Farmlab

Farmlab Public SalonVan Zan FraterFriday, March 19, 2010 @ NoonFree Admission

2010-03-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

Jesus is my Homeboy - the real story

You may think you know Jesus is my Homeboy. It's the image you've seen on tee-shirts, hats and badges. It's the iconic design worn by celebrities too numerous to mention. It’s that shirt you’re wearing right now – but there is much more to Jesus is my Homeboy than just an image.

Jesus is my Homeboy was not developed to make a fashion concern motivated by cashing in on a trend. It is not a calculated ploy to make money; it was born of inspiration gained from life experience. It is now time to tell the real story behind the success of Jesus is my Homeboy.

Van Zan, President and CEO of the Jesus is my Homeboy Foundation Inc., served in the Navy during the Viet Nam War Era. He is an actor, a singer, and has performed with his family music group, “The Fraters”, at, among other places, the Brentwood and Wadsworth Theaters. For 14 years he was a union AFGE local 1061 representative, serving as a Steward, Vice President and Executive Vice President consecutively until 2002. He established the Jesus is my Homeboy Foundation Inc. a non-profit human services organization in 2007 to provide assistance with burial expenses and grief counseling for innocent victims of gang violence. The founder, a victim of gang violence himself, Van Zan has a deep commitment to assisting families and individuals in this sudden and unexpected time of crisis. Other services to be provided in the future.

Further Information: www.jesusismyhomeboy.org or www.jesusismyhomeboy.com

Farmlab Public SalonRobert BirchardFriday, March 12, 2010 @ NoonFree Admission

2010-03-05T08:43:00.000-08:00

HOORAY FOR EDENDALE!

A celebration of the birth and early growth of the movie industry in Los Angeles. Award winning film editor, writer and film industry historian Robert S. Bichard presents over 100 images exploring the first movie studios in L.A--which were established a century ago. The Selig Polyscope, Keystone, Pathe, Mixville and Norbig studios constituted L.A.’s first “Studio Row” in the 1910’s, and Hooray For Edendale! will take you inside the gates of these long-vanished pioneer film factories. This is a must attend event for anyone interested in the history of Los Angeles and the movies. This program was recently presented at the Hollywood Heritage Museum and the Los Angeles as Subject Archives Bazaar.

Image: Mack Sennett directing "Stolen Magic" (Keystone, 1915), Hans Koenekamp is the cameraman. Courtesy: Robert Birchard

Further information: http://www.rsbirchard.com

Farmlab Public SalonRoy A. BrownFriday, March 5, 2010 @ NoonFree Admission

2010-02-27T14:37:00.000-08:00

Vet to Vet:

Gladly Teach, Gladly Learn

The mission of Vet to Vet is to serve all veterans, their concerns, and emotional, spiritual, educational, vocational, transitional, real and present needs. We are veterans from every branch of service. We are combat vets and peacetime vets. We come from different backgrounds of every kind. Many of us have experienced the heat of battle and the consequences that often follow. Adjustment for us has not always been easy. That is why we have come together in partnership and cooperation with VA medical centers to offer peer support and education to our fellow veterans.

Vet to Vet is a peer support program that utilizes recovering veterans in a peer capacity to help other veterans. The program is a recovery-based model that involves veterans as both consumers and providers of mental health services. Vet to Vet provides a way for recovering veterans to be able to talk to others who have been through the same or simular experiences. It strives to educate veterans through direct interaction. Vet to Vet also involves consumers and families in orienting the mental health system towards recovery and develops paid positions for veteran(s) within the facility/network to work with mental health leadership in developing peer to peer.

Starting in 2003 with Roy Brown (Director) and Stacey Maruska (VA Liaison), Vet to Vet Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System has grown to be one of the premier Vet to Vet programs in the U.S. It also serves as the national training site for coordinators from across the country.

Further Information: vet2vetca.org

Metabolic Studio Public SalonWes JacksonFriday, February 26, 2010, NoonFree Admission

2010-02-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

We Can Now Solve the World's Oldest Environmental Problem

Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute (founded in 1976), will describe how, through a combination of genetics/plant breeding and ecology/evolutionary biology, we can save our agricultural soils and waters from erosion and chemical contamination.

Born in 1936 on a farm near Topeka, Kansas, Jackson attended Kansas Wesleyan (B.A Biology, 1958), and went on to study botany (M.A. University of Kansas, 1960) and genetics (Ph.D. North Carolina State University, 1967). He was a professor of biology at Kansas Wesleyan and later established the Environmental Studies program at California State University, Sacramento, where he became a tenured full professor. He resigned that position in 1976.

Dr. Jackson’s writings include both papers and books. His most recent work, The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge, co-edited with William Vitek, was released by University of Kentucky Press in 2008. Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place, also co-edited with William Vitek, was published in 1996. Becoming Native to This Place, 1994, sketches his vision for the resettlement of America's rural communities. Altars of Unhewn Stone appeared in 1987 and Meeting the Expectations of the Land, edited with Wendell Berry and Bruce Colman, was published in 1984. New Roots for Agriculture, 1980, outlines the basis for the agricultural research at The Land Institute.

The work of The Land Institute has been featured extensively in the popular media including The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, National Geographic, Time Magazine, The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, and National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Life magazine named Wes Jackson as one of 18 individuals they predict will be among the 100 "important Americans of the 20th century." In the November 2005 issue, Smithsonian named him one of “35 Who Made a Difference” and in March, 2009 Wes was included in Rolling Stone’s “100 Agents of Change.”

