319 SCHOLES PRESENTS BIG REALITY Curated by Brian Droitcour

etc — chris @ 3:56 pm

Robby Rackleff, from Guild, 2012

March 15 – 29, 2012

Opening: Thursday March 15, 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.

Gallery hours: Thursday – Sunday, 2:00pm – 6:00pm and by appointment

“Big Reality” proposes that contemporary everyday life seamlessly integrates elements of fantasy and play through consumer technology and networked media. The exhibition explores this proposition through artworks that draw imagery, themes, and devices from a relatively young and heavily stereotyped genre of play: the fantasy role-playing game. Born in the early seventies, when Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax hacked the rules of historical war simulations to make room for individual heroics and magic spells, the RPG blends game and narrative, systems and storytelling. It brought romance and adventure to models of numerical cognition, which appealed to players familiar with nascent computing culture. “From Nethack to play-by-post forums on the WWW,” an Ars Technica blogger wrote in 2009, “the first thing that computer geeks do upon inventing a new medium is play Dungeons and Dragons with it.” Whether played with dice and pencils, costumes and props, or a videogame console, the RPG codes a particular, specifically contemporary relation of the self of the world, one in which technology and abstraction, fantasy and play are deeply implicated in the routines of everyday life.
Fluxus and Oulipou captured the spirit of a freshly cybernetic world in works that incorporated chance, systems, open-endedness and open relations between author and audience. Gygax and Arneson gave the same spirit a popular form. With a few exceptions, the works in “Big Reality” are not games. Rather, they crystallize in a variety of mediums the expansive attitude toward life that play and imagination afford. The exhibition’s artists grew up in a world with RPGs, in a time when concepts of “virtuality” and “real life” were necessarily disrupted as everyday modes of communicating and receiving information about the world rapidly changed. For them, fantasy is not an escape but one of many facets of an increasingly big reality.
With work by:  Arcanebolt (Mark Beasley, Taras Kemenczy, Alex Iglizian), Bradley BenedettiBFFA3AELaura BrothersJohn BruneauThe Center for Tactical MagicJacob CiocciBrody CondonChris CoyJulia EllingboeDesiree HolmanTimothy HutchingsButt JohnsonDaniel LeyvaGuthrie LonerganNick MontfortShana MoultonBrenna MurphyOregon Painting SocietyRobby RackleffBilly RennekampDeb SokolowEddo SternThird FactionJohn TynesAndrej Ujhazy, and David Wightman.
RSVP on Facebook
Twitter hashtag: #bigR

The “Big Reality” exhibition catalogue includes texts by Brian Droitcour, Tavis Allison, Joanne McNeill and Kristin Lucas (in conversation), Gene McHugh, as well as artists’ texts by The Center of Tactical Magic, Nick Montfort, John Bruneau, and Andrej Ujhazy. It will be available for sale on Lulu.com starting March 12 and at 319 Scholes during the run of the exhibition.
For additional information and image requests, contact: info@319scholes.org.

NET WORK I.R.L (IN THIS ROOM)

a/v,droogs,etc — chris @ 9:06 pm

HEAVY HAPPY CLOSING RECEPTION

droogs,etc — chris @ 7:05 am

IF YOU’RE IN LA GO TO THIS !

MAY 2011

etc — chris @ 2:16 pm

THE CASSOWARY, A STORY BY TULSE LUPER

etc,library — chris @ 10:24 pm

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

a/v,droogs,etc — chris @ 8:43 pm

AN IMPORTANT PROJECT @ IMPORTANT PROJECTS

droogs,etc — chris @ 10:21 am

An Important Project | Chris Coy, Parker Ito, Jon Rafman
February 12, 2010 – March 6, 2011

7 MINUTES IN HEAVEN @ CONTROLROOM

a/v,etc — chris @ 10:17 am


A jet aircraft on a cloudless night began its landing flight-path twenty miles due east from the airport where it was due to land. For the first five miles of its descent, the noise from the jet’s engines disturbed no-one. At the sixth mile, an ornithologist, birdwatching on a reservoir, was irritated by the jet-noise just enough to give the aircraft a quick glance. He turned into a swan. At the seventh mile a naturalist and his wife saw the aircraft through net-curtains and were turned into crows. At the eighth mile, four children in a school dormitory saw the aircraft through a skylight and turned into herons. At the ninth mile, seven night-nurses in an old people’s home saw the plane and turned into swallows. At the tenth mile, twenty-one members of eight families saw the plane and turned into gulls. By the ninteenth mile, twenty-four thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven people in two towns, four villages and a camping-site had seen the plane. Most of them had turned into penguins.

When the plane exploded on the air-strip, a cassowary with a purple beak stepped from the wreckage and checked himself into the VIP lounge.

“Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” What is the role of photography in the space of projected fantasy? A frame of reference for a thing that may or may not have ever existed, a surface that doubles as both well and black hole. The photograph becomes a location of meaning, both spatially and temporally. We rely more and more heavily upon the image to provide a picture of reality that we can depend on, all the while that location to which we have grounded ourselves becomes more and more disparate, two-faced, and untrustworthy. If we lose the ability to image ourselves, we must ask, where physically are we left to exist? And how then can we keep track of time? What can we imagine as the place we long to be? Or will we accept the fate of the image and surrender to formless, timeless, endless fluidity, without the comfort of a moment, a site, a point of isolation?

Please join Karen Adelman, Andrew Cameron, Chris Coy, Valerie Green, Masood Kamandy and Ryan Perez for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Opening Friday, February 11th 7-10pm
Performance by Karen Adelman at 8pm

USC MFA OPEN STUDIOS 2011

a/v,etc — chris @ 7:57 pm

USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS GRADUATE OPEN STUDIOS
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 5, 2011
4:00 PM – 10:00 PM

The Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California is pleased to announce the annual Graduate Open Studios event.

Visit each of the 16 MFA studios, grab a drink with MFA candidates and join members of LA’s vibrant arts community for a film and video screening, live performances and sets by DJ Butchy Fuego and DJ: NA (NGUZUNGUZU). Take advantage of this rare and intimate opportunity to meet and engage with up- and-coming artists and see their work firsthand.

MFA CANDIDATES:
Karen Adelman
Sarah Rara Anderson
Neal Bashor
Tyler Coburn
Chris Coy
Erin Foley
Ryan Garrett
Onya Hogan-Finlay
Marc Horowitz
Gelare Khoshgozaran
John Seal
Sean Townley
Kristen VanDeventer
Paul Vernon
Price Patrick
Walsh Andreas Waris

LOCATION AND DIRECTIONS:
3001 S. Flower St. Los Angeles CA, 90007
The Graduate Fine Arts Building (IFT) is located at 3001 South Flower Street, on the corner of 30th Street and Flower Street. Please enter from the W 30th Street entrance. Limited parking is available on site and on nearby streets. Call 213.743.1804 for directions.

JULIAN ASSANGE + MARC ZUCKERBERG – SNL

etc — chris @ 12:34 pm

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