X-TRA’s 15 Years in 15 Days

at ForYourArt
6020 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Celebrating 15 years of X-TRA in Los Angeles, with 15 days of programming at ForYourArt.
Explore the history of X-TRA, hear supporters and enthusiasts  in conjunction with the unveiling of our new design and new website.

X-TRA is the longest running critical art journal in Los Angeles.
X-TRA has chugged on for 15 years and 57 issues.
We begin the next fifteen years with a 15 day celebration and the launch of a new format, design, and website.

Please join us each and every night!
Check out the schedule below. Unless otherwise specified, all events begin at 7:30 pm.

During our 15 day stay at ForYourArt, X-TRA will present an installation at ForYourArt of the complete library and ephemera of X-TRA and Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism.
Visit the X-TRA store at FYA with back catalogue and artist editions, where you can find special offers and our 15th Anniversary shopping bag.
Browse all 57 issues of X-TRA, our bandanas, the Pasadena Adjacent edition. Take home your favorites.

DAILY CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Monday, October 1, 2012
VOLUME 1
Stephen Berens presents The Los Angeles Times and Me.
A live performance based on the 1998 video of the same name. The video script is comprised of a series of text drawings that compare word usage between the articles Stephen Berens wrote for X-TRA in 1997 and the articles written about art by the four art critics of the Los Angeles Times during the same period.
Performed with Ellen Birrell, Leslie Dick, Karen Dunbar, Elizabeth Pulsinelli, and Damon Willick.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012
VOLUME 2
Why Start An Art Magazine Now? (1997 / 2012)
Part 1: Ellen Birrell and Stephen Berens discuss the conditions under which X-TRA came into being.
Part 2: Travis Diehl talks about his new publication, Prism of Reality, and Andrew Berardini and Sarah Williams discuss their forthcoming online publication, The Art Book Review.
Prism of Reality is an artist-run journal that treats art as de facto and absolute, itself constitutive of reality.
The Art Book Review is a compendium of reviews about books vaguely relating to the subject of art (artist books and ephemera, catalogs, monographs, art history, and book-length works of art criticism or general literature about art.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012
VOLUME 3
Debate Drawing Party:
When was the last time we all sat around and made drawings together and listened to politics?!
7:30 – 9:30
We’ll  start the debate late at 7:30pm and draw while they sketch out their domestic policies.
In honor of our Sketchbook Issue. Still-lives, paper and pens provided, please bring other materials.
Trading and collaborations encouraged. (refreshments will be provided.)

Thursday, October 4, 2012
VOLUME 4
Off-site Event:
Join us at the MAK Center to support
ARTISTS + INSTITUTIONS: Common Ground
“What is the Common Ground for Artists and Institutions?”
7-9 PM
at
Schindler House
835 N. Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069
For more information, see ARTISTS+INSTITUTIONS or MAK Center

Friday, October 5, 2012
VOLUME 5
Revisiting the revisiting of feminism.
In 2003, X-TRA published “Something Like A Bridge: Roundtable discussion with Leslie Dick, Sharon Hayes, Mary Kelly, and Kerry Tribe. A Conversation on the Occasion of Gloria: Another Look at Feminist Art in the 1970s.” This 2012 roundtable will take that 2003 conversation as a starting point and invite the participants to take another look at Feminist art, now, after the last ten years of looking at a lot of feminist art.
Leslie Dick, Mary Kelly, and Kerry Tribe. Moderated by Shana Lutker.

Saturday, October 6, 2012
VOLUME 6
Off-site Event:
X-TRA celebrates MATERIAL.
In honor of our peer publication MATERIAL, join us in Frogtown at Blow Your Noses!,
8-11pm,
at Studio, Details here.
Learn more about MATERIAL here.

Sunday, October 7, 2012
VOLUME 7
Jan Tumlir presents
Black and White Paintings and Albums
A talk with images and music
5 – 7 pm
Volume 7 featured four excerpts from Jan’s The Magic Circle: On The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper and the Invention of Art Rock. The current issue contains his feature, “Dark-Side Minimalism.” This talk will bridge the two.

Monday, October 8, 2012
VOLUME 8
William Leavitt presents Habitat
Habitat is a dialog environment for two groups of neighbors who engage each other in adjoining suburban backyards of a small mid-western town. It is meant as a kind of ambient theater, where casual dialog and stage action lessen the emotional force of an operatic plot.

This is a special opportunity—A full production of the play will be presented in April 2013 at The Kitchen in New York City.
William Leavitt’s artist project, Organism (a theatrical habitat), appeared in X-TRA Volume 8 number 1 in fall 2005.