Wes Jackson is a recipient of the Pew Conservation Scholars award (1990), a MacArthur Fellowship (1992), and Right Livelihood Award (Stockholm), known as “Alternative Nobel Prize” (2000). He has received four honorary doctorates and in 2007 received the University of Kansas Distinguished Service Award.
Further Information: The Land Institute

Farmlab Public SalonBuck McGibbony & Yuki Uehara-McGibbonyFriday, February 19, 2010 @ NoonFree Admission

2010-02-13T08:36:00.000-08:00

Geocaching – An Adventure Network

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

This salon will offer you a brief introduction to the technology and practices of Geocaching. We will share a few stories from our adventures while Geocaching and talk about how you can get started yourself. We will introduce you to Geocaching in a simple concise way and you will have the opportunity to go out and discover a Geocache for yourself at the event. Bring a GPS if you have one, but it’s ok if you don’t since we will a few available for use.

Buck McGibbony is a software engineer & computer technician residing with his wife Yuki in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. Buck is currently owner of WiseWerks, a small software development and consulting company. When not tweaking computer programs or running around L.A. fixing printers and hard drives Buck enjoys flying, hiking and traveling.

Yuki Uehara-McGibbony is from Japan and came to Los Angeles in ‘93 to study theatrical lighting. After working for stage productions as a freelancer for over 10 years, she decided to settle down in a cubicle. Now she happily works for a Japanese company as bilingual secretary. Yuki enjoys Geocaching while on vacation and here in Los Angeles.

Farmlab Public SalonMarcos Lutyens & Alessandro MarianantoniFriday, February 12, 2010 @ NoonFree Admission

2010-02-09T23:23:00.000-08:00

Parts per million: Phase transitions in awareness

This Salon highlights Marcos Lutyens' and Alessandro Marianantoni's ongoing project CO2morrow, a large scale installation on the facade of the Royal Academy, London, UK in the exhibit eARTh: Art of a changing world. The installation will travel to various National Trust properties in the UK through 2010. The project explores the relationship between public awareness, perception and atmospheric conditions, particularly CO2 levels, and its effects on social and cultural issues.

Marcos Lutyens is an intermedia artist who has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale of Art and shows curated by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the image Festival in Italy and the the Royal Academy in the United Kingdom. He has often worked with the process of hypnosis to explore the unconscious and associated schema, and collaborated with Matt Mullican, Raimundas Malasauskas and other artists and curators. He recently performed at Artists Space, NYC, Kunstverein, Amsterdam and the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and is involved with continuing explorations into the mind. He engaged in experiments with Dr. V. S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, at the University of California, San Diego to explore the brain's neural pathways in the synesthetic mind. His work with the mind, has lead him to develop events and exhibits that reflect research with specific social or ethnic groups such as the Muxhe, from the Zapotec culture in Southern Mexico.

Building on his investigations into consciousness and social dynamics, Lutyens has worked on large scale projects that involve interactivity, the environment and new technologies. Works include data tracking, feedback from vehicle traffic and pedestrian flows, pollution and air quality levels, brain wave monitoring and other objective factors that are generally invisible to the casual observer, and yet as important to us as the subjective processes of the inner mind.

Alessandro Marianantoni works on projects across different fields: culture, technology, environment and art with a multi-disciplinary approach.He produced several interactive art installations exhibited between Los Angeles and Italy, receiving public and private sponsorships. He earned a degree in Computer Science from the University of L'Aquila, with a thesis on perceptual interfaces at the USC Integrated Media System Center, afterwards he was a researcher at the UCLA REMAP center at the Theater, Film and TV Dept where, across different projects he was able to enrich his research in technology. While based in Los Angeles he often travels to Italy where, with public funding, he started MEDIARS, an Experimental Center focused on Cultural Heritage and Technology. As a program director at MEDIARS he runs the international summer program Art, Technology and Cultural Heritage in the Castle of Contigliano. Over the last 15 years he has designed and developed innovative projects involving music, healthcare and environment.

Further Information: www.co2morrow.net, www.mlutyens.com

Image courtesy Marcos Lutyens

Special Thursday Evening SalonMel ChinThursday, February 11, 2010, 7.00-9.00pmFree

2010-02-01T16:59:00.000-08:00

There is no (a) solution, because there is no (a) problem

Or: Making a 300 Million Dollar Difference with Conceptual

Art in the Age of Disaster and other Repetitive Negativities

Click for more information

Metabolic Studio Public SalonSimon BalmFriday, February 5, 2010, NoonFree Admission

2010-01-29T12:22:00.000-08:00

A Year at the South Pole

Simon Balm will describe his experiences during a year spent at the South Pole conducting astronomical research in one of the coldest and extreme environments on Earth.

A native of London, England, Simon Balm received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Durham in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Sussex in 1992, working with Nobel Prize winning chemist Sir Harold Kroto. After graduate school he spent two years as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow in the UCLA Astronomy Department followed by four years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA where he helped to design, build and install a radio telescope at the geographical South Pole. After several Summer visits to the Antarctic he wintered-over with the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station during the 1995-1996 season as a scientist with United States Antarctic Program.

