thinking once again of jack kirby's collages...

i recently found this 2013 text i wrote about jack kirby's collages, and figured i'd post it here...

in 2012 i heard that jack kirby made collages, and i was curious how a great draftsman would experiment in the collage medium... there's a lot  opinions of kirby's around kirby's collages and those images were what got me back into comics (and a closer look at comic art - especially from the 1960's). it took a while to see one in person. 

i know there is a bit of controversy about the value of these works - i don't mean in terms of money, but how do they fit into the king's overall body of work. some folks gripe that kirby slipped collages into the mix in books because they could be done faster than penciling a page (which i highly doubt), while others - such as myself - see them as kirby the artist , experimenting with a different kind of graphic language and effect; and i would say that the fact that he published collages sporadically throughout his career would be enough to suggest that they were not only important to his creative process, but also important to enhance his stories.. i.e. they offer another voice... and another level of story telling. 

i think the collages were not only important to kirby's narratives and landscapes, and are essential part to his process overall  vision - where found forms were used to make new forms throughe a different activity than drawing with a pencil. 

when i turn the pages of a sequence of drawings, and find a world of collage detritus, the landscape offers an "other"... arriving as a shock, as a portal to another dimension. 

the image above, was, i believe jack's last published collage, and one of his masterpieces of his use of the collage medium. it's a gigantic twice-up two page spread filled with complexity along with some very detailed scissor and hand work.

please support my friend's kickstarter comic con game - nerd fest!!!!!

take a look at my friend's kick starter for a comic-con game, they are close to their goal... throw them a bone!!!!!!!!!!!  they are getting close to being funded. it's going to be a hilarious wonderful game to play!!!!!!!

here's the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1705849268/nerd-fest-the-comic-convention-game?ref=recommended

a new work in denmark... "a song for my father"

when i was 15, my father moved into a house designed by r.m. schindler. it’s a long story, but when my father bought his house, there was in a crawlspace under the garage, where we found 3 cartons of old domus magazines, something like 40 issues. (if you don't know the magazine, it was an architecture/design/art magazine started in the 1920's and is still publishing every month).

after my father passed away, i started to think about the magazines, and that over time, i kept looking through them, like a conduit between myself and my father - and these dirty, silver fish eaten, mold, mildew - i mean they were in really bad shape. some of the pages were falling apart, but i kept them as some kind of special material between myself and my father. 4 years ago, i decided to work more seriously with the materials attempting to converse with the materials in the hope to suggest "moves".

i began by making paintings of my father's house, and used various aspects of the april 1964 domus cover which was published the month of my birth. other steps were a series of small collages (in homage to joseph cornell's late collages). the next step was using pages of the domus magazines, towards temporary collages,  sort of collages, and sort of videos... but there were100 short videos, using all the pages of the april 1964 issue. 

when i finished with the 100 short videos i felt like i had climbed a mountain, and yet still, i kept mining the materials for promise.

when i was asked to make a "sound mark" for the installation in denmark, i wanted it to be outside, so that the process of dying would be palpable, while over time these images would change simply because of the weather and the poor materials.

so i pulled 65 pages from 1960's issues of domus magazines, each page with the text  “this is a part of a song for my father" -  plastered across the image.

in this way, i didn't want to manipulate the pages myself, but to simply allow a “patina of decay”.

ultimately, i placed the images in windows of a huge empty space, most likely a factory... and the pages were placed in various locations - existing like fragments of a stanza of a poem, or a score or a lost dog note... and each image a stepping stone, or a breadcrumb. 

over time, the images will fade from sun and weather, perhaps in a way that all things break down, no matter how much they long to remain... 

moholy-nag at lacma

holy cow - the moholy-nag show at lacma and the guggenhiem... was freaking amazing. the breadth of materials, ideas, genres, etc. someone opening his mind up to any thread to see where it might lead to... i loved so much his willingness to take a risk with an idea or a medium, covering abstraction and figuration... and always pushing. there was a lot of awkward works, funky approaches, and some wonderful works. here's a few that killed me...

performances by steve roden, yann novak, special guest, at human resources, 7/11/17

Steve Roden, Yann Novak, & Special Guest

June 11, 2017, 7:30PM

Artists

• Yann Novak
• Steve Roden

Venue

Human Resources
410 Cottage Home St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Artists

• Yann Novak
• Steve Roden

Venue

Human Resources
410 Cottage Home St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

soundpedro

june 3rd, 2017

RSVP on Facebook for soundpedro, a free event, taking place on June 3rd at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro Ca. RSVP on Facebook is optional and not required for entry. No tickets are necessary for entry.

Soundpedro takes place on June 3rd 2017, 5pm to 11pm. Soundpedro is a sound art event at Angels Gate Cultural Center. Dress warmly and bring a flashlight.
Map of the site

Installations by: Aught Collective/Hot Tomorrows, Glenn Bach, Borderline Antigone, Terry Braunstein, César Dávila-Irizarry,The Dirty Chaps, Ear Meal Webcast, Martin Espino & William Almas , Wolf Gowin & Tom Zear, heare, The Laptop Ensemble, Janet Lozada, MicDrop, New Culture Media Group, phog masheeen, Tom Peters, RadioMachineMagazine,sARTe, Susan Rawcliffe, Steven Speciale, TV-MA, Whereas...DivineBrick & BrenNoid, Roxanne Varzi, Elouise Walker,wikiGong, X EYES

SynthLab sound art performances, Building H:
5:00 PM - Sander Roscoe Wolff
5:45 PM - QRUX
6:30 PM - Loren Nerell
7:15 PM - Som
8:00 PM - Rychard Cooper
8:30 PM - Faraday Cage
9:15 PM - foreign native
Visuals by univac

Atlas Place sound art performances, Building F:
5:00 PM Southern California Soundscape Ensemble
5:30 PM Panel Discussion: “Atlas Place: Living Sound in Los Angeles” (moderator: Glenn Bach; panelists: Steve Roden, Robert Crouch, Yann Novak)
6:30 PM Steve Roden
7:30 PM Robert Crouch
8:30 PM Yann Novak
9:30 PM Southern California Soundscape Ensemble

In 2013, 100 years after the release of Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto “The Art of Noises,” the Long Beach-based art collective, FLOOD, presented its last SoundWalk. Just as Russolo’s seminal declaration strove to open new ways of perceiving, FLOOD pursued similar aspirations through SoundWalk, which created a platform to raise awareness of and appreciation for sound art. The event grew to include a mix of local, national and international artists, and the community experienced inspiring aesthetic sensibilities and approaches.

After ten years of producing SoundWalk, FLOOD believed it was time for a change. Deciding to expand beyond the aural towards more synaesthetic modes of presentation and perception, FLOOD began planning PUMP, a multi-sensory event coming in October of 2017, which will offer opportunities for cognitive boundaries to dissolve and senses to converge.

Following the final SoundWalk, however, sound artists and art professionals perceived a vacuum. They had lost a high-profile event that introduced mainstream communities to sound art, a form often relegated to the margins. In response, Amy Eriksen, Executive Director of Angels Gate Cultural Center, approached FLOOD with the proposition of starting soundpedro. Angels Gate is fertile ground for this endeavor. In 1998, the venue had initiated experiments in the area of sound that would move out of San Pedro and lead to the creation of the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) in Los Angeles.

Ear Meal Webcast, Terry Braunstein & MLuM, Aught/Collective Hot Tomorrows, and Elouise Walker will continue to exhibit at Angels Gate Cultural Center from June 3rd through 19th.