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Dear Friends and Everybody,

Join us to celebrate The Benefit of Friends Collected, Vol. 2 and its contributors on Thursday, May 28th.

We’re collecting friends together, and everyone will benefit.

Thursday. May 28, 7:30 PM
Hosted by LA Contemporary Archive and Ghebaly Gallery
2245 E Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90021

In case you missed it, this year Project X Projects published The Benefit of Friends Collected, Vol. 2, featuring 45 artists writing about each others’ work. The artists were randomly assigned their subjects.

The book’s organizer, Jesse Benson, will host a short panel discussion about the book with some of the contributors.
Followed by a massive White Elephant Gift Exchange with book contributors—a fun way to collectively explore the issues of the randomly assigned gift of dialogue that is key to the book’s structure.

** Bring a wrapped “gift” for the White Elephant Exchange. **
Wrapped gift guidelines: Your wrapped gift should be technically valued under $25 (although it can be priceless by other indicators): something funny, weird, arty, junky, or actually nice.

What’s a “White Elephant Gift Exchange”?
A White Elephant Gift Exchange is a popular Holiday event where people vie to walk away with the best present. It also goes by Yankee Swap, Dirty Santa, and a plethora of other names. More details below.

There will be drinks and food, too.

Hope to see you!

Very best,
Shana & Jesse

List of Contributors: Kelly Akashi, Animal Charm, David Berezin, Simon Bill, Sergio Bromberg, Kathrin Burmester, John Burtle, Jedediah Caesar, Joshua Callaghan, Anthony Carfello, Rachel Foullon, Joey Frank, Liz Glynn, Patrick Goddard, Patrick Hill, John Houck, Bettina Hubby, Jamie Isenstein, Vishal Jugdeo, Stanya Kahn, William Kaminski, Nicholas Kersulis, Alice Könitz, Jason Kunke, Gabriel Kuri, Lisa Lapinski, Caitlin Lonegan, Marie Lorenz, Molly Lowe, Brian Mann, Emily Mast, Nicole Miller, Joshua Nathanson, Jed Ochmanek, Virginia Poundstone, Sarah Rara, Elise Rasmussen, Isaac Resnikoff, Matt Rich, Amanda Ross-Ho, Miljohn Ruperto, Asha Schechter, Alex Slade, Jill Spector, Clarissa Tossin

More about the book>

White Elephant Gift Exchange Rules:
1. Each player brings one wrapped gift to contribute to a common pool.
The gift exchange organizer should provide information on what type of gift people should bring.

2. Each player writes their name on a slip of paper and gives it to the organizer.

3. The organizer pulls the first player’s name from  hat.
The first player selects a gift from the pool and opens it.
Make sure everyone can see the gift!

4. The first player picks the second player’s name from the hat.
Each player going forward will draw the subsequent name.

5. The following players can choose to either pick an unwrapped gift from the pool or steal a previous player’s gift.
Anyone who gets their gift stolen in this way can do the same – choose a new gift or steal from someone else.

To keep things moving along, there are a couple of limits on gift swapping:
A present can only be stolen once per turn, which means players who have a gift stolen from them have to wait to get it back.
After three swaps, the turn automatically comes to an end (otherwise things could drag on for a long time).

6. After all players have had a turn, the first player gets a chance to swap the gift he or she is holding for any other opened gift.

More White Elephant Gift Exchange Rules>