Following his work in the Antarctic he spent several years teaching Astronomy as an Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and then joined Santa Monica College as a full time faculty member in the Fall of 2000 where he is currently a Professor of Astronomy and Chemistry in the Department of Earth Sciences. In December of 2006 he traveled to the Antarctic again with renowned Santa Monica artist Lita Albuquerque as the science advisor on the first large-scale art installation to be placed on the continent.

Simon has many interests outside of academia including, hiking, mountaineering, swimming, scuba diving and horse riding. He also runs a small IT consulting business and is a musician, playing the trombone in a local community symphony orchestra.

Image: An aurora over the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station in winter

Courtesy: National Science Foundation

Metabolic Studio Public SalonAnne BrayFriday, January 29, 2010, NoonFree Admission

2010-01-26T15:44:00.000-08:00

Ads or Art or ?

Ad companies want to add 800+ electronic billboards to Los Angeles. Thousands are up illegally in LA. What do we want to do with our public space? To whom will you sell your eyeballs? Is public space best used to pump the economy during global warming? As ads switch from intrusive to inclusive experiences, what is their difference from art? LA City has tried for 2 years to legally distinguish art and ads and has failed to find words. Can you help? Does free speech cover ads? What is zoning? How have other cities presented large scale art and contained ad space? How can the arts in Los Angeles respond to her streets as evocatively as ad companies? Must our city be covered with ads? Why?

MAK Center for Art & Architecture is commissioning over 20 artist billboards in Spring 2010 through its outdoor exhibition How Many Billboards. In advance of the three panel discussions she will be composing moderating for the MAK Center in conjunction with this exhibition, Anne Bray will ponder these questions and more. Sample works will amply illustrate ideas.

Anne Bray is an artist, teacher and Director of Freewaves, a media arts organization in Los Angeles. She developed the concept of the multicultural network of media artists and venues in 1989 and has continued to see the organization through the technological, social and aesthetic changes of the 1990s to now. As an artist she exhibits her work as temporary installations in public sites and art venues combining personal and social positions via video, audio, slides and 3-d screens at gas stations, malls, movie theaters, on TV, in department stores, on billboards, and now wants art to be everywhere. She teaches public art and multimedia at Claremont Graduate University and USC.

Image courtesy of Anne Bray

Chosen as a “Best of Los Angeles Art Month” by ForYourArt

Farmlab Public SalonJ. Eric LynxwilerFriday, January 22, 2010 @ NoonFree Admission

2010-01-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles

The acclaimed Los Angeles history book by J. Eric Lynxwiler and Kevin Roderick, Wilshire Bouelvard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles, tells numerous stories from what has been called the backbone of the city. The Brown Derby, The Ambassador Hotel and Bullock's Wilshire create a holy trinity of our city's culture, but there are other aspects to Wilshire's development that make it a cross section of Los Angeles life. Please join J. Eric Lynxwiler as he shares stories of the Boulevard and historic photos from numerous public and private archives.

J. Eric Lynxwiler is an L.A. native and active member of the Los Angeles Conservancy's Modern Committee who specializes in signage issues. A former board member of the Museum of Neon Art, he still celebrates the city's neon as a guide aboard the museum's famed "Neon Cruise". He co-authored and researched the book "Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles" and leads Miracle Mile walking tours for the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.

Metabolic Studio Public SalonJoanne PoyourowFriday, January 15, 2010, NoonFree Admission

2009-12-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

A Resilient Los Angeles: What Could It Be Like?

The Transition movement is a worldwide network of grassroots communities and neighborhoods that are preparing for a post-petroleum future. They're doing this by growing local resilience, our ability to flex and adapt to great change. And it has been said that their approach at times looks more like a party than a protest march.

Climate change plus the end of cheap oil are converging to create a potent stew. Add economic contraction, and forecasts show that our future will be vastly different from what we have today. Yet if we plan ahead with creativity and imagination, the future with less oil could be even better than what we have now.

Through the Transition approach, we look at each aspect of our current lifestyles (food, water, transportation, energy, money, livelihoods, etc.) and begin to redesign it so that our local communities can become self-sufficient and resilient.

What might a resilient Los Angeles look like? As part of this salon, you'll be invited to share your vision.

Joanne Poyourow of Transition Los Angeles will explain the initial steps of the Transition approach, and update you on all the Transition-type activities blossoming throughout the greater Los Angeles basin.

Joanne Poyourow is the initiator of the Transition Los Angeles City Hub. Over the past year, Transition initiatives have formed in Culver City, Mar Vista, and South Bay, with groups under formation in Santa Monica, Inglewood and the San Fernando Valley. Joanne is the co-founder of the Environmental Change-Makers, a community group in the Westchester/LAX area that pioneered Transition ideas for many areas of Los Angeles. For five years, the Change-Makers have offered free public sessions that highlight environmental solutions, from bicycle transportation to local foods to alternative finances. Joanne designed the beautiful and prolific Community Garden in Westchester, which is a teaching garden as well as a supplier of fresh produce to the local food pantry. Joanne is a homeschooling mother of two, and helped found one of the LA basin's major homeschooling support organizations. She is the author of two books: Legacy, a novel which envisions a positive environmental future in Los Angeles, and Environmental Change-Making, a nonfiction how-to book on making that positive future come about. Joanne was a CPA in public practice for 13 years, and is quite proud of her intricate knitting projects.

