Singer/songwriter/filmmaker/etceterator Emily Lacy is currently crashing the Japanese Pavilion at LACMA and creating “Temples of the Mind,” a loop-heavy soundscape that feels like Linda Perhacs broadcasting over a secret shortwave station. She speaks now about shape-shifting, pedals and the origin of “Temples.” This interview by Drew Denny.

When did the idea for ‘Temples’ come to you? Did you build it from the ground? Receive it from the sky? Wake with it from a dream?
Emily Lacy: I was seated on the perimeter of the Pavilion for Japanese Art and felt like I was looking down into a canyon. I felt I was inside a giant mind. I thought of the brain inside my head and then I saw an infinite matrix of brains echoing in all directions. It was a very specific sequence: the big brain of the building, my little brain, and then the mega-matrix of infinite brains. On a deeper level, it’s coming from thinking about Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, and interesting myself in a musical experience that is not afraid to embody mythology. I liked the title because it made me picture a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.
How did you determine the set up for ‘Temples’?
Emily Lacy: I felt like I was casting parts in a film and a lot of stuff had to be painted or altered before I could use it. I scoured used-instrument shops, pawn shops, regular music shops and the internet… I found it interesting the complete lack of females in the business of selling musical equipment. I was seriously in the ‘dude onslaught’ throughout the whole process—when you don’t want to even feel your gender but you are required to because it’s just so clear that it’s a marketplace completely occupied by men. On the first day I went out to buy stuff, I actually had a really bad experience with a salesman who was showing me a guitar and he—in a sort of textbook way—violated my space when he handed me the guitar. Let’s just say he didn’t even hand it to me. He—in a gross way—insisted on placing it on my body and it was disgusting. It was such an amazing example of someone thinking they can touch you simply because you are a woman.
Unfortunately I can identify. Wholeheartedly. Could you explain the process—level by level—of creating your sounds in the Pavilion?
Emily Lacy: I find myself drawn to mathematical models. So let’s say you start at zero, which means there is no sound. No signal going into any of the pedals. You start with nothing at all. Right now I have five different decks in the Pavilion that can generate music. Within those five levels there are nine mechanisms that can create loops or information cycles within the network. That just means within the five spaces there are nine different things that can literally make a signal without you physically remaining afterward. These things range from delay pedals to loop stations to small computers to an actual physical tape loop created by two reel-to-reel tape machines, which runs across and actually connects two of the decks together. So these are the shapes of the tools in the equation. They help structure the possibility of the music. I begin by creating a sound and then making a decision at a certain point in time to begin recording that sound. Then I can walk away and repeat the process at another station and choose to interact with the previous sound in whatever way I see fit. I look at it as cycles of information, and constantly creating or destroying them through improvisation in the space. The most exciting thing to me is that nothing is saved—everything is constantly generated anew within each device at every point in the system. It’s incredibly liberating to make music in a circle where no one position is privileged as the centerpiece of the sound. At any point in the game, one thing could be more prominent than the other, or they could all be equal. Also, it’s just so freeing to make a sound and then walk away while the material continues to play back without you. Certain games I play with myself are about desire and restraint: How long can I wait before the compulsion to loop overtakes me? How long can I stay at the drum station before moving on? How quickly can I fall in love with a loop and then kill it? Also, I should say my ideas about loops and echoes are different than what the dominant interpretation of the materials might be—I use these things as aids to some kind of strange improvisational chanting or trance. As a way to get outside of time and to deviate from the dominant temporality. My main understanding is that most people use looper pedals to save parts to songs they’ve already written. I use them to write something beyond myself, and a way to feel connected to other dimensions of potential.
What drew you to the Japanese Pavilion?
Emily Lacy: I was drawn to the space because of the multiplicity of the levels and its total circularity. The relationship of the collection inside—as it dealt with themes of meditation, consciousness, nature, temporality and thought-experiments—were very heavy and entered me completely. The stories of monks, sages, mystics, hermits … these are all things that are important to me to begin with, and the work inside the Pavilion felt like a way for me to explore that content in my own practice. There’s a Pink Floyd film where they play an entire concert in the ruins at Pompeii to no audience—just themselves in the architecture and remains of something long past… They were able to bring their energy into the space and channel a power which bridged gaps across time. I thought if I shacked myself in there for hours at a time and made a whole album on-site, I would begin to feel that way—that I was conducting a music which bridged periods of time and circumstance with artistic evolution.
What is your relationship to the LACMA employees?
Emily Lacy: To my knowledge, LACMA hasn’t ever had an Artist-in-Residence before. In my first few weeks of installing and performing, I felt much more connected to security guards and electricians than I ever knew I would. Those are the faces I am seeing and interacting with the most. I feel like a cross between a maintenance worker and a shaman. The Pavilion is very quiet and what I am doing is peculiar and somewhat unprecedented, so it’s bizarre to feel that no one really minds or cares or notices on the day-to-day level. The environment isn’t ignoring me, but maybe it’s just not phased. Or it has adjusted. I feel like I am slowly cracking open a mountain, but with just a couple small tools.
What about the robes?
