THE KITCHEN TABLE is a reprise of the series of conversations organized by Eugenia P. Butler in 1993 at the ART/LA art fair.

Situated within the College Art Association Conference at the same LA Convention Center that was the site for the ’93 talks, we will bring together a group of articulate cultural thinkers of our time—primarily artists—seating them around a table, perhaps the oldest cultural institution.

To create the deepest discourse possible about the powerful impact of art on society. Their focus will be to better understand our present, and, by using the visionary tools of the artist, to begin to visualize our future.

Watch live feed of the conversations on a monitor at the College Art Association Conference, or see it online here:  http://www.livestream.com/xtraevents

TALK 1

Thursday 12:30 pm

Faith Wilding
Miles Coolidge
Kerry Tribe
John Tain
Ana Prvacki
Cindy Smith
Shana Lutker

TALK 2

Friday 12:30 pm

Ashley Hunt
Marie Shurkus
Mark Lee
Charles Gaines
Lita Albuquerque
Gabriel Ferrer
Corazon del Sol &
Karen  Dunbar

TALK 3

Friday 3pm

Marcos Lutyens
Bob Bates
Barbara T. Smith
Dana Duff
Leila Hamidi

Most integral to this event will be the invited guests. The participants will be drawn from the local and the international community, having been carefully chosen for their qualities as human beings and artists. They are characterized as deep and catalytic thinkers who also have the ability to enter and move into a dialogue. They will be fed and housed within the community—in effect serving as bio-implants into Los Angeles. As the city itself sits poised for change, aware of its shadow while gazing at the horizon, THE KITCHEN TABLE examines the power of art to affect culture, using discourse as a social tool.

During the conference, inside a secret room—a metaphor for the soul of a society—there will be three “meals.” The 40 x 11 foot space will reflect the essence of a kitchen, setting up with delicious food and drink, the ideal atmosphere to engage in such a dialogue. Because each meal involves different guests, with each guest reflecting a different background, experience, and ideology, THE KITCHEN TABLE, like life, will be collaborative and its outcome mysterious.

This ‘meeting of the minds’ will be enlightening and entertaining. A video documentary will be made of the event. Video monitors will be placed within the Convention Center to broadcast the dialogues and they will be live streamed on the internet.

More information on the original Kitchen Table talks: http://eugeniapbutler.com/
Read excerpts from the Talks in X-TRA

Thanks to the College Art Association for making this event possible.

Become a part of the Kitchen Table and email us your questions to editors@x-traonline.org with “Kitchen Table Question” in the subject line.

Your questions will be credited and included in the documentation of the Kitchen Table.

Notes to Eugenia made to herself a few months before embarking on THE KITCHEN TABLE:
Make something to listen to the utter sound of the self… holding a form while also changing and transforming. Listen to it. Make something to enlarge the ability to hear.
The acuity and aliveness of the Gap…passing through that gap…electricity…mining the interstices. MATRIX
A Matrix of power rather than a hierarchy of power
Make art which has the ability to act in the real world
Mix art and non art context
Connect art and mundane life
Find a way to inject its expression into the global discourse
The interweaving of the visible and the invisible
The possibility of tapping into that order of reality that is behind the world of appearances
The reflexive relationship of knowledge and nature
Observed patterns of matter are reflections of patterns of mind
Every marksman knows that if a bullet misses its target, the gun was not aimed correctly

click on images to view larger files.

Letter to the Editors from The Getty in response to “Under the Sun:”

X-TRA is proud to present Robert Wilhite’s Chinese Cocktail
as part of the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival.

Originally performed in 1978 at the San Francisco Art Institute as Chinese Cocktail and then at the Newport Harbor Museum of Art as Ido Ceremonial Music, Wilhite’s musical performances attempt to demonstrate the potential sounds of otherwise mute objects. The concert is played on Wilhite’s musical sculptures––a combination of original instruments from 1978 and a number of re-imagined objects produced specifically for this event, including Cone, Cube, Sphere, Silent Cube, Black Box, Black Ball, Silent Harp, and Spinners.

