Jérémy Clapin will be in town to present his acclaimed animated drama I LOST MY BODY, the point-of-view story of an errant hand and its trip across Paris.
For this free American Cinematheque program, the director will also participate in a post-screening discussion of his work.
Wednesday, January 29, at 7:30 pm.
Aero Theatre
1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica.
Jérémy Clapin, I Lost My Body / J’ai perdu mon corps (2019). Images courtesy and © the filmmaker and Netflix.
A meditation on love and death in a period of darkness. — Jonas Mekas
A restored 35mm print of GUNS OF THE TREES, Mekas’ debut feature, is screening daily at Anthology Film Archives.
This weekend the Archive also celebrates the publication of Mekas’ I SEEM TO LIVE—THE NEW YORK DIARIES, VOL 1, 1950–1969 with a launch party and reading. Participants include Mekas colleagues Ken Jacobs and Vyt Bakaitis, and actor Stella Schnabel.
Saturday and Sunday, January 25 and 26, at 5:15 pm and 7:30 pm.
Monday through Wednesday, January 27, 28, and 29, at 7:30 pm.
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd Street), New York City.
Jonas Mekas, Guns of the Trees (1962), from top: Ben Carruthers and Argus Spear Juillard; Adolfas Mekas (left); Frances Stillman and A. Mekas; Carruthers; Juillard and Carruthers. Images courtesy and © the Estate of Jonas Mekas and Anthology Film Archives.
A couple of years ago I came to a realization: If I’m interested in those artists’ ideas that have fallen outside of the institutional, my only option is to try to carry them forward in some way. It’s about letting art escape from the mechanisms of art history and consensus. There are going to be parts that are invisible to most people. There’s something exciting about that invisibility to me—we live in such an entirely overexposed time. You talk about market forces; I’ve seen an emerging alignment between critical discussion, market activity, and museological practice in the past couple of decades. It comes as no surprise to me that anything that functions in any one of those forums functions in all three of them. At this point, the mechanism is so streamlined that it’s hard to imagine what you could do that would escape that dynamic. — Nayland Blake*
Join Marvin Astorga, Nao Bustamante, Ron Athey, Robert Crouch, Jennifer Doyle, Jamillah James, Young Joon Kwak, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, and Bradford Nordeen at Zebulon for an evening of performance, music, and dance at Nayland Blake’s FIRST INTERNATIONAL INTERGENERATIONAL GENDER DISCARD PARTY.
The event marks the closing day of Blake’s ICA LA exhibition NO WRONG HOLES—THIRTY YEARS OF NAYLAND BLAKE.
DISGENDER EUPHORIA—NAYLAND BLAKE’S FIRST INTERNATIONAL INTERGENERATIONAL GENDER DISCARD PARTY
Sunday, January 26, from 8 pm to midnight.
Zebulon
2478 Fletcher Drive, Los Angeles.
*“Rachel Harrison and Nayland Blake” interview, Bomb 105, Fall 2008.
From top: Nayland Blake; Nayland Blake, Untitled, 2000, charcoal on paper; Nayland Blake, Untitled, 2007, graphite and colored pencil on paper; Nao Bustamante as Conchita, photograph by Austin Young; Nayland Blake, Kit No. 7 (Flush), 1990, rubber gloves, stainless steel cups, belt, hose, shelf, books; Nayland Blake, Equipment for a Shameful Epic, 1993, mixed media; Nayland Blake, Crossing Object (Inside Gnomen), 2017, mixed media. Images courtesy and © the artists, the photographers, ICA LA, and Matthew Marks Gallery.
As a native Texan, I have witnessed firsthand the discrimination that immigrants face in the United States. I have heard from friends who visited detention centers, and from lawyers representing those detained. I have heard the stories of those who are separated from their families, and read transcripts from underfunded courtrooms operating far beyond capacity. It is devastating. That all of this occurs in the name of “security” and “safety” is the greatest farce of all. — Molly Gochman
DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE CHILDREN ARE (DYKWTCA) is a call to action and exhibition of over 100 unique works of art by 100+ leading visual artists that is organized by the artists and activists Mary Ellen Carroll and Lucas Michael. Each work incorporates, or represents an actual account (in whole or in part) from a child who was separated from their family and detained by the U.S. government. This text may be in the native language of the child or a translation into English. The accounts are taken from the interviews that were conducted by the Flores investigators that included legal, medical and mental health experts who visited the detention facilities six months ago in June of 2019. Upon witnessing the deplorable, inhumane, and illegal conditions they found the children in, they decided it was necessary to act upon their findings. They went public.*
The exhibition—WHEN WE FIRST ARRIVED…,curated by Ruth Noack—will open this weekend in Washington, D.C., and proceeds from artwork sales will benefit and support the Safe Passage Project, Terra Firma, Team Brownsville, and the Innovation Law Lab.
Through March 29.
Opening night: Saturday, January 25, from 6 pm to 8 pm.
The Corner at Whitman-Walker
1701 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
When We First Arrived…, artwork, from top: Spencer Ostrander, Ricci Albenda, Mary Lum, Molly Gochman, Rob Pruitt, Terence Gower, Jesse Presley Jones, When We First Arrived invitation card, Amy Sillman, Beto De Volder and Leon Villagran, Kay Rosen, and Carlos Motta. Artwork courtesy and © the artists, the photographers, DYKWTCA, Mary Ellen Carroll, and Lucas Michael.
As part of the citywide Eurydice Found program, the Hammer Museum presents three live performances of Samuel Beckett’s wordless, percussive teleplays QUAD I and QUAD II, first broadcast in Germany in 1981.
QUAD brings together the representational conventions of ritual, computational code, and matheme. This television play presents a clear connection between Beckett’s literary convictions, in particular his concept of the “unword” and its avant-garde possibilities, and the role of mathematics in art. The formal connections between the ritualistic, computational, and allegorical dimensions of this television play render QUAD a “hyperstitional” work, one that is composed of twin formal elements: symbols without significance and superstition without belief. The relation between the television play and mathematics is thus not superficial or referential: Beckett’s “hyperstitional” work produces a literary dimension that echoes the temporal and spatial stakes peculiar to twentieth-century mathematics.*
Thursday, January 23, at 7:30 pm.
Saturday, January 25, at 2 pm and 4 pm.
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.
*See Baylee Brits, “Ritual, Code, and Matheme in Samuel Beckett’s Quad,” Journal of Modern Literature 40, no. 4 (Summer 2017), pp. 122–133. Published by Indiana University Press.
Samuel Beckett, Quad I and Quad II. Images courtesy and © the writer’s estate and Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart, 1981.
