This summer in Los Angeles I seem to be stumbling into more performance related work than I have, perhaps, since high school, and along the way being introduced to spaces that regularly present such events, spaces I had never heard of before.
I went to hear Casey Thomas Anderson perform a new work for radio, electronics and various implements at Pieter PASD (performance art space DANCE). Also performing with new works were Cecilia Lopez from Buenos Aires and Jacob Wick from New York. The space was a nice big open loft-type room, and I, of course, appreciate their non-cash donation admission policy, requesting that people bring drinks or food instead of money for admission, to share with everyone else present.
Another new space for me, introduced via Perform! Now!, was Volume Projects. For perform now, they had a day long set of musicians presenting works for 4 audience members via headphones, at half hour intervals, including Julia Holter, Mark So and Adam Overton. Simultaneously, a performance by Julie Tolentino was going on over the course of the afternoon. The audio performances taking place became de facto “soundtracks” accompanying the performance, each one shaping the experience of Tolentino’s performance in a different way. Perhaps the most shocking change occurred during Mark So’s presentation of four field recordings, when suddenly it was revealed how much the preceding musicians’ works were turning Tolentino’s performance into a much more aesthetic work. Instead of becoming soundtracks for an abstract performance, the barrenness of So’s field recordings became instead a series of environments that were projected on top of the performance which, no longer being made prettier by music, became for me a much more grotesque bodily experience of human-like animals covered with bursting pustules and festering wounds.