Emily Lacy: The robes came to me in a mysterious vision, which I love. I was in Oregon and an image appeared that transfixed me… A seated figure on a beach, back to the camera, fully cloaked in the black and white zigzag robe with a red electric guitar strapped on the back. I immediately drew a picture and started laughing. I couldn’t believe how mischievous it appeared! Originally it was just this deviant image—but just as it used to happen in my paintings, one element appears outside the pattern and then just takes over because the seduction is just too intense. I realized it could serve a great purpose by allowing me to completely check out of the visual field while playing. Where I could play but not be looked at—or not be aware of people looking at me—and I could become genderless… Don’t get me wrong—I like that people can read me as a ragged 30-year-old female folksinger, but I also love that I can shapeshift out of that reading—and all its associated baggage—whenever I want. The most powerful effect of the robe is that it’s making its own mythology. It’s giving life to some deeply perched energy which is still being unearthed from the mind: sage, monk, musician, nagual … I like to think of the people or the energy under the robes as ‘Carrier Spirits’ to a place outside of time. They can grant us access.
Have you ever tripped on those robes?
Emily Lacy: I have tripped, but I have not yet fallen. I also ‘tripped’ in the sense that during one performance that was filmed I had a hard time ‘coming out’ of the robe. I was disoriented and had a hard time speaking for a bit afterwards. I think I just went to such a far-off place in my mind—really trying to ascend to a space that was beyond me—that then to come out of the trance for another take or small-talk was really jarring. I think I even said, ‘I need to step away from the robe.’ It’s hard to come out of the trance and step so easily back into regular life. I have had fears or visions in the robe of the worst possible thing happening, which in my opinion would be someone appropriating the energy and imagery of my work into something violent.
Where do you think those fears originate?
Emily Lacy: I think that fear comes from my own fear of America and its truly terrifying patterns of modern violence, combined with my own worst fears about audience. My background is really in cinema theory and that informs a lot of the way I perceive things. So those issues I’m sure are lurking in the dark theater of my mind somewhere. It’s likely that mixed with my own worst fears about the robe’s mythology. Let me just say that I got a certain feeling when I would hold a Castaneda book in my hands last spring—The Power of Silence—and it was a feeling of nervous excitement and fear, a sense of ‘Now be careful—you’ve got something powerful in your hands.’ I felt that way about the robe when it first existed: ‘Be careful—this is a strong image you’ve got here.’
Who are your ‘Temples’ collaborators?
Emily Lacy: Ezra Buchla has been performing music and helping me conceive of the greater technological and relativistic environment, and Laura Steenberge doing great work with light. Behind the scenes—as in a film environment—tons of people have helped me with everything from studio time to the production of costumes, cabins, lanterns, images or idea-meetings. I consider all those points in the chain as sites of collaboration. Working with Ezra has been amazing because he is just wired differently than most humans—we’re both interested in some form of musical physics at work in the system we’ve created, that of sound generation and degradation across a whole network of information and echoes. Working with Laura creates a strong sense of the laboratory—we’re working with very primal elements and on the brink of unleashing something I don’t quite understand yet. Machine has influenced me to look at artistic experience as a series of potentials, or as an experience where the simultaneity of things can be a strong function of their appeal- I feel I am truly going on a journey through Consciousness—no joke!—with the people who work on this. We’re all losing our minds together in some strange radiant bliss.
How’s the album coming along?
Emily Lacy: The album is a huge challenge to record, which I hadn’t foreseen at all… It’s a lot of information to capture in the recorded form. None of the sources of sound relate back to a mixer of any sort—everything is a stand-alone piece of the equation contributing to or retracting from the whole. What’s great is that such a rich environment has been created that truly feels like a living thing—full of diversity and weird texture-pockets of difference and invisibility. What’s difficult is thinking about how best to make an artifact of this living ecosystem of sounds—how to decide what will live for others to see. In the end, the album may actually be a film that you could either watch or listen to—I’m still not sure.
Tell me about the Hermit’s Cabin!
Emily Lacy: Physically, it’s an actual cabin where I’ll occasionally be performing. It was designed on wheels so that its location could shift from time to time. It acts as a speaker for the music coming from the Pavilion when I am not inside, and is sited on the big public plaza at LACMA. People can’t tell if someone is inside or not, so they will try to peek through the cracks… I still feel like I am breaking it in and negotiating the energy of it. I built it because I think it’s an image that recurs throughout folklore—you meet a spirit or another version of yourself inside a cabin in the woods, and you come away changed… There is a sense of being re-aligned, or maliciously interrupted in some cases. I think it has something to do with our ideas of the woods—of the forest—and a kind of hidden fluidity or elasticity of the Spirit. I wanted to investigate that through performance. So I will be in there, singing for people one to two at a time…
Where were you born? What comes next?
Emily Lacy: I was born on the eleventh day of 1980 in Modesto, California. My parents moved to a house in the woods in Oregon when I was 8 months old. There was a creek. My first memory is of my mom coming toward me with food in our kitchen, likely with eggs. I came to L.A. when I was 18 because I wanted to make movies, and I’d gotten into film school. I keep coming back because I feel an immense comfort from this place. I feel love and community. Also I think there is something about being casual here, which stems from the climate and the culture. You can have rigorous ideas and work very hard, but you can be very casual about it. You can be playful in your endeavor, and you can be friendly to people. There’s the sense and the spirit that you can just open up a storefront for whatever it is that you want to do with it, and maybe even just figure it out along the way. Folk music, punk music, conceptual art, these things are all thriving here. And maybe they’re blending together. I also like making work here because it’s a site of image and sound production for the rest of the world. In terms of theory, you just can’t be more fulfilled than working with Los Angeles as a site or origin for works. I mean, it’s fully loaded and operational. I’m like one little window cleaner inside a giant dream factory!

