Entries by Human Resources (392)

Monday
Aug152011

Friday August 19th - Color From God-lung (Larkwat 1254)

 

PLEASE RSVP TO ATTEND!

Color From God-lung (Larkwat 1254) is an endurance-based opera in which the cast members create an intense yet minimalist environment through the use of their bodies, and how they relate to each other. Created by artist Dorian Wood, the opera unfolds within the petrified carcass of a giant celestial elephant, one of thousands strewn across the earth, many years after mankind's demise.

The opera will be performed by Dorian Wood, Ricardo Bracho, Rafael Esparza, Aerie Shore, Geneva Skeen and Kari Svendsboe

IMPORTANT: 

This is a highly intense performance, with a duration of 1.5 hours. 
No one under 18 will be admitted. 
Performance begins at 9:00PM SHARP. Arrive early. 
No one will be allowed entry after 9:00PM.

Artist Dorian Wood has held audiences captive on street corners, in concert halls and performance spaces throughout the US, Mexico and Europe, armed with a powerful, soul-rattling voice, and boasting a music aesthetic that marries troubadour balladry with the avant-garde. Dorian has performed at LACMA, UCLA, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Highways Performance Space (Santa Monica), Pacific Design Center (West Hollywood), The Stone (New York City) and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). His most recent live album, Brutus, was recorded at a church in London during his Spring 2010 European tour. He is currently working on his second full-length studio album, Rattle Rattle, to be released in November.

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"[Wood] is armed with a vocal charisma that would befit a preacher and an experimental streak that would make avant-gardists swoon" - WNYC CULTURE

"Just in case you thought that Sufjan Stevens was the only arty, ambitious folkie out there, there's also the sweet-voiced Los Angeles singer/songwriter Mr. Wood." - VILLAGE VOICE

"The androgynous emotionality of Wood’s singing voice lends itself to the demanding theatricality of [his] lyrics, arrangements and production. The nakedness of a lover’s need and the wide-eyed madness that ensues when that need is not met twine around one another." - LA WEEKLY

Official Website:  http://dorianwood.com

For press inquiries:  dorianedwardwood@gmail.com

  

 

Thursday
Aug042011

Tuesday August 9th - Free Clinic #1 w/McMurry, Huckleberry, Deutch

THE ACTION BUREAU PRESENTS FREE CLINIC #1 AT HUMAN RESOURCES

THE ACTION BUREAU is pleased to present FREE CLINIC #1, the first installment in a forthcoming series which features new works in performance by contemporary artists. FREE CLINIC #1 will take place on Tuesday, August 9, 2011 from 7pm-10pm and is hosted by Human Resources, the performance-focused art collective occupying the former Cottage Home Gallery in Chinatown. The FREE CLINIC provides a platform for artists to explore action-based performance art and will pair Los Angeles-based artists with those from the performance community at large. The FREE CLINIC will also engage the local public with the growing discourse surrounding the performance art medium. Each clinic in the series will include a publication featuring photographs and writings on the artists’ work, to be distributed free-of-charge to attendees.

FREE CLINIC #1 presents live works by renowned artists Joe Deutch, Jeff Huckleberry, and Jamie McMurry. These artists have reputations for creating intensely visceral works which engage the audience in their highly personal, often-times violent battle against the dominant moral economy. Through their unique methods, each structures a sequence of actions, which together describe a collision of physical and psychological space. Each artist has idiosyncratic means of attributing value to their own actions and in doing so, they question the rationality that allows us to perpetuate cultural standards at the expense of our own desires.

About the Artists

JOE DEUTCH received a BFA from Webster University, St. Louis, in 2001 and an MFA from UCLA in 2007. Working in video, installation, and performance, Deutch has been steadily barreling challenge against the rational. He has exhibited at PS1 MOMA, and is represented in Los Angeles by Parker Jones Gallery.

JEFF HUCKLEBERRY received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Jeff has been performing art for the last 20 years, both nationally and internationally. Upcoming exhibitions include TIME EATERS w/ Vela Phelan at Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY September 8th, and Préavis de désordre Urbain, Marseille, France, September 17th-24th.

JAMIE McMURRY has been an active organizer, educator and artist in the fields of performance, installation, video and conceptual art for over fifteen years and is currently based in Los Angeles. His upcoming exhibitions include: SubStation Gallery, Singapore; Existence Festival, Brisbane, Australia; Guangzohu Live, Guangzohu, China; and curator of "This Is Performance Art" exhibit, CCA Glasgow,Scotland.

