Welcomes CamLab to Engagement Party
First event
Dubious Equalities
Thursday, January 5, 2012, 7–10pm
250 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
The Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce CamLab as the winter 2012 participant in Engagement Party, the innovative program commissioning new works by Southern California-based artist collectives and collaborators. CamLab will present three new projects on the first Thursday evenings of January, February and March. All three events feature new songs commissioned from the Los Angeles-based trio Hotel La Rut.
DUBIOUS EQUALITIES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 7–10pm
MOCA Grand Avenue
For their first Engagement Party project at MOCA, CamLab will transform two adjoining spaces inside the museum, taking aesthetic cues from the Mark Rothko paintings and the Jim Isermann mural currently on view. The museum lobby will become a waiting room made radically comfortable by couches and libations; in addition, it will serve as the site for a durational Double Open Mic session during which visitors will be invited to read from texts collected around the theme of “empathy and misunderstanding.” CamLab will usher guests who occupy the waiting room into the adjoining “Rust and Bludoir” Rothko room to experiment with embodiment in a custom-built video booth with mirrored live feedback. Donning garments stitched by Los Angeles-based textile activist Frau Fiber, visitors will oscillate between immersion and agency as they occupy the various perspectives proposed by the installation.
FREE; no reservations
YOU ARE AN I
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 7–10pm
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
In the tradition of the teach-in, CamLab’s second Engagement Party work will provide a fabric infrastructure for receptive bodies to listen, learn, and speak to each other. The encompassing encampment will merge with participating bodies, mapping the many distinct yet related conversation groups taking place simultaneously throughout the evening. Discussions around the theme of embodied forms of communication will be led by facilitators recruited by CamLab from diverse disciplines. The variety of groups and perspectives will be reflected in the structure’s custom-designed cell architecture. CamLab’s employment of optically charged patterns in the fabric will draw attention to the horizontal and non-hierarchical movement of groups within the whole.
FREE; no reservations
TWO IN THE BUSH
THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 7–10pm
MOCA Grand Ave
In response to an economy gone to the birds, this third installment in CamLab’s Engagement Party residency will use money as material in a large-scale hands-on group exchange. Longtime “economicalists,” members of CamLab will facilitate the creation of a pop-up micro-economy with a bottoms-up ethos. Drawing attention to currency as an everyday, familiar relational object, participants will circulate self-determined currency and contribute it to a sculptural cipher for the group’s wishes. Visitors to the museum can participate in the revaluing of values or stand back to behold the glint of the mint. CamLab will build collectivity with coins, not walls with wealth.
FREE; no reservations
ABOUT CAMLAB
CamLab is an artists’ collaboration between Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman initiated in 2005 at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. Mayer and Wyman are united by a common interest in phenomena such as scopophilia (the sexual pleasure derived from looking at objects), embodied knowledge, and the destabilization of a singular subjectivity.
Engagement Party
Engagement Party offers Southern California–based artist collectives and collaborators an opportunity to make new artworks, interacting with and exploring MOCA and its resources in unexpected ways. Invited to work on site for three months, the artists may employ any medium, discipline, or strategy to create performances, workshops, screenings, lectures, or any other activity emerging from the group’s particular focus.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Lyn Winter
Tel 213/633-5390
lwinter [at] moca.org
Jessica Youn
Tel 213/633-5322
jyoun [at] moca.org