EMILY LACY WITH ‘TEMPLES OF THE MIND’ IN RESIDENCE THROUGH SUN., JAN. 31, AT LACMA, 5905 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. THUR.-SUN., 3-7 PM / FREE-$12 / ALL AGES. LACMA.ORG. VISIT EMILY LACY AT EMILYLACY.NET.

Over December and January I will be in Residence at LACMA conducting ‘Temples of the Mind’, making music and films based in the Pavilion for Japanese Art. Throughout this process an entire album will be recorded on-site at LACMA, mysterious radio transmissions will be available over the internet, and mystical reckonings will occur inside a tiny Hermit’s Cabin, where performances transpire for just 1 to 2 people at a time.

DEC. 5, 6pm: Opening Concert in the Pavilion for Japanese Art, followed by Machine Project Book Party at 7pm, in LACMA West.

Will they give her a bed and snacks, is what we wanna know…

Download: Marco Paul “The Heavenly Music Corporation”

(for a complete play list please visit dublab.com)

For ten years, since the days when ‘Internet radio’ was as futuristic a concept as the electric car, dublab has been adding color, texture and depth to music in Los Angeles and the world beyond. Hip-hop and soul and jazz and psych and punk and folk and cosmic genius and more—whether from L.A., from deep history or from someplace no one’s even sure about—all find a permanent home at dublab.com as well as in the work of an army of DJs and artists and musicians and listeners who constantly prove that there is always something new and beautiful to listen to and learn about. Labrats Frosty and Ale meet at Girl House to talk about their anniversary. This interview by Chris Ziegler and Drew Denny.

