Monday
May202013
Tuesday May 21: COMEDY
Comedy Night at Human Resources L.A.
8 pm
with
Fleece and Jeans, Donny Divanian, Chris Thayer, Nick and Nora and video by Sporay
Tuesday
May142013
Gallery Hours - Wed thru Sat 12-6pm for Scott Benzel
Scott Benzel and What Does Possession Mean to You?
Opening and Performances Saturday April 27 7-10PM
Shows Close Saturday May 18
Human Resources is pleased to present two concurrent shows by Scott Benzel. The downstairs space will feature a show of the artist's recent work including large-scale installations, vitrines containing new works, and performances. The upstairs will feature What Does Possession Mean to You? a selection of works and objects from Benzel's collection to be deaccessioned, stored, or promised to individuals and institutions following the close of the show.
Benzel's conceptually-based practice is comprised of sculptural, photographic, sound, and performance works often employing readymade elements. His interest in "genealogy" or "geology" -the process of mining layers of history and discourse to trace connections between objects and ideas- serves as a thread through the diverse work. Meaning is often a product of recombination, with individual objects and ideas –often found or appropriated- operating as components in the system of each piece. Benzel interrogates the lines between appropriation and anthropological examination, collecting and authorship, poetics and politics and often employs strategies of reversal, inversion, and doubling.
A new performance, Un Coup de Des / Presence, and a ‘recombination’ of Benzel’s Folk History and Non-Genre I for Female Black Metal Guitarist and Belt Sanders (2012), will take place during the opening Saturday April 27 from 7-10 pm.
What Does Possession Mean to You? (upstairs)
Benzel’s poster for What Does Possession Mean to You? reworks Victor Burgin's seminal work of 1976 of the same title, substituting Burgin's glamorous couple redolent of a luxury goods ad with a still from a ‘Possession’- genre horror film. The show focuses on selections from Benzel's collection: a small cave section and portraits of Benzel by Mike Kelley, an early sculpture by Kathryn Andrews, a silkscreened wallpaper by Olga Koumoundouros, the catalog of the first exhibition of conceptual art assembled by Seth Siegelaub, an early novel by Liam Gillick and more by artists including Marcel Broodthaers, Jakob Erol, Violet Hopkins, Martin Kippenberger, Malcolm McLaren, Rodney Mcmillian, and Gustav Metzger. Following the close of the exhibition, Benzel will ‘give up all material possessions’ for an undisclosed period. The works will be stored, deaccessioned, or promised to institutions and individuals.
Scott Benzel is a Los Angeles-based artist and composer. His work was featured in Made in LA 2012 at the Hammer Museum and has been shown or performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum Of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, LAXART, and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. This is his second solo show at Human Resources.
Human Resources is a team of creative individuals which seeks to broaden engagement with contemporary and conceptual art, with an emphasis on performative and underexposed modes of expression.
for inquiries:
eric@humanresourcesla.com
Monday
Apr082013
EMA, Bouquet, DK, & Roses 4/11
EMA
Bouquet
DK
Roses
Thursday April 11
7-10pm
EMA is Erika form Gowns' new band and she says: "Every time EMA has played LA we always play in a club and I'm stoked for this opportunity to play at HR. New stuff and some oldies too!"
www.cameouttanowhere.com
Bouquet is: Carolyn and Aaron, formerly of The Finches.
Ardor for gothy, folk, and progressive rock, arranged into a psychedelic 4-piece pop band: http://www.bouquetmusic.com/
DK aka Dawn Kasper is inspired by social sculpture. Under the new persona DK, Kasper will enact the second in this new series making visual music sculptures inspired by the environment, people, and making mistakes.
https://vimeo.com/30938275
Roses (member of Abe Vigoda)
www.soundcloud.com/rosesLA
7 PM til 10 due to noise, so don't be late!
$5 bucks
Friday
Apr052013
April 5-7 - Cleaning Human Resources - 3 Day Performance
Cleanliness promises resolve and respite from the unkempt and the filthy. It is not the reduction of objects; rather it is the manifestation of an idealized state. Cleanliness remains in flux, an idea perpetually shaped by its surroundings.
