Events from February 1 to February 29
Fresh from performances at the Sundance Film Festival, award-winning director and media artist Lars Jan and his company Early Morning Opera employ the latest in high-tech wizardry to explore the seductive power of multimedia persuasion, including TED-style presentations and video-enhanced megachurch events.
In the early 1980s, many artists were excited by the possibility of showing video art on television—a promise that was broken by commercialism. By turns humorous, pensive, or even abstract, this selection of short videos highlights some of the era’s most compelling video art accompanied by music.
CalArts President Steven D. Lavine hosts an evening dedicated to one of the great early forces in the emergence of Los Angeles as an international art center: the Chouinard Art Institute—CalArts’ predecessor institution. Joining the discussion are Chouinard alumna Alice Estes Davis, filmmaker Gianina Ferreyra, and other invited guests.
Vintage electronics share a stage with the newest sonic technology when acclaimed Dutch composer Thomas Ankersmit highlights a two-night festival. Friday’s "Noise Night" features L. Damion Romero and noise pioneers Zbigniew Karkowski and Xopher Davidson. Saturday’s “Ambient Night” features Ankersmit along with zerfall_gebiete, Thomas Köner and Ulrich Krieger.
Two courageous authors, novelist Shahrnush Parsipur and poet Suheir Hammad, have fiercely insisted on voicing consciousness and social criticism. Joined by editor and scholar Persis Karim, who moderates, this evening is devoted to creative conviction linking nations, genres, and generations.
For five years, filmmaker Lee Anne Schmitt and her collaborators followed Terry Albrecht, a guide-for-hire for hunters of buffalo, to create The Last Buffalo Hunt. As the mystique of the West becomes a commodity for the nouveaux riches, Albrecht’s livelihood is threatened and cowboys and buffalo alike become ghosts.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth, REDCAT hosts two nights of rarely played music by the American visionary. The New Century Players, CalArts’ professional new music ensemble, joins forces with the CalArts Orchestra to perform such works as Renga and Cage’s seminal graphic score Fontana Mix.
The ragingly multitalented Mx Justin Vivian Bond commands the stage in a hilarious, heart-wrenching cabaret show with original music from the critically hailed debut recording Dendrophile, featuring guileful covers of songs by Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, LCD Soundsystem, and others—and no small amount of biting political satire.
A large-scale revolving set magically transforms into dozens of different locales in this internationally acclaimed work from Argentine writer-director Mariano Pensotti. The Past follows the evolution of a quartet of characters as Argentina’s economy collapses and their lives take unexpected twists and turns in a fast-paced, multilayered “mega-fiction.”
