer perimeter of the Schindler House and its grounds through the vocalization of original and found song structures.

LA Fog is a collective of musicians focused on woodwind, brass and other "voice" type instruments, with players for this date including Kelly Coats, Kathleen Kim, Jonathan Silberman and Giles Miller.

BODYCITY will lead a dancing project: "Linked" A house sits in Los Angeles, drawn and dragged and built, it opens its inside to the outside, unfolds its past to our present exploration. We inhabit space, dictating how we move and discovering how we relate to other bodies. Enter the gardens and play with us! Chains of arms and legs link our bodyspaces; we are a new proximity, physicality and community. Our connected movement sprouts in the shadows of Schindler and the reflection of Sundown Salons. Under each other we unfold a map. We invite you to visit bodycity.

Bodycity is a dance democracy dedicated to the site specific, with members Madeline Baugh, Jennifer Lehman, Cristina Paul, Lake Sharp, and Meagan Yellott. We are completely ensemble based, each of us with varying levels of training. We are all creative directors. Our dances challenge the notion of dance and choreography as a traditional/singular vocabulary performed by specific dance "types." We are dedicated to the site specific. We have danced in bars, at the REDCAT, in backyards, in art galleries, in parks, on the steepest street, in our living rooms, in empty parking lots, at parties, in geodesic domes and gardens; we traverse LA with dance.

HOT KNIVES presents: "Pickle Play" Pickling is usually a tool for those whose access to fresh produce is limited, unpredictable or seasonally short. Thankfully we Angelenos don't have those problems. But that doesn't mean that we can't enjoy and rely on the tricks of quick pickling to keep beautiful fruits and veggies from rotting deep in the fridge. The Hot Knives team has been playing with "fresh pickling" this month to figure out the the ways of the brine. In our tent we'll be serving up pickled daikon radish, grapes and cucumbers and talking about where that snap and zing comes from. WATCH THE VIDEO BY JACINTO ASTIAZARAN

Hot Knives is Evan George and Alex Brown. It started as a vegetarian food blog launched in 2006 but has blossomed into a multi-media, DIY cooking site with recipes, kitchen tips, and videos. Hot Knives has also expanded into a small, site-specific catering company that specializes in unique, homey and fun grub, tackling everything from vegan weddings to beer festivals. Known more for experiment than technical, scientific achievement, we like to deconstruct after-school snacks into haute cuisine, poach eggs in beer and, generally, play with our food.

JOHN P HOGAN will lead performances: "Creative Clutter" John P. Hogan and Anna Oxygen espouse the virtues of creative clutter and generative jamming. They will use musical instruments, analog and digital technologies, improvisation techniques, and craft materials to create a multidisciplinary jam session and performance happening. They will enlist the help of friends and colleagues. Your participation is encouraged. Make your own percussive object! Bring your own acoustic or digital sound-making thing! Or just show up and receive whimsical/absurd directives.

John P. Hogan is a multimedia artist whose work is grounded in the aesthetics and ethos of DIY rock music and amateur theater production. His band, Ponce De Leon, bases its music on a fictionalized history of Florida, and it seeks to reconcile the sexualized hipster death drive with the corporate oligarchy’s need to enforce global ideological homogenization through violence and social imperialism. He recently wrote and directed a musical mini-series at Machine Project entitled Heretics, performed in four live installments. He is currently producing a radio-play series based on this piece, called Heretics Lost. Hogan received his MFA in Art and Integrated Media from CalArts in 2006.

JOHN BARLOG & JOHN BURTLE will lead projects in the garden: "In the garden of Eden, baby or California Dreamin' " John and John will explore and establish connections between the gardens of the Schindler House and the gardens at Fritz Haeg's house on Sundown Drive. For the duration of the event, they will hold several performances interacting with plants and people, and give away plant cuttings from the gardens on Sundown Drive. The performances will focus on the histories and rituals of food production and consumption, at these two significant L.A. gardens.

HAWKWIND SCREENPRINTING will lead silkscreening. Rachael and Mike of Hawkwind Printing, who hand-silkscreened the covers of the salon book, will custom print images from the book for guests.

Rachael Hawkwind is a longtime Evil Twin collaborator, having produced 1,000 covers for "Catholic No.1: CATS" (2003)  and "Slept in Beds" (2005) in DIY style in an apartment kitchen. Hawkwind proves that printing can be low-tech and simple and look a lot better than slick factory produced work!