About the Organizers

THE ACTION BUREAU is a curatorial collective founded by artists Parker Davis and Paul Waddell.
Please visit us online at http://actionbureau.tumblr​.com/

Tuesday
Aug022011

Wed thru Fri, August 3,4,5 - Angel Gabriel/Hannah Henderson’s The Art of Yes!

Human Resources is proud to present Angel Gabriel/Hannah Henderson’s The Art of Yes! - a project by performer/choreographer Hana van der Kolk.

The Art of Yes! will occur on three unique evenings. This special event is open to only 15 participants per evening.

Wednesday thru Friday - AUGUST 3, 4, & 5 at 8:30PM at Human Resources.

RSVP now to reserve your place! Admission is free.
Send your name, phone number, and number of places you'd like to reserve to giles@humanresourcesla.com
Consider your reservation confirmed unless you hear from us.

For more information visit http://humanresourcesla.co​m/artofyes/

Tuesday
Aug022011

Artinfo video on NewVillager's "Temporary Culture"

Tuesday
Jul262011

Dawn Kasper Performance Video

Tuesday
Jul192011

Show Images Posted - Taft Green and Scott Benzel

Tuesday
Jul122011

Gallery Hours

12-6pm
Thursday Thru Saturday
or By Appointment 

Tuesday
Jul052011

Saturday July 9th - Two Solo Shows

Taft Green and Scott Benzel
Opening Reception at 7pm 

Act Natural, a solo show by Taft Green

and

mal-dis-tri-bu-tion, a solo show by Scott Benzel
Upper Gallery 

for more info:

http://humanresourcesla.com/current-exhibition/

Tuesday
Jun282011

Thursday June 30th - Jack Smith's "Normal Love"

By request, an added screening of Jack Smith's "Normal Love"

8:30 pm
Free

Normal Love
Dir. Jack Smith. 1963. 16mm. With Diana Baccus, Mario Montez. DVD courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York

 

Wednesday
Jun222011

Friday June 24th - Saturday July 2nd "Queering Sex"

QUEERING SEX curated by Kathryn Garcia and Sarvia Jasso

Theo Adams, Skip Arnold, CHOKRA, Coco Dolle, Zackary Drucker, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Fine Art Union, Gordon Flores, Kathryn Garcia, Paul Gellman, Katy Grannan, Wynne Greenwood, David Jones, Dawn Kasper, Brian Kenny, Rosalie Knox, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Lars Laumann, Bruce La Bruce, Danielle Levitt, Lovett/Codagnone, Manon, Nadja Verena Marcin, Lucas Michael, Slava Mogutin, Tameka Norris, ORLAN, Maria Petschnig, Breyer P-Orridge, Hunter Reynolds, Natalie Rodgers, Michael Rudnick, Ira Sachs, Rafael Sanchez, Carolee Schneemann, Scottee, Michael Sharkey, Jack Smith, Matthew Stone, Toshinori Tanaka, Tobaron Waxman, Marnie Weber, Samuel White, Martha Wilson, Rona Yefman

OPENING NIGHT, FRIDAY JUNE 24

6pm - Screening
9pm - Fine Art Union

SATURDAY, JUNE 25

6pm - Screening: 9 Days of Cry Out by Toshinori Tanaka
7pm - Matt Greene
8pm - Tall Paul

SUNDAY, JUNE 26

4pm & 6pm Normal Love by Jack Smith
8pm - Screening: Bruce La Bruce, Gordon Flores, Kathryn Garcia, Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Lars Laumann
9pm – Sphinx

JUNE 27 – JULY 1: Please check the website for hours and screening schedule

CLOSING NIGHT, JULY 2

8pm - Dawn Kasper

Queering Sex is a performance and video exhibition that features the work of artists who are dealing with gender and sexuality. This cross-generational, trans-historical video program explores sex and sexuality via ideas and actions related to performance, and thereby highlighting a relationship between performativity and identity. The exhibition includes the participation of over 40 artists from Los Angeles, New York, and abroad. 