Virtuous conduct and etiquette politely beckon in transformative and representational labor. While “creating cleanliness” seems second nature, here it is pushed into a performative gesture of cultural relationships, scripted in Mr. Clean jingles and the Home Depot orange crate.
For three days Lucy Campana, Hailey Loman, and Gaea Woods will clean Human Resources. From top to bottom: Day one, ceiling; Day two, walls; Day three, floor; they will scour and scrub, collapsing the typical gallery hierarchy and timeline of installation, exhibition and deinstallation into one performative event. Emphasizing sharing, cooperation, and sterilization, the artists will seek cleanliness.
Opening on Friday April 5th at 11:00 am, the viewer is invited to observe and participate: bring tools, grab tools, transform, clean.
Cleaning Human Resources
Lucy Campana, Hailey Loman, Gaea Woods
April 5th, 6th, and 7th, 2013
Saturday
Mar232013
FRITZ HAEG's SUNDOWN SCHOOLHOUSE 'AT HOME IN L.A.'
March 26th to April 4th, 2013
March 26th to April 4th, 2013 (closed Monday) / free, drop in, open to public
"Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living" - John Cage
March 26th to April 4th, 2013 (closed Monday) / free, drop in, open to public
"Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living" - John Cage
The traveling Sundown Schoolhouse comes home to the east side of Los Angeles for 'At Home in L.A.,' a series of activities with local materials, topics, and collaborators involving knitting, reading, napping, moving, talking, smudging, flower arranging, eating, garden fresh herbal tea drinking, music and yoga. We make ourselves at home on the massive expanding crocheted rug (fresh from the Hammer Museum and previously MoMA - before heading to the Walker Art Center) of discarded textiles serving as a charged field for trying out L.A. living. A typical daily schedule looks like this:
...11am-1pm: open yoga - all levels
...1pm: tea
...3-6pm: knitting & crafting (bring projects)
...6-8pm-ish: scheduled music, performances, readings
Featuring Lucky Dragons, Maya Gingery, UFO 2012, Dawn Kasper, LA Fog, Natural Curves, D Tibereo, KCHUNG, Katie Bachler, SK Kakraba, Sam Davis, Gabie Strong; activities lead by Fritz Haeg, Jen Doyle, Chiara Giovando, Eric Kim; more to be added...
Contact info(at)sundownschoolhouse(dot)org if you'd like to propose and lead an activity during one of the slots. Additions to the schedule will be made on a rolling basis.
Wednesday
Mar202013
Danny Paul Grody + Chuck Johnson + Claire Cronin + Daniel Bachman 9p $5
Danny Paul Grody is a solo musician and founding member of San Francisco based bands Tarentel, The Drift, Believer, and Moholy-Nagy. He is a self taught guitarist, and the melodies at the core of Danny’s songwriting bring to mind his love of West African kora, Tacoma style fingerpicking and all things minimal, repetitive & hypnotic. His first solo album Fountain was released in 2010 on Root Strata followed up by In Search Of Light on the Students Of Decay label in 2011. He is currently working on new material for his third solo album scheduled for release later this year on the wonderful Three Lobed Recordings … more on that soon! http://soundcloud.com/dannypaulgrody http://dannypaulgrody.wordpress.com/
Chuck Johnson is a composer and musician residing in Oakland, CA. He approaches his work with an ear towards finding faults and instabilities that might reveal latent beauty, and with a focus on American Primitive fingerstyle guitar, experimental electronics, and minimalist composition. In 2010 Chuck Johnson was featured on the Beyond Berkeley Guitar comp on Tompkins Square, and in 2011 I released an album of solo acoustic guitar on Strange Attractors Audio House: http://strangeattractorsaudiohouse.bandcamp.com/album/a-struggle-not-a-thought. In the Spring of 2013 Johnson will be on a Northwest and West Coast tour with Danny Paul Grody, both in support of (in anticipation of) their respective solo releases on Threelobed Recordings. www.chuckjohnson.net http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7uCMJ3gDzZQ
Friday
Mar152013
Unmanned Minerals - Reading and Performance
March 18, 2013 – 7:30pm
At Human Resources, 410 Cottage Home Street, 90015
Unmanned Minerals will read from and interpenetrate the poems of Jared Stanley, Paleolithic Cosmonaut and Predator of the Marvelous.
