In conjunction with the landmark Pacific Standard Time exhibition Collaboration Labs: Southern California Artists and the Artists Space Movement, artist-run production company EZTV will host a five-week series of video screenings, live music, performances and artist talks in honor of its 32-year history as one of the world’s first video theaters, computer art galleries and independent media centers.
Organized by EZTV co-founder and Director Michael J. Masucci, this series includes a high-profile roster of seminal artists who broke boundaries and created new forms in media art. From rarely seen psychedelic video works by Dr. Timothy Leary to early computer art by members of LA-SIGGRAPH, from early desktop video by EZTV co-founder John Door to the surrealist works by multidisciplinary group Vertical Blanking, these evenings will peel back LA’s cultural fabric to reveal key voices that have been excluded from the canon of media art history. Guest speakers and performers include Barbara T. Smith, Lowell Darling, The Dark Bob, Susanna Bixby Dakin, Strawn Bovee, Michael Kearns, Kate Johnson, Dr. Ken Luey, Kate Crash, Michael Wright, David Ehrenstein and Irene Rosen.
Highlights of this series are:
ART AS ARCHEOLOGY–Wed, Oct 26, 2011, 8pm
CORE, a multimedia performance by KATE JOHNSON with S. PEARLE SHARP and KEN LUEY, PhD
Core, a new performance and media work by Kate Johnson, combines music, animation, video and spoken word to tell the story of memory, haunted tongues and disappearing histories, personal and cultural.
THE WORLD PREMIERE OF LA WOMAN, AN INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY PROJECT by ROCK ‘N ROLL ARTIST KATE CRASH
LA Woman is musician/performance artist Kate Crash’s interactive documentary of a multigenerational group of female leaders in LA’s cultural scene. The projects features interviews with over 20 artists, gallerists, and art administrators, including psot-modern choreographer/dancer Simone Forti, performance artist Barbara T. Smith, artist and publisher Susanna Bixby Dakin, filmmaker/actor/poet S. Pearle Sharp, conceptual artist and legal mediator Dorit Cypris, and artist and social entrepreneur Valerie Velazquez, among others.
AN ARTIST FOR PRESIDENT–Wed, Nov 2, 2011, 8 pm
AN ARTIST FOR PRESIDENT BOOK LAUNCH PARTY and SIGNING with 18TH STREET CO-FOUNDER SUSANNA BIXBY DAKIN and SPECIAL GUESTS BARBARA T. SMITH and THE DARK BOB
In 1984 Regan was running for his second-term while pursuing what would become a relentless, multi-decades long retreat from democratic ideals. Susanna Dakin, sculptor, performance artist and High Performance Magazine publisher, had an outlandish notion: she declared with the Federal Elections Commission as an Artist/Candidate for President of the United States. Dakin’s debut book, An Artist for President, tells the story of her campaign and the surprising ideas people held about women, artists and the political process.
THE DAWN OF DESKTOP–Wed, Nov 9, 2011, 8 pm
ACTOR STRAWN BOVEE DISCUSSES THE FIRST KNOWN NARRATIVE GARAGE-VIDEO FEATURE PRODUCED BY EZTV FOUNDER JOHN DORR
In 1979 EZTV’s founder John Dorr used an analog B&W bank surveillance camera to shoot the first known narrative garage-video feature. In 1982 he and a core group of artists opened the EZTV Video Gallery, LA’s first video production and exhibition space. For the opening they screened the feature, which was about Dorothy Parker and her bi-sexual husband Alan Campbell. Host and actor Strawn Bovee, who played Parker, will reflect upon Dorr’s process, the creative foment of the period and EZTV’s unique position in the Los Angeles art scene. Bovee will share short video clips from all three video as well as clips from EZTV artist T. Jankowski. Guest panelists include biographer, critic and queer theorist, David Ehrenstein; Hollywood correspondent to Cahiers du Cinema, Bill Krohn; Crushed Lilies director T. Jankowski; and the star of Sudzall Does it All Irene Rosen.
DREAM ARTIST: THE RISE OF WEHO THEATER–Wed, Nov 16, 2011, 8 pm
HOLLYWOOD’S FIRST OPENLY GAY ACTOR MICHAEL KEARNS RECOUNTS STORIES OF LA’S THEATER SCENE AT THE HEIGHT OF THE AIDS PANDEMIC
Writer/actor/director Michael Kearns, Hollywood’s first openly gay actor, will recount the state of affairs in LA’s late 70s–early 80s gay theater scene and his own highly influential career. He will share video excerpts of playwright James Carroll Pickett’s Dream Man, which Kearns originally starred in and has recently re-staged to critical acclaim in Ireland, Spain, Scotland and the US.
