PACIFIC STANDARD TIME FESTIVAL Announced for January 2018
By: A.A. Cristi Nov. 21, 2017
The Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, a celebration of performance art presented as part of the Getty-led initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, will run from January 11 through 21, 2018. Organized by REDCAT, CalArts' Center for Contemporary Arts, in collaboration with partner organizations throughout the city, the 11-day festival will feature more than 75 works by Latin American and Latino artists, performed at more than 20 indoor and outdoor spaces throughout greater Los Angeles. Supported by a major grant from the Getty Foundation, events will range from large-scale, site-specific performances to multi-artist evenings and will be presented in parks, plazas, galleries, theaters, and busy urban settings.
"Over the last two months, art museums, galleries, and performing arts spaces throughout Southern California have presented exhibitions and events as part of PST: LA/LA, inspiring thousands of people to explore works by Latin American, Latino, and Chicano artists," said James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. "Now, with the Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, supported by the Getty Foundation, we will connect artists from more than a dozen countries with communities throughout Los Angeles with vital performances that address a variety of issues relevant to the people of the regions represented throughout PST: LA/LA."
"We're enthusiastic about working with our partner organizations to present events ranging from community-based projects in neighborhood parks to industrial-strength performance installations," said Mark Murphy, Executive Director of REDCAT, who is organizing the festival with Associate Director Edgar Miramontes and Gallery Director/Curator Ruth Estévez. "Many of these influential artists are confronting urgent topics, building on the traditions of performance art practice in Latin America and Southern California that are deeply rooted in a history of political and social activism, protest, and struggles for human rights and against colonialism."
Following is the schedule for Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA.
Various festival sites
January 11 - 21
Throughout the festival, Rio de Janeiro art collective OPAVIVARÁ! will activate various locations with interactive events, engaging the public in playful explorations of issues related to the use of urban space. Since 2005, the group has invited participation in ephemeral interventions and community projects that incorporate installation, performance, publishing, sound and video, commenting on Brazil's political corruption and economic inequality. Astrid Hadad | I Am Made in Mexico
The Mayan Theater
January 11
Fierce Mexico City-based performance art diva Astrid Hadad mixes feminism and fabulous excess in extravagant events featuring a live band and outrageous wearable art. A social critic, historian, and activist, Hadad confronts Mexican politics, hypocrisy, machismo, and corruption in cabaret-style productions, using an unconventional vocal and visual style filled with music dubbed "Heavy Nopal" (after the cactus juice to make tequila), which combines ranchera, bolero, rumba and rock. Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol | Tijuana
Skirball Cultural Center gallery
January 11 & 12
Mixing video art, a sculptural stage environment, and piercingly poetic texts, the Mexico City collective Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol blurs the line between fiction and reality, linking work and life and giving voice to overlooked moments of social and political history. In Tijuana, performer Gabino Rodríguez depicts a social experiment in which a man mysteriously shows up as a resident of a neighborhood with a new sweatshop job and a secret history. The collective confronts questions such as: What does democracy mean in Mexico today for some 50 million people who live on the minimum wage? What do we expect from democracy? What do we expect from politics beyond democracy? This program is organized in partnership with the Skirball Cultural Center. Ligia Lewis | minor matter
REDCAT theater
January 12 - 14
In minor matter, the Dominican Republic-born Ligia Lewis collaborates with two other international performers in a dynamic interplay between light and shadow, reference and imagination, and affect and embodiment. Their work opens up a celebratory space where the intimate poetics of the performative moment question ingrained symbols. In a time of anti-blackness, minor mattersaturates a black-box space with vital black expression. Sylvia Palacios Whitman
REDCAT gallery
January 11 & 13
In collaboration with local performers, Sylvia Palacios Whitman activates sculptural props that she describes as "images"-giant hands, a volcano, mummies, and mountains. The program includes reenactments of actions first carried out in the 1970s, exemplifying her distinctive style of visual performance combining a rich Latin American pictorial sensibility with the Minimalism of New York's 1970s dance scene. Although Palacios Whitman is known to enthusiasts on the East Coast, this is the first West Coast staging of one of her performances. This program is organized in partnership with the Hammer Museum. Colectivo AM | La Pista de Baile
LACE gallery and outdoor sites
Banco Universal de Pasos: January 11 - 19
La Pista de Baile: January 20