Daedelus said dublab started when a bunch of super-nerds at USC found each other—true?
Mark “Frosty” McNeill (co-founder and president): Lies! Where is that guy? The ‘nerds’ part is very very accurate. Intense record geeks is probably a good description. The whole idea—we don’t know everything and we always wanted to stay open. We always wanted to discover, get turned on to something new. We were trying to share something with our listeners and we discover things along the way, so it always remains fresh. You learn more and more. You never know what direction it will take you.
Brad from Wounded Lion was saying that as a kid he learned from Rodney on the ROQ that all eras of rock ‘n’ roll are friends. I’d even say all genres of music are friends.
Mark McNeill: They’re all connected. There is a lineage. Everything is derivative and that’s not a negative term. Everything influences everything. That’s the whole idea: keep it open and broad. When we started on Real Media Player or Windows Media Player, it was in the midst of all that Internet stuff. We got a lot of free lunches and heard the word ‘synergy’ a lot.
Didn’t you almost have a million-dollar investment?
Mark McNeill: We were offered money before we even launched. I was fresh out of college and I’d sit in meetings with these people and think, ‘If you’re dumb enough to want to give us money, there’s something wrong with your company and you’re not gonna last.’ Everything was very shaky. We had one investor—the only one who seemed good. He was basically the guy who came up with the banner ad. He had tons of money. We were days away from signing papers and everybody was ready to do it. He was giving us money and then the morning the NASDAQ crashed, we got a phone call and my partner Jon’s face just fell. The conversation was basically, ‘I think we need to re-think the nature of our investment.’
Shoulda got the guy who invented the Viagra ad.
Mark McNeill: We do! He’s here—Ale, pull down your pants!
Alejandro Cohen (general manager and treasurer): In the long run, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
Mark McNeill: We said no to everything for so long. There was such hucksterism in it. Very in the moment. It’s like a pop trend that’s on the radio. You see it from the start—it’s a flavor of the moment. If you take it as that and have fun, it’s cool. But don’t imagine it’s gonna be around for twenty years. All that stuff was a fly-by-night vibe. We probably would have been done nine years ago if we’d taken some of that money.
You’ve DJed at places like LACMA—do you think big institutions fetishize the DJ as a symbol of what’s cool?
Alejandro Cohen: Yeah. They ask, ‘What’s your DJ name? Just, uh, Ale?’
Mark McNeill: For the past three years we’ve done a lot of ‘cultural institution’ gigs. They’re cool because they’re not at places where people wanna go crazy and slide across the bar. It’s kids, families, all ages—people that are not gonna be at Part Time Punks. They trip out on seeing records. It’s weird.
How were you able to make dublab a place where Damo Suzuki, Linda Perhacs and Neil Hamburger can all feel equally at home?
Mark McNeill: We have really good incense!
Alejandro Cohen: You lose perspective on the variety of music because it all mixes. I’ll be visiting friends back home and play dublab for them to give them an idea of where I work. For them, it’s extreme worlds mixing in one place, but to me it sounds kind of like the same place. Latin to the other guy doing Middle Eastern . . .
Mark McNeill: Maybe it makes them nauseous.
What are the extreme limits of dublab’s programming?
Mark McNeill: The oldest music comes from Jonathan of Excavated Shellac—a lot of international 78s from the ’20s.
Alejandro Cohen: Some of the stuff Danny Holloway plays, it’s the only copy maybe existing. He did an all-Beatles covers set and was telling me about it. Stuff from Cambodia and weird things he knows. He’s certain they’re pretty much gone forever. Like ‘Hey Jude’ with steel drums—versions where you’re like, ‘What the hell?’
Mark McNeill: Or a lot of those $1,000 45s—B+ will come back from traveling and he’ll bring stuff from Addis Ababa. Original Ethiopian 45s. The idea is to bring it back to the old soul days when people would cut a record and then immediately go play it on the radio. Stuff like that. We play versions that never come out. Weird studio things.
What’s it like to hold the last-ever copy of something in your hands?
Mark McNeill: You should just eat it so it’s part of you! Cats like Jonathan—the records he specializes in are international. It wasn’t for export, it was for those locales. Cambodian records sold in villages but on RCA Victor. They survived in these places that were a pretty harsh atmosphere since the ’20s. They aren’t collector cultures. You get something new and throw the record away.
What kind of people would you have never met except for dublab?
Mark McNeill: We wouldn’t even have met each other if it wasn’t for music. That camaraderie of geeks!
