I got the chance to check out ‘Transmission LA: AV Club’ curated by Beastie Boys’ Mike D at the MOCA, and it is quite a fun ride! The 17-day festival is a multi-media installation that celebrates the senses with colors, movement and sounds.
Mike D has put together the work of artists he likes and, since it is an art museum after all, I couldn’t really make sense of his description of the show before visiting it: ‘a grown-up theme park, a Six-Flags for adults’.
I totally get it now, the exhibit is full of animated art, like these spinning multicolor pinwheels by Jim Drain and Ara Peterson, which can easily hypnotize you or make you, after a few minutes looking at them, more nauseous than the worst roller-coaster ride. A sort of LSD-free psychedelic trip, which was actually competing with these extraordinary trippy videos by Takeshi Murata, full of liquid colors moving into each other, cartoonish moving sculptures that you couldn’t stop watching.
Artist Tom Sachs provided pieces inspired by music, assemblages of amps and turntables, a sort of homage to Jamaican sound system, as well as rather enigmatic ones, like the ‘Nutsy’s World’ ones around the ‘100 Killer Dubplates as Played by Jah Shaka’ inspired by the London reggae artist.
Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe’s books-and-other-paraphernalia installation was particularly weird, a saturated combination of quasi-fiction, real literature (hey, there was a large poster ‘Camus The Fall’), nostalgia, zine culture (‘artichoke underground’), cult utopia, drugs references, and I don’t know what else, whereas Sage Vaugh’ s colored circles of butterflies flying over everyday-grey-scenes which are said to be inspired by the cycle of birth-death-rebirth, were intriguing.
The concept of fun ride was especially true in the Ben Jones’ room, a sort of 3D cartoon-video-game-grand-prix, where you have no control of the car on the road.
There also was a cool coffee bar designed by Robert McKingley, a pop-up rainbow-colored restaurant with food provided by Roy Choi’s food truck, a family book store, an all-feather costume by Sanford Biggers, a video of cats playing piano by Cory Arcangel, a 1979-picture installation by filmmaker Mike Mills, and other stuff I have forgotten. I swear, you couldn’t be bored.
And sure, music was at the center of all this:
– Mike D created a podcast with Peanut Butter Wolf to go with the festival, and you can download it here.
– In case you need another mix-tape, each artist was asked for his or her favorite song:
Santigold: ‘Still Ill’ by The Smiths, Peter Coffin: ‘Love Theme’ by Toots Thielemans, Mike Mills: ‘Basin Street Blues’ by Louis Armstrong, Robert McKinley: ‘All I Do’ by Stevie Wonder, Roy Choi: The Whole Public Enemy album ‘It takes a Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back’, Ben Jones: ‘In My Time of Dying’ by Led Zeppelin, Jim Drain: ‘Spinning Wheel’, Ara Peterson: ‘Wasn’t Born to Follow’ by The Byrds, Takeshi Murata: ‘I Want to See The Bright Lights Tonight’ by Richard and Linda Thompson, Sage Vaughn: ‘Red Headed Stranger’ by Willie Nelson, Sanford Biggers: ‘Pop Life’ and ‘Irresistible Bitch’ by Prince and ‘One Mo’ Gin’ by D’angelo, Will Fowler: ‘I Drowned the Sun In a Glass of Water’ by Shower Curtain Umbrella (err is it for real?), Public Fiction: ‘Down in the Park’ by Gary Numan, Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman: ‘Revolution Blues’ by Neil Young.
– Finally, DJs animate the festival on certain nights, Santigold, Peanut Butter Wolf, Dâm-Funk, J-Rocc, Jonti, Jeremy Sole and Egyptian Lover were there last week, and Z-Trip, DJ Harvey, James Murphy, Diplo and Mad Decent Crew will be there next week.
There is this Mike D’s quote at the entrance: ‘Work hard. play hard. everything at 11.’,… it seems they have really worked hard to prepare this exhibit, and it is our turn to play hard.