Throughout the festival, five members of Mexico's Colectivo AM will solicit and sample dance steps and moves contributed by LA residents via a mobile kiosk installed at LACE and other neighborhood locations. The video samples they amass become part of their Banco Universal de Pasos (Universal Bank of Steps) and the celebratory La Pista de Baile (The Dance Floor), a large participatory dance and music event at an outdoor Hollywood location, activated by a DJ and projections of the community's dance moves. This program is organized in partnership with LACE. Edgar Fabián Frías | Cuerpos Unidos: Performances in Dialogue with Laura Aguilar
Vincent Price Art Museum
January 13
Cuerpos Unidos is a performance and social practice event organized by artist Edgar Fabián Frías in collaboration with the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM). It features new works commissioned from five Los Angeles-based artists responding to photographer Laura Aguilar's retrospective at VPAM. The daylong program features pieces by Frías, Irina Contreras, Cesia Dominguez, Cindy Vallejo, and Freddy Villalobos and culminates with a collective ritual developed by the artists. This program is organized in partnership with the Vincent Price Art Museum. Live Artists Live: Simultaneity
USC Graduate Fine Arts Building (IFT)
January 13 & 14
Performance artists including Nao Bustamante, Carlos Martiel, Mickey Negrón, Rafa Esparza, Xandra Ibarra, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, and Dorian Wood will come together for Simultaneity, the second iteration of the USC Roski School of Art and Design's performance-art biennial, Live Artists Live. In two days of performances, dialogues, a Long Table event led by Beatriz Cortez, and more, acclaimed artists and scholars will explore the simultaneity within binational and multicultural lives. Diana Taylor, the founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in New York, and author of The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, will offer the keynote address. This program is organized in partnership with USC Roski School of Arts and Design / Visions and Voices. Carmina Escobar | FIESTA PERPETUA!
Echo Park Lake
January 13
Floating rafts on picturesque Echo Park Lake become mobile stages for FIESTA PERPERTUA!, a community ritual of manifestation led by acclaimed experimental Mexican vocalist Carmina Escobar with the 40-member Oaxacan youth brass band Maqueos Music, conducted by Yulissa Maqueos, and celebrated movement artist Oguri. Throughout the afternoon, performance interventions take place on and around the lake, following a mystical algorithmic schedule until sundown. Originally commissioned by Machine Project, Escobar's ritualistic performance re-imagines a processional festival as a communal experience that reveals the syncretic, cross-cultural nature of LA. Raul Baltazar | My Sereno: Two Ritual Performances Honoring Our Past, Present, and Future Generations
Ascot Hills Park
January 14 & 21
A project by artist Raul Baltazar in which all are invited to participate, My Sereno is a convening of Angelenos to honor the struggles and journeys of past, present, and future generations. Comprising a ritual procession, picnic, dialogue, folk dances, and music, the event will take place on two successive Sundays. Participants are advised to wear comfortable attire and may bring food to share for the picnic. Lorena Wolffer | If She is Mexico, Who Beat Her Up?
The Armory Center for the Arts
January 14
In Lorena Wolffer's performance of If She is Mexico, Who Beat Her Up?, originally performed during 1997 and 1998, she presented herself as a physically abused fashion model, in a visual metaphor for a Mexico that insists on its narrative of vitality and progress even while suffering violence. Wolffer's clothing and props evoked the Mexican flag; her soundtrack mixed mientras rap and recordings of U.S. Senate hearings on the drug trade. In a new interactive lecture performance, Wolffer continues to embody the body politic through her own body, while examining who is implicated in powerful, overlapping, and unjust economic systems. This program is organized in partnership with the Armory Center for the Arts. Encounter #43 and #44
Human Resources gallery and secret outdoor location
January 14 & 20
Interdisciplinary artists from Los Angeles are joined by five international guests to engage in a practice called Encounter, organized by Peruvian American artist Mariel Carranza. Encounters are durational, improvised, action/time/space-based performances inhabiting private studios, art venues, and public spaces across the city. For this festival, more than a dozen Los Angeles artists will be joined by international guests from Latin America and Europe for two durational performances: one indoors, and one outdoors. Audiences are invited to come and go as they wish, and a meal will be shared at the end of the performance. This program is organized in partnership with Human Resources LA. Alexia Miranda | Memoria Sonora
El Pueblo de Los Angeles Plaza
January 14 & 16
Salvadoran performance artist and activist Alexia Miranda brings together several other festival artists and guests in a sonic community to create a collective, global voice in a world fractured by conflict. Memoria Sonora is a participatory musical and ritual performance for a group of artists arranged in a large circle in an outdoor location. A composed score of music and spoken word is the basis for an improvised collective work, using sound as a language of vibration and a momentarily shared consciousness. Teatro Línea de Sombra | Durango 66
Lower Grand Street
January 16 - 18