Alejandro Cohen: When I was a kid, I was a very scared kind of guy. I’d look at people who play instruments and be like, ‘Oh, you must be so serious! I don’t deserve any of your time—you must have such important ideas.’ And at the end, most turn out not to! But in music you DO meet people with great ideas, and you feel honored to give them a ride somewhere!
Mark McNeill: The guys from Cluster were a treat.
Alejandro Cohen: They were joking about Brian Eno not being a strong boy.
Mark McNeill: They were living in the countryside of Germany and Eno was coming in from England—kind of a glammy boy. They’d be out chopping wood and all this stuff to warm the house—Roedelius is like a big lumberjack grandpa!—and Eno would be like, ‘I wanna chop wood!’ ‘Go back inside, sissy boy—we’ll make music later!’
When you interviewed James Brown, was it before or after his wife got ass implants?
Mark McNeill: Before she did but after I did. We had the same doctor. One of them fell out and now I have to wear a thick wallet. Have you ever been to the Experience Music Project? I don’t know if they still have it, but they had a ride like ‘DISCOVER FUNK MUSIC,’ like an EPCOT Center total after-school special thing. There were two kids and they turn into an alley and Bootsy Collins and James Brown spin around with sparkles coming off and the screen goes, ‘And now—INTO THE FUNK!’ And you go through James Brown’s legs. It’s nuts. It’s probably from the mid-’90s and really fucking bad. Or did you ever see the Miles Davis scooter ads? Lou Reed and Miles Davis—both at fucked-up points in their life. Miles Davis in a parachute pantsuit and stuff. Weird.
Alejandro Cohen: I’d love to have seen them shooting that. ‘Just give me the check!’
What would a horrible dublab commercial be like?
Mark McNeill: Nick Harcourt-y. ‘It’s 2012 and the city is bumping—the spirit of the night!’ We were thinking we should make one for Cinefamily with robots and stuff. ‘Morning becomes … erotic!’
Do you have the same relationship with KCRW that we do with L.A. WEEKLY?
Alejandro Cohen: KXLU has that relationship.
Mark McNeill: There are people there that are true music fans, but when you build a machine depending on that money, then they’re not any different than commercial radio as far as money and power. They rely on their fund drive so much they can’t take chances. The DJs there are great people and music fans but they tread so lightly. It’s like when I was at KUSC. It’s elevator music—classical music. They found their subscriber base and they keep them happy and that’s it. So it’s not such a service. When you have power like that and you can’t take chances, you should.
Anytime anything declares itself ‘independent,’ it’s sort of a political act. Why is it important for dublab to be independent?
Alejandro Cohen: In a good sense of the word, I’m ‘stuck’ with what I am. That’s what we do. I couldn’t do a conscious commercial thing.
Mark McNeill: All that stuff has a purpose. Certain people do certain things. Maybe they’re just happy with it. We try not to judge what people are up to; we try to give them an opportunity to get something different.
How important to a healthy music community is the sort of infrastructure dublab provides?
Mark McNeill: When we started, the idea was we’d be a for-profit business that did good things with the profits, that was grassroots/community-based. But there was never a profit! You look at Ben & Jerry’s—‘Cool, we’ll make money and support farmers!’ Not that we wanna make ice cream, but nonprofit is in line with the original idea. It fits in with the ethos of why we started dublab. If you go nonprofit, the public owns it. It’s the idea of the listeners being part of it.
Alejandro Cohen: It almost makes the mission of dublab more genuine. There’s not a guy behind it getting rich or hoping to get rich. Even the live sessions are all through a Creative Commons license. So in a sense it really is doing it for the music. Through the years, dublab found itself operating more on a nonprofit model. We were an LLC, but we were doing fundraisers and projects mostly with museums and cultural institutions—we had to do the switch! When we were applying, I was a bit afraid. But a friend of mine who’s worked for many nonprofits said this is very very common—organizations operating for ten or fifteen years with no status at all and then they switch.
Mark McNeill: It’s all very fragile. I remember my grandfather, the last thing he ever said was, ‘You know what? Do what you wanna do. You’ll be much happier. Do what you wanna do. I went through my whole life worrying.’ When I was at USC, most of my friends were film students and some make really good money. Some have Mercedes and houses they bought. I’m somewhat envious. I wish I had a car that wouldn’t break down! But they’re envious of me doing something I dig. I spend my day around good people. I put a little time into the world of bullshit and it’s much more fulfilling to be around intelligent people who are creative. That’s part of the reason for being nonprofit. We don’t wanna bow to the wishes of someone selling the flavor of the moment. We think of a more timeless aesthetic, something that isn’t commercially viable. That’s a major reason to go nonprofit. You can be timeless.