For this restaging of Chinese Cocktail, the instruments are played by both original performers and an ensemble of the artist’s recent collaborators. The program will also include Parallelogram, and Wilhite’s music from Ramona (1977), one of his collaborations with Guy de Cointet.

Wilhite worked with X-TRA editors Shana Lutker and Aram Moshayedi to bring this restaging of Chinese Cocktail to the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre, where Wilhite and Guy de Cointet initially staged their collaboration Ethiopia in 1975. Concurrently, ephemera from Ethiopia is featured in the exhibition Civic Virtue at the neighboring Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in the Barnsdall Art Park.

 In 1978, Wilhite described the concert Chinese Cocktail:

1. The orchestra was composed of 10 musical instruments which I made. Each was non-traditional. The geometric shapes of the instruments were direct visual art references while the sounds they created only remotely fit into the categories of wind / string / percussion.
2. I devised my own musical notation system for the performance. I used symbols which related to the geometric shapes of the instruments, and created a type of hieroglyphic system. Somewhat crude, but effective. The music notation simply provided an order for the musicians to play. They followed no rhythm pattern, and the sound created by each musician with the instrument was up to that person. The musicians were all friends and most had no music background.

Robert Wilhite’s work is represented in a number of exhibitions that are part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative, including “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980,” organized by the Getty Center; “Downtown LA,” Las Perlas, with Larry Bell, Ed Moses, Robert Irwin, and Laddie John Dill; “Los Angeles goes life: Performance Art in Southern California 1970–1983,” LACE, Los Angeles; and “Civic Virtue: The Impact of the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery” at the LA Municipal Gallery at Barndsall Art Park. The Getty Center presented IGLU in December 2011, the second of four plays Wilhite made in collaboration with Guy de Cointet. Currently, Wilhite has a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Amsterdam, “The Robert Wilhite Store for Art and Design,” on view until February 2012.

Images of the January 24th concert:

Press inquiries, please contact Shana Lutker at editors@x-traonline.org, or 323/983-0279.

The Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival will
transform Southern California over eleven days from January19-29.
Featuring more than 30 major performances and large-scale outdoor
projects, the festival will include new commissions, reinventions,
and restagings inspired by works created by artists during the
Pacific Standard Time era.

Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
The festival is organized by the Getty Research Institute and LAXART; support is provided by the Getty Foundation.

The first four in the series arrived this past week!

Original drawings by KATE COSTELLO, HARRY GAMBOA JR., KAY ROSEN, and JESSE WILLENBRING  Silkscreen on cotton bandanas.
Printed in limited editions of 50, each bandana is 21 x 21 inches.

>Buy them in our store!

Inspired by the Artist’s Project in our new winter issue, the editors of X-TRA invite you to join us for a reading of artworks that exist only in written, immaterial form.

The evening’s readings will be a mix of historical and contemporary works: outlined ideas and proposals for imagined objects, images, events, or exhibitions that remain text only-scripts, descriptions or proposals that could never be or intentionally have never been realized in other forms.

PARTICIPANTS:

Stephen Berens, Audrey Chan, Leslie Dick, Karen Dunbar, Rita Gonzalez, Glenn Harcourt, Micol Hebron, Julian Hoeber, Shana Lutker, Emily Mast, CamLab, Joseph Mosconi, Aram Moshayedi, Kris Paulsen, Elizabeth Pulsinelli, Kim Schoen, Nizan Shaked, Damon Willick