A cavernous underground urban space will be transformed for this industrial-strength installation/performance using construction vehicles, tons of soil, and giant projections. Mexican performance collective Teatro Línea de Sombra's Durango 66 (or Duran66o) draws connections between the student protest movement in Mexico in the 1960s and the recent massacres in Mexico attributed to crime syndicates and government collusion, including the mass murders discovered in Durango in 2011 and other recent atrocities. The piece resumes the action taken by a group of students in Durango almost fifty years ago, seeking to reflect on how the social risks involved in privatization and corporate overexploitation of natural resources were not perceptible at the time. Nao Bustamante | Teach Me Spanish/Enséñame al Español
Outside the Westlake/MacArthur Park metro station
January 17
At a portable kiosk at the bustling MacArthur Park market, artist Nao Bustamante will invite participants to help her learn Spanish in a live, interactive environment. Many second- or third-generation Latinx immigrants in California have lost their mother tongue, in a phenomenon common enough to have earned its own slang term, "Pocho/a." Bustamante examines the cultural shame of not speaking Spanish in this participatory performance, in which other kinds of cultural exchange may also be explored, as participants go through the process of teaching the language through conversation, giving tests, and making flashcards. The outcome is an appreciation for Spanish speakers, and for those who are willing to learn and engage. Artemisa Clark | La clase de dibujo libre/Free Drawing Class
The Armory Center for the Arts
January 17
Los Angeles-based performance and installation artist Artemisa Clark recreates a street action originally performed by artist/activist Ema Villanueva, who presented a series of performances in Mexico City's public plazas in the early 2000s. Villanueva posed as a model, using the practice of drawing from a live nude to reflect on contemporary social issues such as feminism and social justice. In this performance, Clark considers Villanueva's actions while offering another interpretation of the traditional role of the model. Villanueva's La clase de dibujo (The Drawing Class) is represented in the Armory's exhibition Below the Underground: Renegade Art and Action in 1990s Mexico. This program is organized in partnership with the Armory Center for the Arts. Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani | Discurso de Promoción
REDCAT theater
January 18 - 20
"Yuyachkani" is a Quechuan word meaning "I am thinking, I am remembering." Since 1971, Peru's Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani has devoted itself to the collective exploration of embodied social memory, particularly in relation to questions of ethnicity, violence, and memory in Peru. Incorporating visual arts, theatricality, and the poetics of found objects, the collective's multidisciplinary performance Discurso de Promoción (Promotional Speech) confronts a revisionist history that the group perceives in public relations campaigns about Peru's upcoming 2021 Bicentennial. Rubén Martinez and Raquel Gutiérrez | Variedades
The Mayan Theater
January 18
LA-based performers Rubén Martinez and Raquel Gutiérrez will host Variedades, an interdisciplinary performance with music, spoken word, theater, comedy and the visual arts, loosely based on the Mexican vaudeville shows of early 20th century Los Angeles in which Martinez's grandparents performed as a musical duo. Bringing political and intellectual depth and a performance art edge to history, the program curated B. Marcus Kuiland-Nazario will feature performances by Alice Bag, Nao Bustamante, Rafa Esparza, Selene Luna, Marisela Norte, Dorian Wood and others. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa | El Corazón del espantapájaros (Heart of the Scarecrow)
LACMA's Rodin Sculpture Garden
January 19
Guatemalan artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa's participation in the PST: LA/LA exhibition A Universal History of Infamy is an installation and a performance titled El Corazón del espantapájaros (Heart of the Scarecrow), after a play by Guatemalan playwright Hugo Carrillo. The costumes and props in the installation are activated for the performance by five LA-based performers working under the direction of the artist. Despite the critical success of the play in the 1960s, a 1975 student production faced brutal repression and censorship, which led to the cancellation of the show and the company's entire theatrical season. Theater and political resistance continues to be a line of research for Ramírez-Figueroa. This program is presented in partnership with LACMA. Oscar Santillán | Correspondances (After Charles Baudelaire)
LACMA's Los Angeles Times Central Court
January 19
For Correspondances (after Charles Baudelaire), Ecuadorian artist Oscar Santillán devised a simple data visualization system that allows an opera singer to read the cracks of a building as musical notation, transforming crevices and fissures in the architecture into sound. Santillán is one of the participating artists in A Universal History of Infamy at LACMA. Correspondances (after Charles Baudelaire) was first performed in Paris in 2013. Soprano Juliana Snapper will perform. This program is presented in partnership with LACMA. Mercedes Azpilicueta | La Facultad
REDCAT gallery
January 19
Two quotations incorporated into the book The Words of Others by Argentinian artist León Ferrari are the points of departure for this work by Argentinian artist Mercedes Azpilicueta: the poetic words of Yuko Yamaguchi, a survivor of the 1945 US attack on Hiroshima, describing the moment the atomic bomb fell, and the words of Justine, the main character of the book Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu (1787) by the Marquis de Sade. With the help of queer Chicana poet and feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, Azpilicueta will present a fictional script made of gestures, movements, and sounds. Carmen Argote: If only it were that easy...
