Gerry Fialka on LARZ, followed by a Hiatus

This Sunday's guest on Doug Harvey's LESS ART RADIO ZINE is the incomparable Gerry Fialka, multimedia renaissance impresario behind the PXL THIS film festival (now nearing the quarter-century mark!) dedicated to work produced on the instantly obsolete PXL 2000 children's video system, which recorded lo-res B&W images on audio cassettes; the self-explanatory Marshall McLuhan-FINNEGANS WAKE Reading Club, which has been meeting regularly in Venice since the early 90's; the DIY experimental cinema venues 7 Dudley CInema and Documental; live Media Ecology Soul Sessions (interviews) and poetical funk at the Unurban Coffee Shop; a phenomenal array of workshops colliding such pertinent topics as art, advertising, experimental cinema, technology, fakery, culture jamming, hacking, social media, conspiracy theory, and the color blue; and many other virtuosic DIY/experimental syncretisms.

One of which is  Sunday evening's PSYBERNETIC DREAMING with RIA LIVE CINEMA (RIAPD) - a collaborative project with Will Erokan consisting of "post-hypnotic triggering and hyper-maximum multi-media live cinema event" which functions as a "media yoga session [that] enables participants to meta-analyze the dualities of form and content." We'll be asking Gerry what the hell he's talking about, and playing audio-collaged mashups of his experimental documentary soundtracks, or something. But don't wait to pencil it in at 7 PM Sun Aug 31 at Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, California 90291 - Free admission!

After this program, I'm going to have to put LARZ on hiatus, while we find a place to move to and move there -- no small undertaking after 15 years accumulating research materials in one location! So I'm going to be needing my Sundays. I swear to you, though, that LARZ will be back! If I feel like it...

Michael Uhlenkott & Damon Willick on L.A.R.Z.

ANOTHER Seagate external hard drive has crapped out, leaving me devoid of documentation -- this was after the brand new big one I got to back that shit up died while sitting on a shelf, unused for 3 months. So is it any wonder that I've not been blogging so much?

I will, however, break the silence to promote the upcoming episode of Less Art Radio Zine featuring Michael Uhlenkott and Damon Willick. Michael was a founding member of the 70s/80s L.A. art collective World Imitation (Products) and their auditory wing Monitor, one of the most beloved but misplaced post-punk bands of the era. Their single self-titled 1981 LP was finally reissued last year to not enough fanfare on the Superior Viaduct label.

Subsequently, Michael honed his songwriter chops leading the avant-cowpunk band The Romans through a couple of albums to near-glory, and has recently been devoting his energies to the preservation and perpetuation of Tiki culture -- the peculiar mid-century American translation of traditional Polynesian art, music, food, and lifestyle that captured the imaginations of many from the post-punk generation -- including frequent WImP collaborator Jeffrey Vallance.

So we have a lot of material to pick from to fill up the hour, and plenty of L.A. art and post-punk historical veins to mine. Tune in Sunday Aug 26th at 12 noon to www.kchungradio.org! And check back for archival links.

Jeffrey, Michael, and the other WImP operatives (most notably master collagist and Solid Eye member Steve Thomsen) are among the subjects -- along with Judith F. Baca, Hans Burkhardt, Karen Carson, John Divola, Scott Grieger, Channa Horwitz, Michael C. McMillen, C.R. Stecyk III, Rena Small, Benjamin Weissman, Robert and Suzanne Williams, and many others -- of Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley, ca. 1970-1990, a sort of San Fernando Valley riposte to the Getty's 2011/12 Pacific Standard Time extravaganza, curated by my other guest, art writer Damon Willick, Ph.D.

Valley Vista runs from Aug 25 – Oct 11, 2014 at the Cal State Northridge Art Galleries, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA, 91330-8299. It's open Mon-Sat 12-4pm, Thurs 12-8pm (closed Monday, Sept. 1) Public Reception: Sat, Sept 6, 4–7 pm; Gallery Talk: Mon, Sept 15 10 am; Panel Discussion: Sat, Sept 27 1pm. More info: http://www.csun.edu/artgalleries/

CC on LARZ Pt 01: Juvenilia Mix

This Sunday at Noon on Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine, I'll be doing a live uninterrupted hour-long mix of cassette recordings made by Christian Cummings as a young self-taught experimental audio artist over a decade ago. These tapes miraculously escaped the devastating studio fire by being in my possession.