HISTORY IS THE ART OF FORGETTING–Wed, Nov 30, 2011, 8 pm
RARE SCREENINGS OF WORKS BY DR. TIMOTHY LEARY, VERTICAL BLANKING, TRANSHUMANISM AND LA DIGILANTES
Hosted by EZTV Director Michael Masucci with special guest Michael Wright, the final night in the series takes a look back at EZTV’s CyberSpace Gallery, one of the world’s first galleries dedicated to computer art. CyberSpace co-founder Masucci and LA Digilantes co-founder Wright will discuss the artists and events that surrounded the creation of the gallery. The evening also features the debut of a new video art piece by Esther Kiss as well as the rarely seen Outside Looking In–One Last Visit with Timothy. Produced by Masuci, Natasha Nita-More and members of EZTV, Outside Looking In is among the very last video interviews
All events are free, with limited seating, reservations strongly recommended. RSVP to eztv@eztvmedia.com
About the artists:
EZTV
In 1979 John Dorr, in collaboration with a group of artists formed EZTV as the first video theater in the US. Originally housed in the West Hollywood Community Center, EZTV exhibited experimental videos in an intimate setting, with chairs clustered around large television monitors; the pioneering collective opened its own space in 1982. By moving video—at that time a new technology that was cheaper and viewed as more populist than film—outside an institutional museum setting, EZTV emphasized the radical, democratic aspects of small-screen technologies. Since its inception, it has promoted not just alternative media, but also queer aesthetics and politics. Throughout the 1980s, ACT UP and Queer Nation held meetings at EZTV.
Eventually evolving from a microcinema to a community-based editing facility, EZTV was home to production facilities where artists created everything from feature-length narratives to short abstract works and computer art; EZTV established one of the world’s first galleries dedicated to computer art. Currently run by co-founder artist Michael Masucci and current president Kate Johnson, who came on board in 1993, EZTV is a major site of the digital desktop revolution and continues to promote methods of video distribution beyond commercial networks.
KATE JOHNSON
Kate Johnson is president of EZTV, called “one of the core pioneers and advocates of digital technology in the moving image arts” by the American Film Institute and is being presented as part of Pacific Standard Time by The Getty Museum and Research Institute. As a multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker, her collaborative work has been seen in a variety of venues including the Cannes Film Festival, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Lincoln Center, The History Channel, Channel 5 in France, SIGGRAPH and in theatres and public spaces internationally. She has designed graphics and animations for large-scale live events including all of Maria Shriver’s Women’s Conferences, the Global Climate Summits and for major museum openings. Currently she is developing several original projects and is launching Hyphen Media, a new company focusing on creating collaborations with multi-discipline artists and thinkers in the areas of filmmaking, interactive design and contemporary publishing.
She is on the faculty of Otis College of Art & Design as an assistant professor, leading lectures on filmmaking, film music and sound design and interactive web design.
KATE CRASH
Kate Crash is a multimedia performance artist and recording artist/musician, whose work focuses on alternative ways of promoting proactive positive change. She is heavily influenced by her mother’s work in the field of civil rights, the philanthropic grassroots approach of EZTV and the generosity of the Armory Center for the Arts (for providing her free art classes and supplies throughout high school). She received her BFA in photography and media from California Institute of the Arts.
Crash’s feminist DIY approach to production allows her to collaborate with many different types of artists, and has led to her understanding of the important contributions of the interviewees in this project. She hopes to inspire others out of apathy into action by the example of these women.
She is signed by Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records, and her first recording My Zombie Nation was released this August.
SUSANNA BIXBY DAKIN
Susanna Bixby Dakin is a sculptor, performance artist, writer and once upon a time publisher of artists’ books, magazines and a community newspaper. She has taught sculpture and drawing, exhibited both in solo and group shows and completed a few large-scale sculpture commissions. She has done several unique performance pieces at various venues in Southern California. Dakin has served as publisher of the seminal and influential magazine High Performance, and was co-founder of the 18th Street Arts Center, where she currently is on the Board of Directors.
Dakin’s most well known work was a year-long performance campaign around the United States as “An Artist for President” from 1983-84, in which she advanced the idea that “The Nation is the art work and we the people are the artists.” Dakin will reprise the campaign as a book tour.
Dakin received a BA in art and philosophy from Scripps College and an MFA. from Otis.
STRAWN BOVEE
Strawn Bovee is a performing artist, writer, dramaturge and journalist. She was an original member of EZTV and starred in founder John Dorr’ s Case of the Missing Consciousness, Dorothy and Alan at Norma Place, and in the fragment The Three Cassandras, as well as in videos by other early members. She produced shows at the gallery and created her own installation-based interdisciplinary performance series, An Astral Tea Party.