Griffith Park
January 20
Artist Carmen Argote invites LA-based artists and cultural workers who ride motorcycles to help her develop the skills necessary to complete a cross-border journey from Guadalajara to LA on her father's prized Moto Guzzi motorcycle, reversing a journey he made in the year 2000. Each person who agrees to impart his or her motorcycle know-how will be invited to develop a set of instructions and tasks, pertaining to both riding and potentially fraught social interactions, that will comprise the performance score. This program is organized in partnership with 18th Street Arts Center. Naomi Rincón Gallardo | The Formaldehyde Trip
The Broad
January 20
Presented as part of The Broad's series En Cuatro Patas (On All Fours), featuring feminist Latinx performance and media artists who ruminate on and fantasize about alternative embodiments, Naomi Rincón Gallardo's The Formaldehyde Trip is a speculative fiction, comprising a cycle of songs and videos dedicated to murdered Mixtec activist Bety Cariño. The work is a mixture of Mesoamerican cosmologies and decolonial feminist perspectives; crafty and ornate props and settings; echoes from Mexican B movies and sci-fi films of the 1960s and '70s; sounds and voices from the past, lurking into the future; and lyrics addressing women's struggles against the background of the dispossession of their lands, bodies and cultures. This program is organized in partnership with The Broad.
Carlos Martiel, Andil Gosine and Jimmy Robert | Representational Acts
Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA)
January 20
Representational Acts features three artists representing different linguistic regions of the Caribbean: Carlos Martiel (Cuba), Andil Gosine (Trinidad), and Jimmy Robert (Guadeloupe). Martiel, known for putting his body in extreme situations as a means of calling attention to social injustices and marginalized peoples, performs América with 116 stars from the flags of all the countries in the Western hemisphere fixed to his body. Gosine's Our Holy Waters and Mine draws from his background as a queer Indo-Trinidadian man, using water, a bucket, and multiple glass jars to metaphorically trace the ancestral journey from India to Trinidad, as well as his own travels. Robert continues his exploration of the performative dimension of inanimate objects in Abolibibelo, appearing in a costume resembling carnival attire, made entirely of rolls of white paper. This program is presented in partnership with MOLAA.
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
January 21
In this newly commissioned work, Rafa Esparza will present an ambitious three-part performance at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Esparza's point of departure is a meditation on bridges and bodies of waters as sites of connection and healing, as well as spaces of division and risk. The artist's actions respond to familial histories of immigration into the United States and the deeply complex history of downtown Los Angeles. He will be joined by artist Sebastian Hernandez in a special collaboration for the final segment of the performance. This program is presented in partnership with MOCA.
About Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at arts institutions across Southern California. Through a series of thematically linked exhibitions and programs, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA highlights different aspects of Latin American and Latino art from the ancient world to the present day. With topics such as luxury objects in the pre-Hispanic Americas, 20th-century Afro-Brazilian art, alternative spaces in Mexico City, and boundary-crossing practices of Latino artists, exhibitions range from monographic studies of individual artists to broad surveys that cut across numerous countries. Supported by more than $16 million in grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA involves more than 70 cultural institutions, from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, and from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
About REDCAT
REDCAT is a multidisciplinary center for innovative visual, performing and media arts founded by CalArts in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles. Through performances, exhibitions, screenings and literary events, REDCAT introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in this region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT continues the tradition of CalArts, its parent organization, by encouraging experimentation, discovery and lively civic discourse.
REDCAT.org
The Getty Foundation fulfills the philanthropic mission of the Getty Trust by supporting individuals and institutions committed to advancing the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world. Through strategic grant initiatives, the Foundation strengthens art history as a global discipline, promotes the interdisciplinary practice of conservation, increases access to museum and archival collections, and develops current and future leaders in the visual arts. It carries out its work in collaboration with the other Getty Programs to ensure that they individually and collectively achieve maximum effect. Additional information is available at www.getty.edu/foundation.
Support for Pacific Standard Time
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
Lead Sponsors
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA Leadership Council, California Community Foundation, Design Miami, The James Irvine Foundation, Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board, Montage Beverly Hills, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., South Coast Plaza, Terra Foundation for American Art
Accenture, GRoW @ Annenberg, The Herb Alpert Foundation, The Rose Hills Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. James Ukropina, Weingart Foundation
Media Partners
Jezebel/Fusion, Los Angeles Magazine
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