Beastie Boys' Mike D will curate ‘Transmission LA: AV Club,’ an upcoming cultural audio/visual festival, running from April 19 to May 10, which will include an art exhibition at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary.
In divers interviews to Blog Downtown, the Wall Street Journal, and Back Book, Mike D (Diamond) admitted with complete humbleness, that he is 'thoroughly unqualified’, but that he feels ‘like a kid in a candy store.’
The Beastie Boys kid is said to be coordinating artists, musicians, coffee bars ad restaurants, and he is encouraging to see the MOCA event as a ‘place for confluence’ since the Geffen will stay open till 10pm four days a week, and will offer free admission… actually Mike D wants you to keep coming back:
‘It'll bum me out if people just go once and they check it off their list’.
And which artists will be featured? Favorites of Mike D, like Sage Vaughn, a Pasadena painter specialized in colorful wildlife representing butterflies and birds, and who met the Beastie Boy while surfing.
The other artists will be ‘a mix of people Diamond already knew and many others he admired from afar’, as he said to have always been interested ‘in visual design, art, coffee, food and of course, music’… ‘Hopefully I'll get to DJ’, he added.
‘Transmission L.A.: AV Club’ is sponsored by Mercedes Benz, and is a continuity of their digital magazine ‘Avant Garde Diaries’ featuring artists who are pioneers in their discipline. It is only the second of the kind (the first one was in Berlin and was curated by fashion designer Raf Simons).
It must be cool to be Mike D and to have this total artistic freedom, inviting any artist you want! And he seems to have a new vision of what an art museum should be, as he wants to avoid the ‘museum experience’, and wants ‘a place where people can come and hang out’, and ‘Not some button-up white walls gallery with people to match’…. So should we expect green or red walls?
He added it is ‘all about the experience’: ‘It kind of drives me crazy when you see people at museums reading the cards next to pieces the whole time. In a way, you could call this show "No Manual Necessary." Just build it!’
I am certainly ready to build my own experience next month!