Friday, July 25, 2014

F for CHAOS!


So much going on with Perform Chinatown 2014: CHAOS REIGNS! that I'll just use this one image to stand in for all the documentation that is to come - F will play live on the Mainstage at 8:30, and Chaos will never be the same again!

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Virtual Solo Show of Flash Fudd Fashions

Cutting edge online fashionista destination artfuck.com invited me to contribute tee-shirt designs to their rapidly expanding array of auteur couture. I obliged with blown up fragments from my collage comic sequence Flash Fudd, which I have been working on since I was 11 years old! Here are a few examples, but there's plenty more to see over at http://www.artfuck.com/doug-harvey. Cheap at half the price!



Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Firesign Theatre's Phil Proctor & Archivist Taylor Jessen on LARZ!


Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine is honored to host one of the last of the great radio artists, Phil Proctor of Firesign Theatre along with workaholic FT Archivist Taylor Jessen this Sunday July 20th at 12 Noon on www.kchungradio.org. The Firesign Theatre -- in the tradition of Stan Freberg, Max Ferguson, The Goons, Bob & Ray, and Henry Jacobs -- approached radio as an open playing field and a quintessential but (happily/criminally) unsupervised Modernist artform.


Simultaneously avant-garde and populist, collective and idiosyncratic, intricately crafted and improvisational -- The Firesign Theatre's work as radio innovators was overshadowed by their enormous success as Columbia Records' "Beatles of Comedy." Their 1971 LP I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus is the masterpiece of this period, and the subject of my newly-published chapbook from Insert Blanc Press, What’s Happening in The Firesign Theatre’s I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus as Best as I Can Make Out.


With the recent release of Duke of Madness Motors -- Jessen's labor of love and a copiously illustrated account of the FT's radio career, including an 80-hour DVD of recently rediscovered audio transcriptions -- the FT's reputation as pioneers of postmodern radio art has been irrefutably solidified. All Hail Proctor and Jessen!

Monday, July 14, 2014

Let the CHAOS Begin! Ha ha ha ha!

Image may contain: text

The sixth edition of Perform Chinatown 2014, L.A.’s premier performance art gathering, will present over 40 performers, distributed across a host of Chinatown galleries and public spaces on the 26th of July between 12 Noon and 10 PM.

This year’s rendition pools the complementary curatorial talents of Doug Harvey, Lee Lynch, and Paige Wery.

Perform Chinatown 2014 : CHAOS REIGNS! stretches the boundaries of Performance Art to include live experimental music, historical reenactments, survivalist workshops, guided meditation rituals, chess tournaments, poetry, dance, video, and food – as well as the cutting edge New Genre happenings that define the field.

http://performchinatown.com/

Apparently Sisyphean Workout Pays Off!


It took 2 days to haul this 287 pound thrift-store treadmill up the concrete steps and down the narrow root-cracked walkway into the backyard (not to mention the months MA spent trolling craigslist and the trip to the depths of Huntington Park to retrieve it), but its worth it just to see the happy smiling whippet faces ready to start working off that flab!


Saturday, July 12, 2014

White dust 'n' perished birds leaves its hex in the air?


Thanks to everyone who came out to the Insert Blanc Rabble celebration at Machine. My ritual slapstick sealing of the picture plane was preceded by various incantatory, satirical, and 'patacritical presentations by Alexandra Grant, Holly Myers, steve roden, and Tyler Stallings (with encouraging words from host Matthew Timmons). Special thanks to Daniel, Jenn, and Isabel, who sorted the inverted logistics and filled my pie-pans -- and to Jimmy Chertkow who did all that and took these photos. It was unexpectedly meaningful, as are the best things in life. Oh wait, that's "free." Oh well. Kudos to whoever inscribed that pie!


(PS: The performance consisted of me in a clown costume (Thanks Marnie!) backlit by blue video projection light, systematically pie-ing the front window of Machine Project from inside (audience on the street outside) until it was completely full, to the soundtrack of the climactic 6 minutes of the Firesign Theatre's I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus, which is the subject on my hot-off-the-presses Rabble pamphlet, entitled What’s Happening in The Firesign Theatre’s I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus as Best as I Can Make Out.)


Thursday, July 10, 2014

Rabble-Rousing Launch for Firesign Bozos Pamphlet!


Tonight's performance piece is an homage to the subject of my hot-off-the-presses pamphlet from Insert Blanc Press' Rabble imprint, What’s Happening in The Firesign Theatre’s I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus as Best as I Can Make Out - available here.

Image- outtake from FT Bozos album cover shoot by John Rose.

Rabble at MPPSfP
(Machine Project Project Space for Projects)
Thursday July 10, 2014 at 8 p.m.
Insert Blanc Press imprint Rabble
co-edited/curated by Holly Myers & Mathew Timmons

Join us for the grievously belated but no less ardent, eager, and enthusiastic launch of Rabble, an imprint of Insert Blanc Press dedicated to the publication of innovative critical writing in pamphlet form. We aim to celebrate the writers whose very fine work we’ve published in the last two years, herald those who are slated soon to appear, and generally extoll our ongoing mission of bringing the excitement back into criticism. Rabble is co-edited by Holly Myers and Mathew Timmons.

The evening will include readings, performances, and other occasions of rabble rousing by Myers, Timmons, Alexandra Grant, Doug Harvey, Steve Roden, and Tyler Stallings.

Part of a selection of events curated by Amy Garofano. Blurring the line between performance and exhibition, this series of events uses the Machine Project Project Space for Projects as a container for both actions and the effects of those actions. Each artist in this series will create an event that doubles as an opening. During the event the work will be in flux. The aftermath of the event will remain in the space to operate as a monument, remnant, diary entry, time capsule, or trace. In the days following the event, visitors can experience the aftermath from the storefront window as a kind of forensic tableau.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Gray Lake Scars Pie Whispers and Smiles


I have so much blogging to catch up on, and no time - several upcomings to plug too.... But first, I happened to see Michael Arata's monumental painting "Gray Lake Scars Pie Whispers and Smiles" installed in the West LA College gallery -- it had been shown down south somewheres, but he hadn't got a photo yet. It's 13 X 26 ft!

I was all like "You should leave it up and keep the gallery open so people can see it in the flesh" and he was all like "OK" and so we would like to announce Michael Arata's solo summer show "Gray Lake Scars Pie Whispers and Smiles" (also the name of the painting, detail above widescreen ATJ)

It will be on view Monday-Thursday 12-4 PM from June 30 to July 25 at West Los Angeles College Art Gallery, Fine Arts Complex, 9000 Overland Ave. Culver City, California 90230 Phone (310) 287-4200. Directions and parking: http://wlacgallery.org/directions-parking-contact/

Thursday, July 3, 2014

ALHAMBRA on LARZ on KCHUNG


Due to the phenomenal number of inquiries regarding the mystery track we played during the recent Wounded Lion episode, we've asked two of the perpetrators of Special Girl - The ALHAMBRA Chinese-American Children's Choir's Jimmy Chertkow and Jaime Paul Lamb - to join us in the KCHUNG studios on Sunday July 6 at 12 Noon to share more material from their forthcoming debut, play some selections from their earlier solo and collaborative oeuvre, spin some fave platters, talk about their studio praxis, their microbrewery fantasies, and their most recent occult initiations.

www.kchungradio.org