FOR FULL DESCRIPTION CLICK HERE

 

Wednesday
Jun152011

June 13 - 21 NewVillager's Temporary Culture - Residency and Performance

NEWVILLAGER Residency at Human Resources

AN INSTALLATION AT HUMAN RESOURCES GALLERY DESIGNED FOR LIVING, SLEEPING, PERFORMING, AND AN INSTALLATION AT HUMAN RESOURCES GALLERY DESIGNED FOR LIVING, SLEEPING, PERFORMING, AND GOING THROUGH STAGES OF CULTURE.

http://www.newvillager.com/

PERFORMANCES:

Th 16 - Ilirjana Alushaj (ApacheBeat) DJ
Fri 17 - Matt Kivel (Princeton) & friends
Sat 18 - JohnPaulJones (Worst)Friends) DJ 
Sun 19 - Calmer + JuliaHolter
Mon 20 - Emily Lacy + DavidScottStone
Tue 21 - NewVillager -- IntegrativeConcert + IAMSOUNDsystem DJ set


CONTRIBUTORS

KatieBachner, JosephBarber, BenjaminBromley, ConorBuckley, AshleyCarter, JudgeDylan, SonyaGenel, JuliaHolter, LizJanssen, KalenKaminski & AstridChastka (for Upstate Clothing -- www.youreupstate.com ), EliLanger, EricLister, LuckyDragons, BrianVillanuevaMendez, CollinPalmer, BlakeSalzman, RossSimonini, CassieThornton, ZachWojcik 

Monday
Jun132011

Fetish and Fantasy: The artist Matt Greene in conversation with Kathryn Garcia

Matt and I conducted this interview a while back while driving through Highland Park, he wanted to show me the house where the cult-classic Spider Baby was filmed. The movie is about  three siblings who suffer from “Merrye Syndrome” a degenerative disease that causes them to regress down the evolutionary ladder, yielding primitive cannibalistic results. One of the siblings, Virginia nicknamed “Spider baby” for her obsession with Spiders, moves lithely around the house mimicking the movements of a spider while carrying and using two very sharp knifes to torture unsuspecting victims. Matt sees her character as a Hollywood (via Freud) fetishization of castration anxiety. Clearly, I think.

We drive up to the house - a spooky Angelino mansion - and talk about Matt’s paintings, ambiguity, his relationship to cross-dressing and its inevitable link to castration anxiety, fantasy and fetish.

What does the grid in your paintings represent to you?

I never want the work of art to make a specific reference that can be tied to any one thing. I prefer to let the work be ambiguous, not only in terms of gender ambiguity and life-death ambiguity, but also being in between the theoretical and naïve or emotional.  For example, I like studies of early renaissance paintings where the illusion of the illusionist space was disrupted by seeing the mechanics that created the illusion. That's one interesting thing about painting; you have the ability to see the flaws in the construction of an illusion or fantasy. Hollywood uses computer animation to create a perfect surface, a perfect reconstruction of a fantasy. I prefer imperfect things, because any reconstruction is flawed.

So your work is simultaneously about fantasy and the point where fantasy crumbles?

Yes. A fantasy can only be a fantasy, it can only exist in your mind. There's no way to make that fantasy take place in reality.  A sexual fantasy can never be replicated with another person. For instance, the whole beauty of Bellmer's dolls is their failure to be a three year-old girl with eight legs and no eyes.

Do you think that the impossibility of a fantasy urges the creation of it?

No, it's the insanity of being able to imagine it in your mind and it not existing that urges the creation of art, that what you want is limitless. Marx said that there's no end to human desire, and fascism is about realizing limitless desire with no concessions to reality. So how do you accept the history of someone like Bellmer who is acting on his fantasies? Well, because he's not actualizing his fantasies; he's willfully not acting on his fantasies. He's documenting them whereas fascism is about enacting them.

So do you think fascism was based in fantasy?

Yeah, for sure.

Do you think it is a symptom that drives fantasy?

The feminism from my upbringing says that the symptom is male desire, that the male gaze is that symptom. I agree with that, but I also have a penis and desire sex with other people, so what's the tightrope I can walk between feminist theory and my masculine urges?

Do you think feminist theory creates a dichotomy that's not necessarily real?

How can we find the language to both talk about it? I want there to be effective feminist thought, because I have the same issues with masculinity on a purely emotional level. It's easy to love women and hate men.