Transition LA's Website: http://www.transitionla.org /

Image Courtesy: Christine Budzowski

Metabolic Studio Public SalonNance KlehmFriday, December 11, 2009, NoonFree Admission

2009-12-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

Everything Comes into this World Hungry:

Soilmaking and Building

There are three fundamentals that guide this time of descent into northern-hemisphere darkness. The winter season is one of decline and decomposition, activity below ground and general shadowiness. The fundamentals that guide us are:

Everything comes into this world hungry.

Everything wants to be digested.

Everything flows towards soil.

This salon will discuss various methods of transforming what is perceived as waste and turning it into soil or building/healing existing soil.

Nance Klehm is a radical ecologist, designer, urban forager, grower and teacher. Her solo and collaborative work focuses on creating participatory social ecologies in response to a direct experience of a place. She grows and forages much of her own food in a densely urban area. She actively composts food, landscape and human waste. She only uses a flush toilet when no other option is available. She designed and currently manages a large scale, closed-loop vermicompost project at a downtown homeless shelter where cafeteria food waste becomes 4 tons of worm castings a year which in turn is used as the soil that grows food to return to the cafeteria.

She works with Simparch to create and integrate soil and water systems at their Clean Livin’ at C.L.U.I.’s Wendover, UT site. She uses decomposition, filtration and fermentation to transform post-consumer materials generated onsite (solid and liquid human waste, grey water from sinks and shower, food, cardboard and paper) as well as waste materials gathered offsite (casino food waste and grass clippings, horse manure from stables, spent coffee grounds) into biologically rich soil. The resulting waste-sponge systems sustain or aid: a habitat of native species of plants, digestion of the high salinity of the indigenous soils and the capturing, storing and using of precipitation.

She has shown and taught in Mexico, Australia, England, Scandinavia, Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States. Her regular column WEEDEATER appears in ARTHUR magazine.

Read Nance's interview in the current Time magazine

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1945764,00.html

Nance's Website: www.spontaneousvegetation.net

Image Courtesy: Nance Klehm

Anabolic Monument Flower Harvest

2009-11-30T16:55:00.000-08:00

Friday December 4,

9am - noon: Harvest in the Anabolic Monument

nonn - 2pm: Join us for the Metabolic Studio Public Salon + Lunch

2pm - 4pm: Harvest continues in the Anabolic Monument

Saturday December 5

8am - 1p: Harvest in the Anabolic Monumentm

Join us in gathering the flowers in the Anabolic Monument this weekend.

Bring scissors, clippers, and containers. Take home what you can carry.

Contact Meredith for further information: mb.generator@gmail.com

Metabolic Studio Public SalonT. J. Mairs, C. de Arce, M. Carrasco, T. McKinney Zisler, S. Faxon‐MillsFriday, December 4, 2009 @ Noon

2009-11-20T15:56:00.000-08:00

Human Trafficking in Los Angeles County

a panel organized with the Studio for Southern California History

for the Studio’s current exhibit “Law & Disorder".

What are the most relevant definitions of human trafficking today? What are examples of human trafficking that we may not see but that may surround us? How has the passage of Assembly Bill 22 – the California Trafficking Victims Protection Act – increased our ability to recognize & respond to human trafficking in Los Angeles? How can we protect our daughters? What are the tell tale signs that someone is in a relationship that may lead to prostitution? What else can we do? As individuals? As a community?

Carmen de Arce: Ms. de Arce is a Victim’s Specialist for the greater Los Angeles area for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI works with other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies and national victim‐based advocacy groups in joint task forces that combine resources and expertise on the issue. Today, the FBI participates in approximately 30 law enforcement task forces and approximately 42 Bureau of Justice Assistance‐sponsored task forces around the nation. The FBI Victim Specialists (along with victims specialists from the US Attorney Offices and/or other non‐government victim assistance service providers) work with human trafficking victims to not only advise them of their rights as victims but also to assure they get the help they need to address their short‐term and long‐term needs—like legal and repatriation services, immigration relief, housing, employment, education, job training, and child care.

Taja McKinney Zisler: Ms. McKinney Zisler is the Volunteer Coordinator for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking. The Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST) is a multi‐ethnic, multi‐lingual human rights organization that has been nationally and internationally recognized for its dedication to the identification of victims, mobilization of all sectors of the community to identify and advocate against trafficking, and provision of direct services for victims. CAST provides comprehensive long‐term services through a three‐armed empowerment approach, which includes Social Services, Legal Services, and Outreach and Training. The organization also operates the first shelter in the nation dedicated to serving victims of trafficking. CAST’s mission is to assist persons trafficked for the purpose of forced labor and slavery‐like practices and to work toward ending all instances of such human rights violations.

Susannah Faxon‐Mills: Ms. Faxon‐Mills is the Senior Coordinator of Youth Education for Break the Cycle. Those at Break the Cycle believe everybody has the right to safe and healthy relationships—regardless of where they live, who they are or what they believe. That is why they work everyday towards a mission to engage, educate and empower youth to build lives and communities free from domestic violence. Break the Cycle offers programs that defy geographic bounds—ensuring that no young person is excluded from receiving the help, tools and information they need to live free from violence. Their success is demonstrated by more than a decade of leadership in working with teens to prevent and end domestic and dating violence.