Unmanned Minerals (Matthew Hebert, Jared Stanley, Gabie Strong) is an interdisciplinary California and Nevada-based art collective interested in the ways history and language mediate landscape. Together, we combine individual practices in poetry, design, sculpture, photography, and music, to create collaborative site-specific installations evoking a contemporary Western identity. Strong is an artist and designer exploring spaces of degeneration, drone and decay as a means to improvise new arrangements of self-reflexive meaning. Stanley is a poet working at the intersection of lyric poetry and land use, and has written two collections of poetry, The Weeds and Book Made of Forest;Hebert is interested in the creation of objects that generate content and experiences via interactions between the user(s), object(s), and the environment. http://unmannedminerals.com
Tuesday
Mar122013
LAND Nomadic Nights: Planets making Planets w/Anna Sew Hoy, Math Bass, and Claire Kohne
Sunday, March 17, 2013
6-8pm
Performance begins promptly at 6:30pm
RSVP by Thursday, March 14, 2013
When I am making my clay orbs, I'm like a determined coach, punishing headmistress, and construction worker, rolling, smacking, whacking and coaxing the ball into shape. it's exhausting work. I have to put my back into it. When Claire is around, we become a two-headed hydra, working the clay together. The ball is like the world, encompassing everything. Math vocalizes, reports on what we are doing, and sends commentary from her position in the room. Our positions in the room continue to revolve. We are like planets making planets.
LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) presents Nomadic Night: Anna Sew Hoy, Math Bass, and Claire Kohne on Sunday, March 17, 2013 from 6-8pm at Human Resources. The multimedia performance will consist of Anna Sew Hoy and Claire Kohne rolling clay balls on a large canvas tarp placed on the floor of the gallery space, while Math Bass uses amplified sound and her voice to narrate the performance and read her poem, "Holes," which she wrote in 2010. Sew Hoy and Kohne will be joined at the waist by a long piece of rope which will snake around the floor, creating an undulating line as the artists move.
Guests are encouraged to contribute to the performance by bringing miscellanea (such as pennies, chains, beads, string, costume jewelry, phone cords, old cables, rope, shoe laces, etc.) to place on the floor to be picked up by the ball of clay that will be rolled around the gallery space during the performance.
The clay will leave marks tracing the artists' movements on the canvas tarp which will function as the performative residue at the conclusion of the performance.
Monday
Feb252013
River Monument Proposal (Sketch #3)
Saturday March 2nd, 2013
7pm-10pm
River Monument Proposal (Sketch #3)
By Justin Miller, Andrew Sexton, and Adam Janes
River Monument Proposal (Sketch #3) is a collaboration between artists Justin Miller, Andrew Sexton, and Adam Janes. The project was to film a comedy on the Los Angeles River between the horse crossing and Los Feliz Boulevard. The subject of the LA river began two years ago while Miller, Sexton, and Janes lived a block from each other near Griffith Park. The third installment of the river monument proposal series includes specific miniature models of the LA viaducts, miniature bronze sculpture, and a Naples-Sabot fiberglass sailing dingy. For Human Resources, the three artists will present a sculpture and video as a multi-layered monument to the river and the comedy of collaboration.
Monday
Feb182013
MUSIC / BLUES CONTROL + LAMPS + JAWS + THE URXED + BYRON WESTBROOK
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 19th 8 P.M. doors
$5
This fine Tuesday night will herald another appearance by the psychedelic traveling duo known as BLUES CONTROL. Riding “high” off their new Drag City release Valley Tangents, Russ and Lea are amongst like-minded (or like-out of their mind) friends with this stellar lineup. Fresh from his time with Excepter, JAWS brings a similar claustrophobic version of dance music, while THE URXED (aka Rob from High Places) deconstructs the beats and fills in the spaces between with sweet tension and release. And LA’s own LAMPS are going to rock us tangentially, playing tracks from their new record on In The Red. A last minute addition, Byron Westbrook (NYC) will open the evening by disorienting the ear-balls through phase emmersion. A definite for fans of kraut and psych rock as well as synth fanatics everywhere.
Saturday
Feb092013
VIDEO INSTALLATION: TRAVIS DIEHL'S WALK THRU WALLS
February 15-17, 12-6pm
WALK THRU WALLS, a video by Travis Diehl, will be projected on loop during gallery hours.