My point is not to critique feminist theory, but to say instead that the reality is in the ambiguity between feminist thought and a lot of other things. I like to think of painting as a space where I'm putting all of these different arguments into question while deliberately not taking a standpoint. My only position is a point of willful ambiguity.

Does an ambiguous stance constantly shift?

Always… I want every painting to be different, because I want every work to be a different play between ideas.  There are also latent meanings within my paintings that are only there for me, but that's not their only subject.  A truly hermetic work is not communicating an idea, it's embedding an idea within it's own language accessible only to the artist.  Bellmer, for example, crosses the line between the public and the private. The poupée itself is a fetish object, while the photograph of the poupée is something else. The documentation of the poupée is about publicizing the fetish . There's a difference between the two.  Maybe we can assume that the puppet was involved in some kind of sexual practice that we cannot understand, but there's a difference between that object and a photograph of the object intended for a public.  It has to be viewed as an image of the fetish object and not the fetish object itself.  When it enters that arena it creates a difference between pornography and art.  The rules of a successful pornography are easy to attain-- male orgasm. With art there is no way to define success. 

There are things that some consider pornography that no one else would, and that's where it gets interesting, because you're getting into ambiguity.  In Germany there are all of these rubber fetish magazines, where men and women dress completely covered in raincoats. There is no nudity and no sex, but the images are definitely intended for sexual arousal. These were sexualized images, but they were so far from sex. I wouldn't know how to make...

Porn that was Art instead of being porn?
 
Yeah. But my interest isn't in porn, exactly. It's in the moment when the mechanisms that make up the porn become visible, suspending the fantasy. The pixelated grid of the screen is like the perspective grid in painting.  When the computer glitches, cutting off the video right before ejaculation, that's the moment when it stops being porn. Instead it becomes an abstraction that breaks the viewer's fantasy, and that suspension of fantasy is, in my opinion, the sexiest part. The half-ejaculation, half-grid.

Another thing that interests me about internet pornography is the index page, the page where there is a grid of 100 tiny preview images that you click on before accessing the models. In many ways, it is a collection of fantasy partners. One psychological definition of fetishism is that it is a solution to repress the male urge to have harems of female partners. In order to repress that urge, they form collections of fetishized objects as proxies for the missing harem.

What about objects collected that conjure memory? Like childhood toys, fetish objects not necessarily linked to desire but objects attached to a memory, a time that no longer exists or an attachment to something that one cannot have?

To answer that in a roundabout way, another big theme in my work is the idea of the phallic woman. The Freudian theory of cross-dressing is that it is an attempt to preserve the moment before the trauma that results from realizing that women do not have penises. The child assuming women are born with a penis assumes the woman has had the penis cut off by the father.  This idea of cross-dressing claims that it's a fetish resulting from wanting to prevent the male from seeing the vagina-- the site of the lacking penis. Cross dressers are obsessed with proving that phallic women exist, so they become a phallic woman. In that way, it's like preserving a childhood memory, a naive notion of sex preferred to the trauma of learning an actual one.  It's like clinging to an infantile perception of the difference between male and female.

And then fetishizing it?

Right…it always becomes a fetish.

Because of its impossibility?

Exactly.

Matt Greene will be performing a piece titled “THE END OF THE LINE” on June 25th at Human Resources at 7PM. The performance is a panel discussion surrounding the idea of heavenly Eunuchs and castrati.

 

Saturday
Jun112011

Funds for Queering Sex!

Sarvia Jasso and Kathryn Garcia present Queering Sex from Human Resources Chinatown on Vimeo.

Please support the production of this upcoming event!  Some great incentives for your contribution from many artists.

VISIT THE EVENT KICKSTARTER!

Saturday
Jun112011

Sunday June 12th - RATS / TES ELATIONS / TOWN HALL (NY) / THE RELATIVES (NY)

Some really great bands!

5pm (Early Show)
$5 cover 

Rats - 
http://www.ratstheband.com/

Tes Elations -
http://www.facebook.com/teselations

Town Hall - 
http://townhall.bandcamp.com/

The Relatives -
http://relatives.bandcamp.com/

Friday
Jun032011

June 4th - Say You're an Artist - Mark Roeder Installation

Human Resources is pleased to present Say You’re an Artist, an exhibition of new and recent work by art students from Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Middle School. Organized by artist and teacher Mark Roeder, the exhibition will feature a collaborative installation process culminating in an opening reception on Saturday, June 4, from 4:00 to 8:00 PM. 