Leslie Gersicoff: Ms Gersicoff is Executive Director of the Jewish Labor Committee Western Region, a social justice organization that bridges the Labor and Jewish communities in a shared commitment to human rights. She also Chairs the transitioning Los Angeles County Unity Coalition formed to combat all categories of human trafficking. Educating labor leaders and rank and file members about signs of possible human trafficking and providing safe, anonymous avenues to report suspicions has been a prime focus of the JLC, as well as finding Latino victims of trafficking in the car wash and day labor industries. Human trafficking impedes and defies every principle fought for and won by organized labor and every advance gained, including the 40-hour workweek, overtime pay, paid benefits for health, pension and time off, legal recourse for labor law violations, representation on the job and a fair choice of employment. Leslie is also Secretary of the Labor Task Force for Universal Healthcare, a member of Arbeter Ring/Workmen’s Circle, Jewish Communal Professionals of Southern California, National Council of Jewish Women, NABET-CWA Local 53, and Hollywood NOW.

T. Julie Mairs: Julie Mairs is the immediate past president of Soroptimist International of Los Angeles, Chair of Project Five‐0‐Los Angeles, and Chair of the Camino Real Region Soroptimists STOP Trafficking campaign. The Soroptimists STOP Trafficking campaign is an initiative of Soroptimists with 19 countries and territories including Canada, the USA, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. Julie has over 25 years of experience in the leadership of human social and heath services and strategy and change management.

Studio For Southern California History

www.socalstudio.org

Does your history matter?

Image courtesy of Stanford University

Metabolic Studio Public SalonPaulette SingleyFriday, November 20, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-11-16T08:41:00.000-08:00

Figure, Field, and Squid:

The Construction of Space in Bacon’s Painting and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Architecture

Dr. Paulette Singley will present new research that develops the comparison she drew between the Francis Bacon’s painting and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s architecture—in her essay “Hard to Swallow: Mortified Geometry and Abject Form (Eating Architecture, 2004)—into a probative speculation regarding the role of figure and field in the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and contemporary digital production of space.

After Bacon visited Berlin in the Spring of 1927, he returned to London and began work as an interior designer to the extent that he produced rugs, tubular steel furniture, and an “international style” interior milieu. The Studio Magazine published his Queensberry Mews studio in its August 1930 issue as "The 1930 Look in British Decoration." Concomitantly, Mies served as was the director of the Bauhaus from 1930 until the school's closing 1933 in Berlin. While Bacon and Mies form likely anitpodes of irrationalism and rationalism, their interior spaces nonetheless betray a conspicuous affinity for corporeal materiality. They both explore within their work the generative potential of figural bodies inscribed upon abstract fields. Gilles Delueze has identified this tension within Bacon’s painting, observing an “absolute proximity,” a “coprecision, of the field that functions as the ground, and the Figure that functions as a form, on a single plane that is viewed at very close range.” (Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, 9). Similarly the statues of female figures within Mies’s architecture suggest considering the figure and the field through the lens of Bacon’s interiors. Within their work abstract space folds in upon itself through the orifice of the body producing spaces that are at once figure and field. The tension between figure and field forces a powerful spatial involution that characterizes digital production in contemporary architecture through the morphology of the squid.

Paulette Singley teaches in the School of Architecture at Woodbury University in Los Angeles, California. She co-edited Eating Architecture and Architecture: In Fashion and has been published in Log, ANY, Assemblage and several critical architectural anthologies. She received a Ph.D. in architectural history and theory from Princeton University, an M.A. in the history of architecture and urbanism from Cornell University, and a B.Arch. from the University of Southern California.

Metabolic Studio Public SalonLaura Valdés Kuri & Claudio Valdés KuriFriday, November 13, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-11-06T09:40:00.000-08:00

Environment, Art and Science in Mexico

This salon will present an overview of how the environmental movement in Mexico has evolved in the last 20 years. Laura Valdés Kuri will present a slide show showing the groundswell of social participation in environmental and cultural activism in Mexico spanning from the 90’ to present day actions. Her brother Claudio Valdés Kuri will share insights on the greening of the art movement through a specific project “Ecocentro de Ciertos Habitantes” which is being developed by his theatre group “Certain Inhabitants”.

The Ecocentro is nestled at the edge of a forest, it will be an environmentally sound artistic retreat that will offer artistic residences and retreat facilities for creation, reflection, research, cultural exchange, artistic and environmental education and the development of theatrical productions. It is a model cultural project that incorporates artistic inspiration, education, sustainable development and the application of low-impact technologies that demonstrates how a long-term project can preserve natural resources, protect local traditional culture and nurture the theatrical arts. There is an elaborate outreach plan to work with the local rural communities.

This salon will describe just how the Ecocentro de Ciertos Habitantes has been designed with an inclusive multidisciplinary modality which, from its inception, has brought together a wide range of stakeholders who participate actively in its creation and development. Laura and Claudio will discuss how the two disciplines are intertwining through permaculture design, theatrical art projects, hands-on community development and the support of social networks and how collectively they are playing a key role in saving a significant endangered area of the Great Water Forest near Chalma, a rural village in Mexico.

There will be a Q&A in English and Spanish after the discussion.

Claudio Valdés Kuri's Los Angeles residency at CalArts and REDCAT is made possible in part by the City of Los Angeles' Department of Cultural Affair's Cultural Exchange International grant and the National Performance Network's Performing Americas Creative Exchange Program.