DUBLAB’s TENTH ANNIVERSARY EXPLORATION RUNS FROM THUR., OCT. 1, THROUGH SAT., OCT. 10, AT MULTIPLE LOS ANGELES VENUES INCLUDING THE ‘VIBRANT VISIONS’ RETROSPECTIVE AT THE CONTINENTAL GALLERY ON THUR., OCT. 1; A LABRAT MATINEE FILM SCREENING WITH LIVE PERFORMANCE BY DAEDELUS AT THE DOWNTOWN INDEPENDENT ON FRI., OCT. 2; THE FUTURE ROOTS STAGE CURATED BY DUBLAB AT THE EAGLE ROCK MUSIC FEST ON COLORADO BLVD. IN EAGLE ROCK ON SAT., OCT. 3; DUBLAB MEETS PART TIME PUNKS AT THE ECHO ON SUN., OCT. 4; GIVE UP: SAD FILM SCREENINGS WITH SORROWFUL LIVE SCORES AT CINEFAMILY ON MON., OCT. 5; DECKADES AT THE VERDUGO BAR ON TUE., OCT. 6; A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY LINDA PERHACS AND FRIENDS (INCLUDING HECUBA, CRYSTAL ANTLERS AND MORE) AT REDCAT ON WED., OCT. 7; DUBLAB AT THE DOWNTOWN ARTWALK AT THE CONTINENTAL GALLERY ON THUR., OCT. 8; A JOHN LENNON BIRTHDAY BED-IN RADIO BROADCAST LIVE ON KPFK 90.7-FM ON FRI., OCT. 9; AND A FINALE BASH WITH REPRESENTATIVES FROM INTERNATIONAL MUSIC ROOM, MAS EXITOS, SKETCHBOOK, TONALISM AND MORE AT A VENUE TBA ON SAT., OCT. 10. MORE INFORMATION AT DUBLAB.COM/EVENTS. LISTEN TO DUBLAB AT DUBLAB.COM.

Somewhere down in Chinatown, the ‘70s are coming back. The East L.A. Art scene of late has mined these years—with varying degrees of success and, perhaps, to the brink of exhaustion—but Elana Mann’s Performing Economies demonstrates just how dynamic and even necessary participatory art can be. For almost three months now, Mann and artists and collectives from across the city have presented panels, performative works and visual artwork exploring the ideas of alternative economies. This interview by Drew Denny.