Featuring drawings, paintings, collage, and sculptures by twenty-six artists, the exhibition traces the students’ inquiry into artistic perception, creative expression, historical and cultural context, and aesthetic valuing. Together, students and teacher have puzzled-out a profound exploration of human subjectivity and its relation to the external, objective world.

Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Middle School, through a collaborative team effort, is committed to developing the whole child as a successful life-long learner by creating a positive school culture through the effective delivery of a rigorous standards-driven curriculum based on assessed student needs.

"Student art exhibitions allow students to share their work and visual arts experiences with peers and adults. Exhibited work needs to include examples of works in progress in addition to finished pieces."
--California State Board of Education, Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission

Wednesday
May252011

Video of current exhibition - paul pescador

Thursday
May192011

Current Gallery Hours

Gallery hours for Paul Pescador's 1, 1 1/2, 2

12-6pm Thursday through Saturday
Film screens at 4pm

Closing party on Monday May 30th! 

Tuesday
May102011

Saturday May 14th - Opening Reception for 1,1 1/2, 2

Paul Pescador
May 14-June 1, 2011
Opening May 14, 7-10pm. Film will screen promptly at 9pm.

In 1, 1 1/2, 2, the space will be used as a theater, art gallery, and screening room simultaneously. The show explores the relationship between live events, performances, everyday objects, and their photographic documents. These photographic documents are then used as the source material for the creation of new social interventions. Performances become images. Images become books. Books become films. As these works exist in a constant cycle of use, the document becomes both an archive and a directive for new events. 1, 1 1/2, 2 is a culmination of a one year investigation, which explores the use of numerical systems to dictate social dynamics and personal relationships. The social relationships in this project being 1: the individual, 1 1/2: the individual and remnants or absence of another, and 2: the couple, the pair, or the double. Each of the works are in
dialogue with one another to inform as well as complicate the structure of the exhibition as a whole.

Accompanying the exhibition is premier of the film 1, 1 1/2, 2, which will screen once a day throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Paul Pescador is a Los Angeles based artist, art organizer, and filmmaker. His interest in small-scale actions and gestures manifests in the form of photographic objects, performance events, and curated exhibitions. He co-directs Workspace, a project space in Lincoln Heights, and is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Irvine.

 

Wednesday
May042011

friday may 6th - Nuts in May

Friday
Apr292011

Saturday april 30th - May Day Eve Re-opening event

Featuring:

WIFE
Asher Hartman / The All Stars of Non-Violet Communication
Totally Serious
Paul Waddell 
Daniela Sea, Will Schwartz, Patty Schemel, and Bo Boddie Band 
Ladyboys of Sweaty Sundays choreographed by Ryan Heffington

Homemade soda stand by Eden Batki 
Doors open at 7pm


Press release:

Human Resources
410 Cottage Home Street
Los Angeles, CA
Web: humanresourcesla.com
Email: info@humanresourcesla.com

Human Resources’ Grand Re-Opening May Day Event
Celebrating the Performative Arts

Los Angeles, California, April 15, 2011 - On April 30, 2011, Human Resources officially re-opens at its new Chinatown location, the former Cottage Home Gallery. On the eve of May Day, the re-opening event celebrates the inclusion of performance diversity with a full program of innovative theater, dance, performance art and music. The performance program begins with the dance collective, WIFE, founded and choreographed by Jasmine Albuquerque, Kristin Leahy, and Nina McNeely. Multi-faceted artist and performer, Asher Hartman, whose work engages a wide range of mediums including theater, painting and video, follows with a presentation of his thirty minute play, “The All Stars of Non-Violet Communication.” Experimental prog rock duo, Totally Serious, comprised of Jesse Appelhans (Modern Drummer Magazine’s Top Ten Prog Drummer) and bassist, Eric Kiersnowski, plays a set. Artist Paul Waddell, who has shared his boundary-pushing interactive performance nationally, also performs. Waddell is followed by the uplifting musical sounds of artist and musician Daniela Sea, Will Schwartz (of Imperial Teen), Patty Schemel and Bo Boddie Band. The program ends with a dance performance choreographed by widely acclaimed Ryan Heffington featuring the Ladyboys of Sweaty Sundays. A homemade soda by Eden Batki will be available for purchase throughout the evening. Doors open at 7pm. Admission is free.