Bovee has enjoyed several other long-lasting artistic relationships: 1) on KPFK with her two radio shows, FutureWatch (conceptual trends in religion and science) and Ritual Life (ritual in personal, spiritual and civic spheres); with Scott Kellman, founder of the downtown LA performance art scene (Factory Place, WallenBoyd Theaters, Saxon Gallery); with choreographer Rudy Perez (REDCAT, Armory Center for the Arts, 18th Street, Pasadena City College etc.); and on the traditional stage, with City Garage and Circus Theatricals (in residence at The Odyssey and The Hayward.) Her most recent stage appearance was with Murray Mednick and Padua Hills Playwrights.
She has appeared in television, commercials, interactive games, Hollywood films and independents, including Dan Sallitt’s All the Ships at Sea, which was honored at the Off-Camera Independent Film Festival in Krakow and recently screened as one of the best American independents of the past decade at the Wexner Center. Her next work will be with video artist Bill Viola.
Bovee is a UCLA grad, studied contemporary religious movements at Harvard Divinity School on a NEH journalism fellowship with Harvey Cox, as well as technology and culture at Georgia Tech with Mel Kransberg.
MICHAEL KEARNS
Michael Kearns, Hollywood’s first openly gay actor, has juggled a mainstream career (The Waltons, Body Double, Cheers, Murder She Wrote, Beverly Hills 90210, And The Band Played On) with a theatre career as a solo performer. As a playwright, his one-person performance pieces-The Truth Is Bad Enough, Intimacies, More Intimacies, Rock, Attachments, and Tell-Tale Kisses-have been produced throughout the United States and abroad. His writing also includes hundreds of articles in a wide variety of publications, including The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, LA Parent, The Advocate and Paper Magazine. He is the author of three theatre books, published by Heinemann: T-Cells & Sympathy (nominated for a Lambda Literary Award), Acting = Life (also Lammy nominated), and Getting Your Solo Act Together.
In addition to numerous acting awards, his tireless work as an activist-humanitarian has been honored by the Victory Fund, LA Weekly, PFLAG, National Coming Out Day, Being Alive and the Gay and Lesbian Chapter of the ACLU. A recipient of the key to the city of Des Moines, Kearns was also acknowledged by the Mayor of his hometown, St. Louis, proclaiming “Michael Kearns Day.” He received the prestigious 2002 Playwrights’ Arena Award for Outstanding Contribution to Los Angeles Theatre, acknowledging three decades of work as an actor, writer, producer, director, teacher and fundraiser.
MICHAEL WRIGHT
Michael Wright graduated from the University of Washington and began to explore new media in the mid-1980s on an Amiga computer. His paintings are represented in “Imaging by Numbers: A Historical View of Digital Printmaking in America” by Patric Prince for Art Journal, published by the College Art Association, “The Art of the Digital Age” by Bruce Wands, “Going Digital” by Joseph Nalven and JD Jarvis, “Computer Graphics World: 25 year Retrospective of Digital Art” in its January 2002 issue and in the magazine’s “Portfolio” section in the November 2001, issue. Wright was profiled in Computer Graphics Companion edited by Jeffrey McConnell, Anthony Ralston and Edwin Reilly, and also appears in The Computer in the Visual Arts by Anne Morgan Spalter and in Linda Jacob’s seminal book, CyberArts: Exploring Art & Technology.
Wright’s prints are in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Wright is a professor in the Digital Media Program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He served as the art gallery chair for ACM SIGGRAPH 2003 in San Diego California. Wright was part of SIGGRAPH’S first artists-in-residence program at SIGGRAPH 2007 and was included in the SIGGRAPH international exhibition Global Eyes.
TO PURCHASE A COLLECTIBLE COLLABORATION LABS CATALOG
Hacking the Timeline v2.0 is funded through the generous support of the 18th Street Arts Center, with further support from the Getty Museum & Research Center’s Pacific Standard Time, and the ongoing support from EZTV
I posted a wonderful half hour documentary, THE YEAR OF THE QUEER with one of the editors of THE PANAMA DECEPTION back in 1992 My doc showed at The First AFI Festival (I am an AFI Fellow) and it went on to screen at many Gay and Lesbian Fests around the country . I would love to screen it again. It has never shown at 18th Street. That year I also made an Annie Sprinkles short at your complex and also made a collection of other Queer mini docs made in 1992, called EAT MY SHORTS.
[...] Monica, CA–(October 10, 2011) 18th Street Arts Center is pleased to announce Hacking the Timeline, an upcoming series of happenings hosted by its long-term Resident Organization, EZTV. In [...]
[...] Organized by EZTV co-founder and Director Michael J. Masucci, this series includes a high-profile roster of artists who broke boundaries and created new forms in media art. From rarely seen psychedelic video works by Dr. Timothy Leary to early computer art by members of LA-SIGGRAPH, from early desktop video by EZTV co-founder John Dorr to the surrealist works by multidisciplinary group Vertical Blanking, these evenings will peel back LA’s cultural fabric to reveal key voices that have been excluded from the canon of media art history. More info… [...]