Laura Valdés Kuri has been recognized as a leader in the Mexican environmental movement. Since 1985, Laura has propagated environmental practices, sustainable education and community development projects that benefit the environment and society as well. With a background in Social Studies, Environmental Education, Bioregionalism, Permaculture and Ecovillage development she has spearheaded and served as an advisor for hundreds of rural and urban projects throughout Mexico such as the Environmental Promoters Group of Tejalpa, a recycling center run by a women’s collective.

Laura has been founder of the Bio-Regional Movement in Mexico and Latin America, co-founding member of the Ecovillage Network of the Americas (ENA) and coordinator of the national education project ECOHABITAT. She is also an Ashoka associate in Mexico. Laura and the networks she participates in have organized events, symposiums, conferences, fairs, workshops and international congresses in Mexico, Latin America and United States. She is focalizer for national and international environmental and bioregional networks. She has compiled and edited environmental books such as Welcome Home: Life Experiences and Bioregional Thinking (Mexico 2003) and Ecohabitat: Experiences Towards Sustainability (Mexico 2006)

Claudio Valdés Kuri, a prestigious Mexican director, is recognized as one of Latin America’s Artists with the most international acclaim. Founder and director of the Certain Inhabitants Theater Company, his work includes The Grey Automobile, Monsters and Prodigies: The History of the Castrati, Becket or the Honour of God and Where will I be Tonight?, all presented in Mexico and in Europe, Latin America, United States and the Caribbean. Specialized critics have given him well-deserved recognition, such as naming him the best director in experimental theatre as well as best group theatre director.

Several important governmental cultural offices have commissioned and co-produced his productions: National Theatre Company (Mexico). National Autonomous University of Mexico, International Cervantino Festival (Guanajuato) Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Kunsten Festival des Arte (Brussels) and Wiener Festwochen (Vienna). He has received several grants from Cultural Contact, the US-Mexico Foundation for Culture, Young Scholarship Holders and Co-Investment Projects from Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and the Arts.

The monthly publication Mexican Leaders has acknowledged Claudio as one of the top 300 most influential leaders of the country. With the creation of Ecocentro de Ciertos Habitantes, Claudio intends to merge the transformative powers of theatre and performance arts with Environmental Conservation and sustainable development in a rural community within the Great Water Forest in Mexico.

Further information: www.ciertoshabitantes.com

Image: Ciertos Habitantes Ecocenter Design, courtesy of Arq. Jorge Calvillo

Metabolic Studio Public SalonAaron Chappell & Juan de LaraFriday, November 6, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-11-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Building the American Dream in the Inland Empire
About The Salon

During the most recent real estate boom, local boosters produced new cognitive maps of Southern California’s Inland Empire to show that the good life was possible in ‘cow country’ and a booming higher-end housing market created new business opportunities for upscale retail companies that had typically ignored the Inland Empire.

The ideal house – an embodiment of the American Dream - came to represent a lifestyle of luxury that homebuilders and marketers drew upon to stimulate conspicuous consumption. But much of the shopping that drove the local economy was underwritten by the same financing schemes that ultimately doomed the housing sector. The housing crash of 2007-2008 revealed that narratives about the good life didn't match financial reality for the majority of Inland Empire residents.

Considering the ways in which the relationship between finance, consumption, and housing significantly shaped the Inland Empire, Juan de Lara and Aaron Chappell will present a brief history of land, housing, and boom/bust real estate cycles and discuss current organizing efforts to reshape the social, economic, and physical landscape in that area.

Juan de Lara is a PhD candidate at UC-Berkeley studying the political geography of the Inland Empire. (LIUNA Homebuilding Campaign)

Aaron Chappell is a political and community organizer for the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) on their Quality for All campaign, which is uniting the workers who build homes with the residents who buy new homes to create good jobs, sustainable communities and a stronger regional economy here in the Inland Empire. Aaron has over ten years of experience in the labor movement.

Further Information: Quality for All

Image courtesy: Douglas McCulloh, from Dream Street

Metabolic Studio Public SalonAbigail LazkozFriday, October 30, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-10-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

More medals (bigger responsibility)

About The Salon

For me Art is in equal measure a laboratory of imagination and a tool to reflect on life.

The cultural products that have encouraged me to follow the creativity path have almost always had the existentialist ingredient. I believe that identification with the others uneasy approach to life has been the main reason for me to try to use the creative medium.

Let’s say that uneasiness is an inclination that I have inherited and art is the way I use to deal with that fondness for distress. War is for this matters a very useful subject, it can be used literally or, even better, metaphorically to express the struggles of being alive.

About The Salon Presenter

Abigail was born in Bilbao, Spain in 1972, she makes drawings, wall-paints and site-specific installations. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in solo exhibitions at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York; Sala Rekalde, Bilbao; and the Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona; and Group Exhibitions in Hungary, Algeria, France Spain and the United States.

