Installation – Ballistic nylon, 2008
Andrew Rogers

SACK OF BONES, is a group exhibition at Peres Projects Chinatown, LA curated by Blair Taylor and Ellen Langan, and featuring: Jack Goldstein, Dan Colen, Tara Delong, Dash Snow, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Neil Jenney, Mark Flood, Bill Hayden, George Herms, H.C. Westermann, Bruce LaBruce, Daniel McDonald, Andrew Rogers, Arsen Roje, Agathe Snow, William C. Taylor, Donald Urquhart, Oscar Tuazon, Eli Hansen, Kaari Upson, Sebastian Mlynarski and Banks Violette.

Toted around, thrown in the corner, recovered as relic or disposed of as useless, a sack of bones is unavoidably deformed. It is an apparently dead object subject to the intentions of its creator, or its purveyor, or its consumer, or maybe just its times.

Untitled #1 (See America First), 1968
HC Westermann

The group exhibition “Sack of Bones” comes from a viewing of Paul Rachman’s 2006 film, American Hardcore, in which Mark Flood appears as an interviewee on the topic of 1980′s punk rock. The tone of the film is reverent, to be sure, but more than an ode, the voices in the film present conflicting parts pride, humor, fraternity, anger, bitterness, nostalgia, and what are often doleful mechanisms for dealing with the here-and-now. That Flood was both part of Hardcore as it existed musically (in 1980 his band, Culturcide, put out their first 7-inch: “Another Miracle/Consider Museums as Concentration Camps”) and has been practicing visual art for over 30 years poses an interesting question: how, if at all, can art be hardcore? By embodying adolescent punk obsession? By miraculous use of irony? By a simple withdrawal from popular territory?

NO CORE, 2007
Gardar Eide Einarsson

Consider, for example, the tangled ‘attitude problem’ precipitated by Reagan-era punk; there is the myth of a pure strain of FUCK YOU, there is the myth of the majority’s snide perception of its counter-movements, and then, somewhere in the overlap, there is the problematic dilution of any rebellion’s once-potent beginnings (causing cycles of backlash and resurgence pretty much ever after). In the art world this tangle is further convoluted by the relishing of trade and an inherent affluence, elitism and circuitous pandering that can compromise anyone’s well-intentioned we/they stirrings.

The exhibition as a whole may appear deadpan, satirical or pathetic – in any case each of the constituent works turns its back on complacency, and, in doing so, becomes material evidence of resistance (kicking from within the sack). In other words, with all that is stacked against the mutinous artist and the mutinous viewer, hope could lie in objecthood itself.

Installation view

Log Beam (Kodiak), 2008
Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon

Peres Projects, Chinatown, Los Angeles will close to the public upon the end of “Sack of Bones.”

If you’re in LA, you’re welcome to join for a closing reception for the current exhibition and the gallery.

Peres Projects Chinatown
969 Chung King Road,
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Saturday, December 13, 2008, 6-8pm

AGENDA 2009 BY MANUEL RAEDER

A La Cach Cachi Porra is an agenda for the year 2009, which explores the possibilities of being a time storage device in a book format.

Graphic Designer Manuel Raeder has been working since year 2003 on the project of crafting a new agenda – also called time storing devices – every year, produced in collaboration each time with a different publisher.  It’s an ongoing project that focuses on questioning methods of how people organize, in a personal or non-personal way, their time. Formats, sizes and distribution systems vary each year.

List of previous agendas:

1. ‘Brand New Second Hand’ Agenda 2003 published by the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht.
2. ‘Brand New Second Hand’ Agenda 2005 published by Revolver Verlag, Frankfurt.
3. ‘Loose Leaf Wall Calendar’ 2006 published by Anberg and APC shop, Berlin.
4. ‘Popurri’ 2007 published by Sternberg Press, Berlin.

A La Cach Cachi Porra agenda description:
1 year, 120 pages, 17 cm x 24 cm, 25 Euro (excl. shipment)
Limited edition, each copy has a different color scale iris print.

Manuel Raeder lives and works in Berlin and Mexico City. His main focus lies in close collaborations with artists, plants, scientists, parrots, fashion designers, printers, interns, librarians, curators, rappers, photocopiers, book binders, non-professionals and theorists. His work has a wide range of formats from exhibitions, ephemera, books, and type design to furniture design. Manuel has held workshops at the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, Paris, University of Toulouse le Mirail, Centro diseno, Mexico City and the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg.

Further info see Manuel Reader

Animal Shelter: Art, Sex and Literature, is a new special project from Semiotext(e), a 148 page journal featuring new work by David Askevold, Bruce Benderson, Erik Bluhm, Gary Lee Boas, Claude Collins-Stracensky, Rachel Detroit, Jennifer Doyle, Tony Duvert, Hedi El Kholti, Matt Fishbeck, Mark Flores, Paul Gellman, Giovanni Jance, Dave Jones, William E. Jones, Iris Klein, Alice Könitz, Chris Kraus, Elke Krystufek, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Jonathan Meese, Erik Morse, Theresa Pendlebury, Ariel Pink, JC Rees, Ariana Reines, Rebekah Rutkoff, Abdellah Taïa, Masha Tupitsyn, Sarah Wang, Goody-B Wiseman, Bobbi Woods and others.

Fleeting, ephemeral, non-digital and non-hierarchical, Animal Shelter is part intellectual journal, part DIY ‘zine. Eclectic but highly focused, the journal looks towards non-privatized forms of sexuality as a cultural conduit. Looking back to the underground press sex culture of the 1970s, Animal Shelter is dedicated to visions of real freedom for the present.

(in)hibition, haven, protection, caginess, neglect, agency, ill-fit, rescue …

Highland Park, September 9th, 2008
Hedi: We wanted to do a club night with Marti but it never happened.
Paul: The three of us couldn’t agree on anything. I found this incredibly annoying.
H: But with the club, we were going to put out a fanzine.
P: What is Animal Shelter?
H: Well, we hope to gather texts and artworks from our friends, and people we admire, and make new ones along the way, in the spirit of the magazines we love from the past, like Suck, Minuit, Little Ceasar, Masques, Between C & D …

P: You’re definitely more highbrow and literary. I tend towards the streetwise and the expressionistic.
H: I am not sure if I agree. But we both love sincerity.

Animal Shelter is edited by Hedi El Kholti and Paul Gellman.

If you’re in LA, a launch party/event is scheduled this Sunday, 5 pm, at Mandrake Bar.