Tell me the story of Performing Economies—when did you get the idea for the show? How did you choose a space and participants?
Elana Mann (organizer/curator): This past February I was invited to submit a proposal for a curatorial project at the Fellows of Contemporary Art. I had just finished a year-long project called ‘Exchange Rate: 2008,’ which was an international performance exchange created in response to the 2008 US presidential election. With Performing Economies I was interested in deepening certain ideas and questions that emerged during the Exchange Rate project around politics and participation. I also wanted to highlight a community of Los Angeles artists who are interested in exploring alternative economies of activism and intimacy in this time of global political and economic crises. The Fellows of Contemporary Art was an ideal space to hold this type of exhibit, as it is a model of alternative giving and patronage. The organization, founded in 1975, is made up of 140 art patrons who pay dues and use this money for multiple philanthropic programs, all of which relate to the development of art in California.
I didn’t expect to see the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest sharing a bill with artSpa—what’s the uniting factor among the participants?
Performing Economies crystallizes a growing movement of Los Angeles based artists who are addressing current political calamities through methodologies of participation, collaboration and community involvement. The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, for example, has an editorial collective that ‘facilitate[s] the meeting of artists, political activists, theorists, and media makers’ who contribute to their publications and events. artSpa, organized by Adam Overton, works with artists and healers, creating such events as ‘open-mic meditations,’ ‘free aura readings’ and ‘experimental music and massage.’ Both of these projects are deeply invested in social change, whether through political writing and activism or healing workshops.
Could you describe the Free Free Market? What kind of goods and services were gifted at that event?
The Free Free Market (FFM) had nine participants, who are all part of the Artists for Social Justice collective, which was founded by the artist Evelyn Serrano. The gifting at the FFM was really varied—from a woman typing love letters for people passing by, to folks with a table of homemade ‘seed bombs,’ to a singer offering free voice lessons. One of the artists had a table of goods she was giving away, from cans of soup to jig saws that were all ‘acquired’—or stolen. All of the artists were spread out in the courtyard and surrounding the building where the gallery is located. The artists interacted with people coming especially to see them, but also folks passing by who were heading to dinner or to a shop elsewhere in the building. One of the artists gave the janitor of the building a bunch of vegetable plants left over from the day and he planted them in spots all around the outside courtyard. All the participants in the day were really pleased with how it went and are planning to expand the Free Free Market to farmer’s markets, the beach, and other social spaces in and around Los Angeles.
I know the Johns pretty well—from CalArts—but I must ask, what’s this ‘we’ business all about?
John Burtle and John Barlog are two artists who often work collaboratively. They both have rectangle tattoos on their forearms, which they use as gallery spaces. The Johns invite people to do projects on/with this particular demarcated spot on their arms. Since working together they have noticed that their language has changed, from ‘my project’ to ‘our project,’ from ‘I am doing this’ to ‘We are doing this.’ This change in the Johns’ language has been a powerful one, shifting their ideas of individual versus collective identity and they wanted to further explore this shift for the Performing Economies exhibit. For their piece, the Johns proposed that a new form of the English language be used in the gallery space. This new form would eliminate all pronouns except ‘we’ and ‘us,’ abolish command forms, and eradicate possessives. Instead of ‘Get me a beer,’ one would say, ‘Would we like a beer?’ And so on. Tom McKenzie, the executive director of the Fellows of Contemporary Art, is a writer himself and was excited to help facilitate the use of the language in the space. Tom said that this new form has actually helped him think of the Fellows of Contemporary Art as a ‘we’ instead of individual members. The Johns also placed a wall didactic on the wall of the gallery explaining to viewers the ‘rules’ of the new language and inviting people to participate.
This show runs from May through July and involves so many people—did you experience any hiccups in the curatorial process? What have you learned?
The curatorial process was remarkably smooth and maybe this has to do with the fact that the participants in the show are all used to working with others through collaboration or collective art making. Many of the artists have even curated their own projects within the show. In all, over sixty-two artists/collaborations have created artwork through the Performing Economies project, which is pretty remarkable given the size of the gallery space and budget. Of course I have learned so much through this process of working with all the incredible artists participating in the show and with the Fellows of Contemporary Art. One of my curatorial lessons has to do with assuming a type of artistic output for each participant. When I started the exhibit I had the participants divided in my head as to who would make an object for the gallery space and who would produce an event or performance. This was a particularly bad idea, as some of the artists who I thought would want to create a performance expressed a desire to make an object and vice versa. As an artist myself I should have known not to make any conjectures about what an artist would want to create for a specific project. Luckily, this did not create any major problems, but only enriched the exhibition.
So no catastrophes? What about miracles? Surprises?
The show has been a really inspiring experience all around and I can’t wait for the rest of the events that are coming up. Last weekend the gallery was visited by various garment district workers who participated in an artwork by Ashley Hunt and Taisha Paggett called ‘On Movement, Thought and Politics: Garment Worker’s Center, Los Angeles/En el movimiento, el pensamiento y la política: El Centro de Trabajadores de Costura, Los Angeles’ (2009). It was wonderful to share the exhibit with them and talk about how some of the ideas of the artworks could be incorporated into their everyday lives. We hope to host more outside groups to the space through the run of the exhibit.
How did the garment workers participate in the piece?
Ashley Hunt and Taisha Paggett began working with the Los Angeles Garment Worker’s Center this spring. They conducted various movement workshops, which focused on the way the garment workers’ political situation was affecting how they used their bodies at their jobs. Many of them have injuries related to unhealthy ways that they work. Hunt and Paggett also investigated how the garment workers carried or expressed themselves through their bodies in different interactions with each other or with their bosses. For their piece in the exhibit Hunt and Paggett had the workers direct each other to physically recreate some educational posters. These posters indicate—through endearing hand drawings—different ways to position oneself in negotiations, confrontations with bosses, and discussions with each other. Hunt and Paggett filmed the workers as they were acting out the positions of the characters displayed in three posters and added subtitles in English and Spanish.
How do you critically evaluate the role of activism and/or education in your own work and the work of your participants? Could you give me some examples of works you believe to be inspirational or successful in activism and education? What about works that you believe to be unsuccessful?
Yes, this is a good, but difficult question… Over the past few years there has been a renewed interest in ‘participatory’ artwork that involves artists and art audiences in new and recycled ways. This type of artwork is often positioned as activating a political space. From the recent historical surveys such as Allan Kaprow: Art as Life at L.A.’s MOCA and The Art of Participation 1950-today at SFMOMA to exhibitions highlighting new artwork, such as Perific 8: Art As Gift Biennial for Contemporary Art in Iasi, Romania, artists worldwide are creating salons, swap meets, gardens, walking tours, and schools. Art institutions are focusing on interaction, collectivity and collaboration like never before. These projects are created for different reasons—to activate the viewer, so that she or he will be more active in the world, to counteract the disappearance of social bonds in our communities, to be more inclusive rather than exclusive and question authorship of the singular ‘I,’ etc. However, many of these projects are utilizing participatory methodologies as a style rather than a pointed political stance. Some of these projects ask people to do things and participate, but have no critical substance behind their actions, or else create an experience that ultimately a community doesn’t really want or need. The artwork that I chose to highlight in Performing Economies emphasizes artists who are investigating the ways in which participatory and collaborative approaches can challenge the socio-political context in which they are produced. These projects function as social critique rather than style and have direct political content rather than empty symbolic gestures.
How can we—the Los Angeles community—access these people and these types of events outside of Performing Economies?
There are some great alternative art spaces in Los Angeles where people can find the types of events that are part of Performing Economies. There is Machine Project in Echo Park, Outpost for Contemporary Art and Sea and Space Explorations in Highland Park, Beta Level and the Public School in Chinatown and g727 and Farmlab in downtown Los Angeles. These are just a few examples of a growing movement in the Los Angeles art community. LACMA recently hosted a day of ephemeral projects with Machine Project and MOCA has started a series of events called ‘Engagement Parties.’ I think museums are currently trying out different methods of hosting this sort of project.
What advice would you give to people looking for ways to create and interact with alternative economies in their own communities?
What I have learned through researching and creating artwork for this exhibit is that there are currently thousands of alternative economic structures in the world and these movements are currently gaining momentum. I merely had to scratch the surface and was amazed at the plethora of complementary economies that are in existence all over the globe. Here in the city of Los Angeles you have the Echo Park Time Bank and a Co-Op starting in Highland Park. Some great examples of alternative economic structures can be found on the websites of the E.F. Schumacher Society and the Local Exchange Trading Systems—LETS. However, in many ways these alternative economic structures are only making up for the enormous problems of our national and international economic systems. Along with creating our own local systems, people need to pressure our government to initiate necessary reforms and changes to our current economic system.