Above: More medals, bigger responsibility: Abigail Lazkoz, 2004

Indian and pigmented ink on paper, 43 1/4 inches x 72 1/2 inches

Image courtesy: Abigail Lazkoz

Metabolic Studio Public SalonSherwood Chen, Flavio Alvarez & Carlos GonzalesFriday, October 23, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-10-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

Alliance for California Traditional Arts
About The Salon

What are traditional arts? From Native Californian Kawaiisu basketry and language, to African-American quilt-making, Mixtec guelaguetzas and Hmong maykhong wedding negotiation chants, Western saddlemaking, or sacred Afro-Cuban batá drumming, Vietnamese opera and son Jarocho luthiery, California is home to hundreds of diverse traditions. Some folk and traditional arts have been brought to California from other countries or regions and have taken root here to become interwoven with the state’s cultural landscape and identity. Others have prospered long before California was ever a state, developed here by indigenous cultures and sustained today on and beyond California’s over 130 tribal reservations and rancherias.

Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) Associate Director Sherwood Chen will share rich examples of ACTA’s participating artists and organizations statewide, and discuss the community-driven power and the staggering beauty and diversity of a complex, vital, and oft underrepresented sector of arts practice in California today.

Joining Sherwood will be featured artists and ACTA participants Flavio Alvarez and Flavio’s grandnephew and protégé Carlos Gonzales. Flavio serves as Wanaragua chief amongst a group of drummers, dancers, and singers in Los Angeles—including Carlos—who represent, celebrate and sustain Garifuna language, dance and music, forms deemed by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Together Flavio and Carlos will share Garifuna history and culture, talk about what it means to pass on tradition, and how these traditions live and flourish in Los Angeles today.

About The Salon Presenter

Guided by the principles of cultural democracy, diversity and equity, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) strives to ensure that California’s future holds California’s past by providing services to support the state’s myriad living cultural heritages and to increase access to resources and opportunities for folk and traditional artists.

Further Information: Alliance for California Traditional Arts

Above: Garifuna master artist Flavio Alvarez (left) and his apprentice Carlos Gonzales (right) hold a Wanaragua headdress worn by Flavio the night before during the New Year’s Day 2009 Wanaragua processions.

Image courtesy: Sherwood Chen, ACTA 2009

Metabolic Studio Public SalonSuma JossonFriday, October 16, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-10-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

I Want My Father Back

About The Salon

I Want My Father Back is a 60 minute-long film on the suicide of farmers in Vidarbha. Vidarbha is in the eastern region of Maharastra State in India. Cotton is the main cash crop in this area.

The film looks at the reasons behind these suicides, beginning with the fallout of the Green Revolution and the impact it had on the soil and input costs for the farmers. This was followed by globalization processes which further led to a fall in prices of commodities. The other sections in the film include the changing traditional methods of farming especially with regard to seeds, the debt-loan trap faced by farmers, and the devastating effects of Bt. seeds. It also looks at the impact of pesticides on the soil and gives emphasis on organic farming.

The film raises these issues through ordinary farmers and activists like Vandan Shiva. It also looks at some farmers who have been practicing organic farming.

About The Salon Presenter

Born in Kerala, India, Suma Josson graduated in English Lit. from the College of St.Teresa, Minnesota, U.S.A. Having begun her career as a journalist, she switched over to the visual medium. Since then she has made two feature films and many documentary films on a wide range of issues. Her film on the suicide of farmers in Vidarbha, Maharastra has won several awards. She is also a poet and a fiction writer with Penguin having published a novel titled Circumferences.

Further Information

sumajosson@yahoo.com

Image

Still from I Want My Father Back

Metabolic Studio Public SalonJessica HallFriday, October 9, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-10-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

Water and Los Angeles - what is a sustainable water future?

About The Salon

Is Los Angeles a desert? Conventional wisdom tells it is. Reviewing the historical conditions of the region, however, suggest otherwise. How should this ecologically fragile region plan for its future and manage its water resources? Ms. Hall presents looks at landscape and urban design from the standpoint of water resource management.

About The Salon Presenter

Jessica Hall is an advocate for ecologically resilient urban waterways, and for the integration of functional ecosystems within cities. Through her work as a designer, watershed coordinator, and educator, she has become a leading voice in LA; her efforts have resulted in stream daylighting becoming a restoration goal identified in many local watershed plans. With a Master’s in Landscape Architecture from Cal Poly Pomona and an undergraduate degree in architecture from Princeton University, and experience working in both fields, she understands the challenges and opportunities of the built environment. She is a Senior Design Associate with Restoration Design Group, and also consults and lectures part-time. Ms. Hall was a Switzer Environmental Fellow in 2000-2001. Her work has been covered in the local media.

Further Information

LA CreekFreak

Image

Courtesy: Jessica Hall

Metabolic Studio Public SalonFelicity PowellFriday, October 2, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-09-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

"Medals of Dishonour"

About The Salon

Alongside the well-known association of medals with glory and achievement lies another darker tradition of the medal as an indicator of dishonour. Celebrating works that denounce their subjects and expose the rich tradition of this largely unexplored medal type, Medals of Dishonour is currently on exhibition at British Museum.

Medals of Dishonour reframes items in the British Museum’s permanent collection by presenting selected historic medals alongside newly-commissioned medals by thirteen internationally recognized artists, including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Ellen Gallagher, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, William Kentridge, Grayson Perry and Felicity Powell. Elegantly displaying the historical and contemporary medals together the exhibition offers a long view through history that is both intelligent and wry.

Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon writes that Felicity Powell, the conceptual progenitor and co-curator of Medals of Dishonour, has “singlehandedly…revived an entire Renaissance tradition - a rich and intricate tradition of subtle workmanship and symbolism”. At the Metabolic Studio Felicity will discuss both Medals of Dishonour and works from her recent solo show at London’s Domobaal. It will be a talk “about subversion, secret histories and historical hiccups”.