Sunday February 17 at 6pm: ARTIST TALK with guest moderator MICHELLE DIZON followed by A RECEPTION
Set in the auteurist tradition of Antonioni or Benning, the "man alone in the landscape" trades shot and countershot with his own reflection in the walls of iconic Death Valley. Blank but magnificent desert hosts an interior, American phenomenology: part touristic, part cinematic. This is a landscape layered with countless films, photographs, paintings--myths which are as much a part of landscape as the root indifference of rock. Our narrator faces the monument in standard definition.
Wednesday
Feb062013
Projection/Performance: Yann Novak's Snowfall
Friday, February 8th, from 6:00pm-Midnight
Snowfall is a durational audio-visual performance that explores the hushed stillness and isolation sometimes experienced during a snowstorm. Presented over 6 hours, the audience is allowed to come and go as they please. This affords the viewer a more personal experience with the piece, which explores audience as a form of dispersal. Snowfall was constructed using photographs and field recordings collected at the Jentel Artist Residency outside Banner, WY in February 2010. Additional support has generously been provided by Side Street Projects.
Friday
Feb012013
Discussion and Q&A w/Hedi El Kholti of Semiotext(e)
Work Better will be broadcasting on KCHUNG at the LA ART BOOK FAIR
with guest Hedi El Kholti, co-editor of Semiotext(e).
join us at the KCHUNG booth to talk to Hedi live & on the air!
or call us (323) 419-3873!
livestreaming here: http:// www.kchungradio.org/ stream.html
with guest Hedi El Kholti, co-editor of Semiotext(e).
join us at the KCHUNG booth to talk to Hedi live & on the air!
or call us (323) 419-3873!
livestreaming here: http:// www.kchungradio.org/ stream.html
Monday
Jan282013
Alyse Emdur's Prison Landscapes - Book Launch
Tuesday, January 29th, 8-11 pm
In 2005, Alyse Emdur unearthed a photograph of herself posing in front of a tropical beach scene while visiting her older brother in prison. Since discovering this first portrait in her own family album, she invited hundreds of incarcerated individuals to send her photographs for inclusion in this collection. Prison Landscapes gathers over 100 photographs of prison inmates representing themselves in front of visiting room backdrops. Such backdrops, often painted by talented inmates, are used within the prisons as portrait studios. As inmates and their visitors pose for photos in front of these idealized landscapes they pretend, for a brief moment, that they are somewhere else. Alyse Emdur was a winner of Printed Matter's 2010 Awards for Artists, and this book was produced partially with those funds.
Thursday
Jan242013
GEO WYETH - INSTALLATION AND PERFORMANCE
I AM SERIOUS MAN
January 25-26, with performance event on January 27 featuring Narcissister
Geo Wyeth's I AM SERIOUS MAN is the internal landscape of a real live fictional exhibitionist named Kitchen Steve, articulated through interactive sculpture and song. Kitchen Steve moves through his desires to disclose, confess, and disrobe, repeatedly facing dire and absurd consequences for his behaviors. He is a kind terrorist, a mentally unstable Apple Store customer, a corporation, and a collective. The gallery will be open from 12 to 5pm on Jan 25-26 for visitors to interact with the sculptural element.
The installation will be activated by a performance on Sunday January 27th which will also include a performance by New York based artist Narcissister. Doors at 7pm and performances starting at 8pm. Conceived of and performed by Geo Wyeth. Additional visual consultation by Savannah Knoop. Partially supported by Queer Lab.
Bios:
Geo Wyeth is a New York City based musician and interdisciplinary performer. His work expands on pop music performance and contemporary song structure through experimenting with conceptual ideas of interruption, failure, and representation in performance, often with handmade props and sets. Much of his work is generated from a place of deep despair and irreverent humor for the world around him. He is an out female-to-male transsexual and was born to a white father and African-American mother. His works are darkly humorous and ecstatic meditations on the absurdity of these embodied experiences. Featured performances at: PS1 MoMA, the regular old MoMA, La MaMa ETC, Joe’s Pub, the SoHo Theater (London), Kate Werble Gallery, Le Poisson Rouge, Marianne Bosky Gallery, as well as numerous music, theater, and art performance venues worldwide. He was born in 1984 in New York City.
Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Wearing mask and merkin, she works at the intersection of performance art, burlesque, dance, and visual art. She actively integrates her prior experience as a professional dancer and commercial artist with her current art practices in a range of creative media, including collage, photography, video art, and music. In addition being a featured performer at The Box, she has presented work in New York at The New Museum, The Kitchen, and at Abrons Art Center and at many nightclubs, galleries, and alternative art spaces. Narcissister was a re-performer of Marina Abramovic’s Luminosity piece as part of The Artist is Present retrospective at MoMA. Narcissister has also presented her work internationally at the Music Biennale in Zagreb, Croatia, at Chicks on Speed’s Girl Monster Festival, at The Festival of Women in Ljubljana, Slovania, at Warehouse 09, Copenhagen’s first live art festival, and at the Camp/Anti-Camp festival in Berlin, among many others. Her art videos have also been included in gallery shows and film festivals worldwide. Interested in troubling the divide between popular entertainment and experimental art, Narcissister appeared on America’s Got Talent in 2011. Narcissister is currently in FORE at The Studio Museum. "Narcissister is You", her first solo gallery exhibition opens at Envoy Enterprises in New York in Jan 2013, and she will present a new evening-length work at Abrons Art Center in March 2013.
Friday
Jan182013
VIVA VOCE – interactive sound and video installation Katharina Rosenberger / Heiko Kalmbach
ON VIEW: JANUARY 22 – 24, 2013
VIVA VOCE, 2012, video stills, (ltr: Juliana Snapper, Shelley Hirsch, Pamela Z)
VIVA VOCE celebrates vocal performance art in an interactive and experimental context and through this lens explores voice, body relationships, and the self. In the process, the work investigates the root of oral tradition and its impact on shared information in the virtual versus physical social space. In real-time visitors play and re-compose performance and documentary sequences of three vocal artists—Juliana Snapper (Los Angeles), Shelley Hirsch (New York), and Pamela Z (San Francisco)—by interacting with a 3D sonic sculpture on an iPad. Sung and spoken passages appear synchronized to the visual portrayal of the protagonists on floating screens in the gallery space. By improvising with the iPad interface and triggering text and vocal passages, visitors become not only intimately introduced to the vocalists; they turn into performers themselves.
Katharina Rosenberger, Composition, Artistic Direction • Heiko Kalmbach, Video • Michael Schmitz, iPad Design, App Programming • Jason Ponce, Multimedia Programming • Vance Galloway, Set Design, Technical Direction • Joe Kucera, Audio Engineering • Nick Drashner, Audio Mastering
EVENTS
TUESDAY, JANUARY 22
Opening and Artist Reception
7PM – 10PM
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23
BIG CITY FORUM Panel Discussion / VOICE AND BODY SEEN THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA
7.30PM
Big City Forum presents a conversation to explore and expand upon key concerns raised by the installation
Featured Panelists:
Micol Hebron, performance/installation artist, faculty Chapman University
Ming-Yuen S Ma, Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College
Victoria Vesna, Professor of Design | Media Arts, UCLA, Director of the Art | Sci Center
Katharina Rosenberger, composer, Asst. Professor, Music, UC San Diego
Moderated by Nina Eidsheim, Asst. Professor, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music
Big City Forum is an interdisciplinary project that facilitates the exchange of ideas through gatherings, symposiums, exhibitions, and special events that provide access to forward-thinking creative projects by highlighting the intersections between creativity and public/social space.
Location for all events:
HUMAN RESOURCES, Chinatown, LA | 410 Cottage Home St. | www.humanresourcesla.com
Viewing hours: 12pm to 6pm, or by appointment
All events are free
For more information:
www.vimeo.com/channels/vivavoce
http://bigcityforum.blogspot.com/
Special thanks to swissnex San Francisco, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Consulate General of Switzerland, LA, Big City Forum, LA and the Goethe Institut Los Angeles for supporting the show and opening events.
VIVA VOCE has been awarded the mediaproject/sitemapping grant of the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Berne and is funded in part through the Hellman Foundation Fellowship, San Francisco, the UC San Diego Academic Senate Grant, the Faculty Career Development Program and the UC San Diego Department of Music.
