X-TRA Winter Launch Event

Skeletal Readings — A meditation and conversation with Asher Hartman and Rossen Ventzislavov.

Wednesday, December 5
7–9pm

ICA LA
1717 E 7th St
Los Angeles, CA 90021

This event is free and open to the public, please rsvp here.

Drawing on his practice as an intuitive, Asher Hartman will lead a non-acting theatrical exercise to strip the body to its imaginary skeletal form. Rossen will then join Asher in conversation. Using Rossen’s review in the winter issue as a point of departure, other topics of discussion will include: the hegemony of narrative (in the theater and beyond), the gravitational pull of reductive identity (persons, personas etc.), the contemporary cultural defanging of criticism and criticality, and maybe even the vagaries of gender.

ASHER HARTMAN is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, director and intuitive practitioner whose work at the junction of visual art and theater centers on the exploration of the self in relation to Western histories and ideologies. He is currently director of Gawdafful National Theater in Los Angeles.

ROSSEN VENTZISLAVOV is a philosopher and cultural critic specializing in aesthetics, architectural theory, literature, popular music and performance art. He has been a member of the Encounter performance art collective since 2014 and is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Woodbury University.

Thanks to the ICA LA for hosting and to the Department of Cultural Affairs Los Angeles for their support.