About The Salon Presenter

London-based artist Felicity Powell has exhibited widely on the international stage and had solo exhibitions at venues including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. In addition to winning the Millennium Medal Competition by The Royal Mint and The British Art Medal Society, she has received numerous other awards and honors for her work, including commissions from the Linnaean Society and the Permanent Collection of the V&A Sculpture Department. She was elected a council member of the British Arts Medal Society in 2002.

Images

Above: Felicity Powell: Hot Air

Image courtesy: the British Museum

Further Information

Medals of Dishonour at the British Museum

Felicity Powell at Domobaal

Metabolic Studio Public SalonJulian LairdFriday, September 25, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-09-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

Arctic Ice and Frozen Seeds - Feeding the Future

About The Salon

High in the Arctic, deep inside a frozen mountain, a concrete bunker provides protection to one of the most important resources for human life on Earth - seeds. Julian Laird, of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, one of the principal partners in this ambitious project, will describe not only how the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was built and how it works, but why its treasure is so valuable and yet so threatened.

About The Salon Presenter

Julian is Director of Development and Communications at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a young international organisation, with which he has been involved since before the Trust became a legal entity. Before moving to the Trust, Julian was Director of Programmes and Acting Chief Executive of Earthwatch Institute (Europe), an international non-profit organisation supporting environmental field research and conservation in 40 countries. Julian has been involved in the design and development of capacity building programmes in national parks throughout Africa, as well as global environmental awareness-raising campaigns in the public and private sectors.

Above: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Image courtesy: Mari Tefre/Global Crop Diversity Trust

Metabolic Studio Public Salon Public Practice, Otis College of Art and DesignFriday, September 18, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-09-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

Reunion/Reunión:

“Laton, CA: Public Practice in the San Joaquin Valley”

About The Salon

A cohort of nine first year MFA students designed a collaborative project, building on their observations, their skills and community needs as observed over several months. Their final project took place on Saturday, March 21st, in a public video installation highlighting the unique identity of Laton through multiple outdoor projections onto freshly painted buildings.

People of the community and visitors processed along the two block long main street of the small town of 1200 where they encountered music, video projections of life in the community, and opportunities to talk about the future of the region. Inside the local merchants stores, short video documentaries revealed the role of small businesses in the identity of this community. The once-abandoned Methodist Church was recreated as a community space and art studio. During the evening installation it featured a free store to nurture a temporary barter and exchange system, created by Suzanne Lacy and Otis students, and a video installation by Andrea Bowers. Photographer Raul Vega and Videographer Dana Duff also produced work on Laton suitable for this presentation.

The salon will present questions about how art can influence and change a community. After a presentation on their collaborative “Reunion / Reunion” project, students will open the floor to engage a critical dialogue about the work, and its artistic and political pursuits.

About The Salon Presenters

Public Practice is a new MFA program at Otis College of Art and Design. Its focus is on developing projects that ask the question “who and what is art created for?” With community building, and political action in mind, what can art accomplish? Graduate students explore new artistic strategies and practices based on observation, research, social commentary and activism, and visual and performance arts productions in the public realm.

Above: Event postcard

Image courtesy: Public Practice Otis College of Art and Design

Further Information: http://ospace.otis.edu/publicpracticeportfolio

https://wikis.otis.edu/sjv/index.php/Welcome!_Bienvenidos!_Bem-vindo !

Metabolic Studio Public SalonRickey SmithFriday, September 11, 2009 @ NoonFree Admission

2009-09-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

Urban Green on Spring

About The Salon

You may have noticed that Millies - the old hamburger stand on the Los Angeles State Historic Park - has been repainted a fetching citrus shade recently? Reincarnated for the 21st century, Millie’s burger stand is in the process of becoming "Urban Green at LASHP". Rather than burger and chips though, Urban Green will grow vegetables and serve them up in delicious vegetarian dishes.

Urban Green has contracted with The State of California Parks and Recreation to build an interactive, interpretive system on the site of The Historic State Park in Downtown Los Angeles. The development envisions “ON SPRING” as a community hub with activities involving educational and practical application of sustainable functions which guests can incorporate into their own personal lives.

Discussing the venture and answering questions will be Urban Green Founder and Director, Rickey Smith.

About The Salon Presenter

Rickey Smith is founder and principal of Urban Green, a social entrepreneurship dedicated to restoring, developing and promoting “green space” within the communities it serves. Urban Green was designed upon Rickey’s philosophy of Circular Synergy, which seeks to establish a CLEAR path connecting the inter-disciplines of Cuisine, Land-use, Environment, and Architecture into Renewable cycles of self-reliant communities.

Inspired by the challenge to evolve food production in the United States, and seeking to create a deeper, more significant experience than just the mere exchange of goods for money, Rickey is committed to the development of functional, small-scale operations using closed-loop, urban-farming systems within the Los Angeles Metropolitan area.

Recognized as a leader and change agent who passionately believes in the Urban Green adage “Waste not. Want not.” He is currently a guest lecturer at UCLA, local charter schools and conference round table discussions. Rickey is also recognized for his community service work with diverse organizations such as Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles Robotics Team and Mother’s Club in Pasadena.

Above: pre-green Millies

Image courtesy http://lashp.wordpress.com