See Leavitt’s related artist’s project from Volume 8 here.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012
VOLUME 9
Micol Hebron presents 1 Image 1 Minute
1 Image 1 Minute was a written column and live event in which invited participants select a significant photograph that they discuss for 1 minute. The inspiration for the 1 Image 1 Minute column in X-TRA was a similar project produced by Belgian director Agnès Varda (and later written about by Rosalind Krauss) for French television in 1983. In this live version for X-TRA’s 15th anniversary celebration, 30 Angelenos from various facets of the art world discuss an image they find interesting, inspiring, or thought-provoking. The 1 Image 1 Minute column in X-TRA began in 2008 and there have been live versions produced at REDCAT, the Creative Artist’s Agency, and the Pacific Design Center with the support of Art Los Angeles Contemporary. Over 200 people have participated thus far.
Participants to include (list in progress): Jerri Allyn, Sarah Beadle, Cassandra Coblentz, Michael Dahan, Corazon del Sol, David DiMichele, Chloe Flores, David Burns, Farah Karapetian, Dennis Keeley, Devin Kenny, Ellina Kevorkian, Joseph Llanes, Alan Nakagawa, Lara Jo Regan, John Spiak, Dani Ohana Tull, and Jodi Wille.
Read a 1 Image 1 Minute column here

Wednesday, October 10, 2012
VOLUME 10
The Art of Criticism, a panel discussion
Organized and moderated by Damon Willick with Sharon Mizota, Doug Harvey, and Aram Moshayedi.
Read Christopher Bedford’s piece on Art Without Criticism, and Damon Willick’s response, Criticism After Art.

Thursday, October 11, 2012
VOLUME 11
“Country Lessons” hosted by Vanessa Place
Join Vanessa Place for a rigorous performance of critical and corporeal engagement of class and the right movement of art. Wear comfortable shoes.
Read one of Vanessa’s first pieces for X-TRA, a review of Phantom Sightings at Lacma.

Friday, October 12, 2012
VOLUME 12
Performance: Leslie Dick’s “Boundary Lines” & PDAs by CamLab

Leslie Dick presents her text/image piece on the mother’s idealization of the body of the child.

In honor of X-TRA’s 15th Anniversary, CamLab will present fifteen PDAs (public displays of affection) from the duo’s archive. Recorded over several months in and around Los Angeles, the PDAs now function as scores designed for spontaneous or premeditated performance.

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.

Read Leslie Dick on Walid Raad in Volume 12

Saturday, October 13, 2012
VOLUME 13
FIRE IN THE LIBRARY: FIND BIG MIND
Join us at ForYourArt on Saturday at 7:30pm for this cross discipline talk influenced by the work of Eugenia Butler (with *surprise* multimedia component). We have an amazing line up of participants

more info here https://www.facebook.com/events/375482415879206/

During X-TRA’s thirteenth year of publication, four consecutive articles were printed from transcripts of Eugenia Butler’s 1993 Kitchen Table talks. To celebrate this, organizers Corazon del Sol (Eugenia’s daughter), Karen Dunbar (X-TRA editor), and Leila Hamidi (Eugenia’s friend and arhivist) will host the conversation FIRE IN THE LIBRARY: FIND BIG MIND.

This conversation is inspired by Eugenia P. Butler’s Kitchen Table talks (1993) and her Fire in the Library talks (2000-04). Both artworks took the form of conversations in which the artist invited others to join in a discussion about questions that mattered to them, as human beings and within their various disciplines.

The open-ended question that will be posed is: “What does an idea look like?” The space will take the form that Eugenia developed for the Fire in the Library conversations where the participants are seated in a circle, surrounded by their audience, who were invited to be active listeners and witnesses to the conversation.

Read X-TRA’s series of excerpts of Eugenia Butler’s Kitchen Table Talks.

Sunday, October 14, 2012
VOLUME 14
Chinese Cocktail listening party with Robert Wilhite
Talk with the artist about his musical sculptures, view past performances, and participate in hands-on demonstration for audience members of instruments. Hosted by Shana Lutker and Aram Moshayedi.

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. X-TRA presented a re-staging of Robert Wilhite’s Chinese Cocktail as part of the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival on January 24 2012.

Learn more about X-TRA’s presentation of Chinese Cocktail here.

Monday, October 15, 2012
VOLUME 15
X-TRA=XV CAKE PARTY!!!
The finale of our 15 Days, to celebrate the new issue and the future of X-TRA.
Featuring live music hoe-down with the Harmonica Rascals, DJ Jan Tumlir, Deep End Ranch Home Brew, and X-TRA special commissioned desserts by Liz Glynn, Sarah Beadle, Amy von Harrington, Travis Diehl, Jacci den Hartog and more!

LA-based Harmonica Rascals play old-time Americana music. The string band was formed by artist David Bunn (guitar & vocals) in collaboration with champion fiddler Heather Bennett.  The project takes its name and inspiration from visual artist, Thomas Hart Benton’s old-time music band of the same name, formed in the 1930s in New York City. Made up of Benton, other artists and his students, including Jackson Pollack, his was the first urban revival Americana music band. Joining the Rascals for this performance will be Trevor Linsey on upright bass, Lynn Shipley Sokolow on clawhammer banjo  and Sadie Cibula on vocals…plus special guests.