PERFORMING ECONOMIES THROUGH SAT., JULY 25, AT FELLOWS OF CONTEMPORARY ART, 970 N. BROADWAY, STE. 208, CHINATOWN. CLOSING RECEPTION 2 PM / FREE / ALL AGES. MORE INFORMATION AND GALLERY HOURS AT FOCALA.ORG. VISIT ELANA MANN AT ELANAMANN.COM.

Mark Allen (executive director): Machine Project’s Field Guide to LACMA is another way to interpret the museum. I discovered while walking around LACMA that there were parts of it I’d never seen before. I’ve been living in L.A. for ten years, and I’m an artist! I want to lead people to these hidden corners. On my eighth curatorial visit to the museum, I discovered a whole building I hadn’t entered! It took the artists and me three to four hours every time we walked through the museum, and the show will be structured in such a way that it will be impossible for anyone to see everything we’re doing.
How did you pick which projects and artists to include?
Machine Project has been open for five years now, and I invited everyone who I thought would work well in the context. I walked through the museum with the artists, and we generated hundreds of ideas—some just funny to us, some impractical. The process of deciding who and what would be involved was really a group effort. About twenty percent of the projects will be installed. The rest are either performances or workshops. There are lots of cross-disciplinary projects. For example, Corey Fogel’s sculptural sound performance piece—he’ll improvise dance and noise while wearing a suit he constructed out of 300 pepper shakers. There will be musicians in the elevators, a murder-mystery museum visitors can solve, a tour of the ambient sounds of LACMA. There were several ideas that we knew wouldn’t pass. Joshua Beckman came up with the idea of a driving-school valet—people who had just gotten their driver’s licenses would be parking all those BMWs! Then there was the plan to make the museum entrance look like airport security—you have to take your shoes off and put them on a belt, but instead of getting your shoes back at the end, the belt takes them to a big cardboard box and you have to dig yours out before you leave.
Have you met with any resistance? Confusion?
One core aspect of this process has been [LACMA photo curator] Charlotte Cotton’s involvement. She’s such a strong advocate. We developed the ideas with her, and she brought them to the people inside the museum. This really has been an educational experience to work with such a large institution. A much higher percent of our ideas passed than what I was expecting.
What has been the hardest part?
LACMA gave us a budget, and it’s been a challenge to work within that. I invited all the people first, then started working with the budget. I think most people do it the other way around! I’m trying to create a visual picture of how pieces relate to one another. There are various relations—formal, acoustic, conceptual—that weave in and out of each other. Every artist works differently. Liz Glynn has been crucial in this respect. I couldn’t have done this without her. I just had this feeling the other day—imagine you’re standing on a tall building, leaning over the edge, and your cell phone falls out. That vertigo… like, if I hadn’t hired Liz, this show would be a total disaster!
Sounds like you’ve got a good team!
My team consists of Liz and myself on the Machine end of production, with Michelle Yu helping us and also running the gallery. Charlotte and Eve Schillo produce from the LACMA side. The curatorial team consists of the more than forty artists who walked the museum with me and spoke with me about ideas. Then there are about fifty artists. Most of them are people I’ve worked with before, but there are a few new people. There’s a gallery of glass—Greek and Roman glass through the Middle Ages. I really wanted someone to play the glass harmonica, but I didn’t know anyone. Laura Steenberge gave me a name of a man she’d seen play but didn’t know—Douglas Lee. He’s this really theatrical guy who’s played on Japanese game shows and everything! At Machine, I like to bring artists in who can can create something specifically for the space. Joshua Beckman is a poet. He came up with this method of poetry-making in which an audience member suggests a topic, then Josh would say the first word of the poem, his collaborator Matthew Rohr would say the second, and they’d create the poem back and forth. The audience is always thinking about what the next word should be, so it’s a really interesting way to lead people through the process of making poetry. At Machine, we employed that concept a bit differently. We drilled a hole in the floor with a lens then another hole with a pipe and a funnel and a slot in the floor. Participants put their suggestion—along with a tip—into the slot and the size of the poem reflected the size of the tip. At the opening, people were just standing around the gallery talking while one person was pressed up against the floor listening to his or her poem. This is what we’re doing at LACMA: combining my experience of reacting to and working with a particular space and the artists’ willingness to step outside their experience and create something new. One gallery, for example, has a beautiful gothic arch. It was removed from a cathedral and now stands in the gallery. I wanted to fill it up with amps and have a man playing heavy metal guitar for one minute every hour—
Heavy metal church bells?
Yeah! But the curator of that gallery was just not into it. So Sarah Newey and Christy McCaffery—they build sets for commercials and the like—they’re building a replica of it. We’re going to put it on this outdoors porch area that’s behind a locked door. The guitarist will be out there playing one minute of speed metal every hour and people can watch through a telescope that we’re placing at a bank of windows. [Mark shows me an old black rotary phone, with the letter ‘M’ taped to the center of the dialing ring.] This is a rotary phone that I’ve fashioned into a fully functioning cell phone. Every hour, this phone will ring, so you can hear the music through the telephone and see the artist perform through the telescope. This is a good example of how this show has evolved—I have an idea of what’s gonna happen, but it’s probably going to be something really different. The plan is constantly changing.
Do you consider yourself the producer of this event?
The roles are fluid. Concepts emerge out of conversations. I operate on them, but the process is collective. My primary role is just the facilitator-catalyst-e-mailer.
So what’s next for you and Machine Project?
Here’s a picture of my mental space: there’s the election, which takes up about six hours each day. I’m checking blogs and reading reports and polls. Then there’s the event, which I’m working for every day. Two days after the event, my girlfriend Emily Joyce and I are going to Bali and Singapore. Emily’s dad works in Singapore, and her parents travel back and forth so much they gave us frequent flyer miles! Then the future ends. I guess there’s the book…
LACMA’s publishing a book about the event?
The book will be a guide to thinking about the museum. The projects that happened and the projects that didn’t happen will be treated the same way. The next thing will be our 4th annual Fry-B-Que. Five dollars—all you can fry. We rent the apartment upstairs for visiting artists—Josh Beckman will be staying up there to write the main essay for the book. He’s looking at 19th century naturalism, a period when people were interested in everything—natural phenomena, art, music, science… That’s the ethos that exists here at Machine Project. Josh’s girlfriend Jen Bervin is an artist, a poet, and a pie consultant. She’s an expert in pie and works with restaurants. So we’ll be having lots of pie-related activities. A pie-off/fry-off, if you will.
The Machine Project history is rich with tradition. How did this all start?
I moved here to go to CalArts, graduated and joined a collective called C-Level that had a basement space in Chinatown. It still exists there under the name Beta Level. I was living in Culver City but wanted to move here (Echo Park) because all my friends lived here. I saw this store front for rent, and I moved in. I used it as a studio and hosted a few events. The events built up, so i turned it into a 501c3 non-profit. I got a grant, hired Michelle, and she wrote more grants. You know, if you just keep doing something, it builds momentum. I’m interested in different kinds of things—poetry, music, science. I wanted this space to be public. We host participation-based events and the events are free. Plus I get to see all the things I’m interested in without having to leave. It’s like having a party at your house so you don’t have to drive home. This year’s interesting because we’ve been invited to all these different events—GLOW in Santa Monica, the L.A. Art Fair… LACMA is the biggest. It’s not about Machine as a venue but Machine Project as a collective activity. I love this location. It’s mission control hub, and the building is a family base. Everything you need is in walking distance—groceries, the cafe, Taco Zone.
Best taco truck in L.A.! This is building is a good spot. Were you affected by the recent fire?
The fire affected the apartments upstairs. The cafe had lots of water damage, and we had a little bit, too. I almost had a heart attack, though, because my landlord called and told me, ‘The building’s on fire!’ We had an electronics workshop, and we had a robotic-blimp-making workshop that day. I envisioned a mini-Hindenburg!

MACHINE PROJECT’S FIELD GUIDE TO LACMA ON SAT., NOV. 15, AT THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART, 5905 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 12 PM / $8-$12 / FREE FOR MACHINE PROJECT MEMBERS / ALL AGES. LACMA.ORG. COMPLETE PROGRAM INFORMATION AT MACHINEPROJECT.COM. VISIT MACHINE PROJECT AT 1200 D NORTH ALVARADO, ECHO PARK.