The Program

1. Stephen Berens
   “Everyman’s Infinite Art” by Harold Gregor, 1966.
2. Leslie Dick
   “Rules for Dreaming” by Leslie Dick, 2004.
3. Damon Willick
   “Concept Tableau” by Edward Keinholz , 1966.
4. Aram Moshayedi
   “March 26, 1969,” proposal by Allen Ruppersberg for the exhibition “One Month” organized by Seth Siegelaub, 1969.
5. Kim Schoen
   “The Artist” by Kenneth Koch, 1962.
6. Vanessa Place
   Excerpts from Lee Lozano Notebooks, 1969-1970.
7. Kris Paulsen
   “The Dolphin Embassy” by Curtis Schreier of Ant Farm, 1978.
8. Julian Hoeber
   “Michael Asher” from A Report on the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art by Maurice Tuchman, 1967-1971.
9. Emily Mast
   From Oeuvres by Edouard Leve, 2002.
10. Eli Pulsinelli
    Excerpts from Learning to Love You More by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July, 2007.
11. Micol Hebron
    Immaterials and propositions from 10 Women as collected and read by Micol Hebron. The women included: Dana Hoey on photographic clichés, Sydney Snyder, Diane Calder, Cara Baldwin, Nancy Buchanan, Mara Lonner, Susan Silton, Cara Despain and Mary Toscano, Angela Ellsworth and Leigh McCarthy: Glacial Risk Management Institute (GRMI), Sara Fowler, and Catherine Daly, 2011.
12. Audrey Chan
    “Provenance: Unknown” by Audrey Chan, 2011.
13. Rita Gonzalez and Joseph Mosconi
    “Predictions” by Tom Marioni, 1978.
14. Nizan Shaked
    “Hypothesis” by Adrian Piper, 1969.
15. Glenn Harcourt
    “The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away” by Ilya Kabakov, 1977.
16. Karen Dunbar
    Artworks and texts by Eugenia P. Butler
17. CamLab
    Press release for “Not Having to Choose My Partners,” a solo show by CamLab at Sea and Space, 2008.
18. Shana Lutker
    Press release for the exhibition “The Plan” at Stella Danaro Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT, 1969. Courtesy of Mario Garcia Torres.

All proceeds go to the publication of X-TRA. X-TRA is published by Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism, a 501c3 non-profit organization.

Please email us at editors [at] x-traonline.org if you have any questions.

Lunch, hiking, and pool-lounging
at the ranch of our co-founder Ellen Birrell.

Live music by the Deep End Ranch String Band.

We hope to see you there!

– Jeff Beall, Stephen Berens, Ellen Birrell,
Leslie Dick, Karen Dunbar, Micol Hebron,
Shana Lutker, Aram Moshayedi,
Elizabeth Pulsinelli, Nizan Shaked,
Jan Tumlir, Brica Wilcox, & Damon Willick

Images from the picnic:

Presentation by Zoe Crosher with Jenée Misraje

Screening of two Charles Ludlam films,
Museum of Wax and the West Coast premiere of Gooseflesh,
introduced by Bradford Nordeen

Pick up the new issue, and have a special Judy Garland cocktail.

Go to Facebook Page for Event

Zoe Crosher contributed the Artist Project to the issue, and has a billboard project with LAXART,part of LAXART Public Initiatives, on view on the same block as Mandrake. She will present source material from both projects, in collaboration with curator Jenée Misraje.

Bradford Nordeen wrote about Charles Ludlam for X-TRA, and he will screenLudlam’s Museum of Wax and the west coast premiere of the recently re-discoveredGooseflesh.

Antony Hegarty says of the experimental filmmaker: “Charles Ludlam is one of those people who, had he survived the AIDS epidemic, would be at the forefront of those shaping our collective NYC consciousness today with his art and commentary.” http://www.ifccenter.com/films/the-lost-films-of-charles-ludlam/

Left image: Zoe Crosher, Transgressing the Pacific, A Star Is Born from the series LA Like, 2010, Mockup for billboard at LAXART.
Right image: Still from Charles Ludlam’s Gooseflesh, 1967-69, 22 minutes, 16mm-to-video with Henry Geldzhaler, John Vacarro, Everett Quinton, Black-Eyed Susan and friends.