11-day Festival celebrating Los Angeles's role, past and present, as an epicenter of performance and public art. More than 30 new works, re-inventions, commissions and happenings to unfold across the city, into the streets, clubs and public spaces of Southern California. Experimental music and theater, social and political interventions, outdoor visual spectacles, media art, and underground performances.
The art of Pacific Standard Time heads into the streets,
clubs and public spaces of Southern California from January 19 through 29, 2012, during a special Pacific
Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival. This 11-day celebration will feature more than 30
extraordinary performances—including contemporary re-enactments of iconic works by artists such as
Judy Chicago, Suzanne Lacy, Robert Wilhite and James Turrell—and interventions both large and small
in the public sphere. Organized by the Getty Research Institute and LA>
In the 1960s and 1970s, Los Angeles became one of the birthplaces of international performance art, with
artists such as Eleanor Antin, Chris Burden, Suzanne Lacy, Allan Kaprow, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy
and Barbara T. Smith creating pioneering work. The younger generation of Los Angeles artists taking part
in the festival is living proof that this legacy continues to be a major source of inspiration in Los Angeles.
In keeping with the inclusive vision of Pacific Standard Time, the festival features works by well-known
and emerging artists in several different categories that reflect Los Angeles’s artistic diversity—
experimental music and theater, social and political interventions, outdoor visual spectacles, media art,
and underground performances.
Organized by Glenn Phillips of the Getty Research Institute and Lauri Firstenberg of LA>
“Diverse audiences will be
able to experience an
amazing array of
performances and public art
works, all condensed into
one very intense 11-day
festival,” explained Glenn
Phillips. “By revisiting works
of art that loom large in our
memory but existed only
briefly in fleeting moments of
performance and installation,
the Performance and Public
Art Festival is a perfect
complement to the larger
effort of Pacific Standard
Time, which chronicles and
explores Los Angeles art in
all its dimensions.”
“The festival offers people an amazing opportunity to discover and experience art in new ways, from
outdoor spectacles to intimate performances,” said Lauri Firstenberg. “Many of the artists represented in
the festival also have works on the walls and in the galleries at participating Pacific Standard Time
museum exhibitions, further enriching people’s understanding of art during this period and how it relates
to us in the present.”
Adding a daily element of surprise to the festival, Los Angeles artist Liz Glynn will organize Black Box, a
nightly series of festival after-parties in Hollywood, where visitors will be able to socialize and witness
unannounced performances by artists both famous and emerging.
A complete festival schedule and detailed event descriptions are available on the Pacific Standard Time
Performance and Public Art Festival website (pacificstandardtimefestival.org). Below are a few examples
from the diverse festival program of performances by artists whose works are also included in ongoing
Pacific Standard Time exhibitions:
On January 19, Judy Chicago and Materials & Applications with members of the public will
reinvent Disappearing Environments, a 1968 visual spectacle by Chicago, Lloyd Hamrol and Eric
Orr that utilized 37 tons of dry ice to create temporary public sculptures that dispense a field of
fog as they evaporate and eventually vanish. The reinterpretation will include 25 tons of dry ice
and culminate in a flare performance at dusk. The day-long installation will coincide with the
opening night of the adjacent Art Los Angeles Contemporary art fair.
On January 20 at 7pm at the Getty Center, Hirokazu Kosaka will transform the Getty’s Arrival
Plaza into a major sculptural and performative installation entitled Kalpa, a new site-specific
commission that completely immerses visitors in a theatrical experience. Named after the
Sanskrit word for eon, Kosaka builds a symbolic parallel between Kalpa and the inevitable long
passage of time that slowly transforms our lives, our histories and our memories.
On January 21, Pomona College Museum of Art will stage three performances keyed to It
Happened at Pomona, a Pacific Standard Time exhibition in three parts surveying pivotal
moments in the art college’s history. In Preparation F, John White will restage his 1971
performance piece exploring issues of masculinity and gender. In a staged setting, a football
team enters, changes from street clothes to football uniforms and scrimmages in the gallery. In
the second performance, Judy Chicago will perform A Butterfly for Pomona, a new pyrotechnic
performance inspired by her 1970 Atmosphere environmental performance at Pomona College, in
which she used flares and commercial fireworks to soften and feminize the environment. And
finally, James Turrell will recreate his 1971 performance Burning Bridges, a visual spectacle
utilizing highway flares. Turrell, famous for his experiments with Light and Space art, will light
flares to bring an immediate and brilliant orange glow to the surroundings and envelop the scene
in smoke.
On January 22, Pasadena-based artist Richard Jackson will mount Accidents in Abstract
Painting, his previously unfulfilled dream performance in which he crashes a remote-controlled,
large-scale model airplane filled with paint into a wall that reads “Accidents in Abstract Painting.”
For Jackson, this act makes an ironic comment on Action Painting and the concept of chance so
prominent in abstract painting.
Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in January marks a reconceptualization of Lacy’s important work
from 1977, Three Weeks in May, which raised public awareness of violence against women and
is included in Doin’ It in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building at the Otis College of
Art and Design. Working with scores of collaborators and including a number of related events,
Lacy revisits her original work to consider where Los Angeles is 30 years into the anti-rape
movement and how we can end violence against women.
The artist William Leavitt will premiere his never-before produced play from 1979 titled, The
Particles (Of White Naugahyde), with multiple performances at The Annex (January 26, 27 and
February 2, 3). The play is framed as a sit-com, in which a family auditions for a place in a NASA
program that would send them to a planned space colony. The family is then instructed to live in a
security-free community at the edge of the desert with other aspiring applicants for a two-week
period, resulting in anxiety and anti-social behavior among the participants.
On January 27, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA will present Special Members Concert: Punk
Rock, an exclusive concert with three seminal punk rock bands — X, The Dead Kennedys and
The Avengers — that continue to shape California’s music scene. California’s punk culture is
represented in MOCA’s exhibition Under the Big Black Sun through the photography of Bruce
Conner, concert flyers for Black Flag by Raymond Pettibon, and other works that reference the
relationship between art and music of the period.
The Ball of Artists, a private event at the historic Greystone Manor in Beverly Hills on January 28,
turns the attention back to Los Angeles’ present cultural dynamics through 30 commissioned art
projects, including site-specific installations and individual performances by Drew Heitzler, Mungo
Thomson, Shana Lutker, Justin Beal, David Lamelas, Charles Gaines, and other contemporary
artists.
The festival will culminate in two closing events on January 29. At the Hammer Museum, Eleanor
Antin will direct a restaging of her historic piece Before the Revolution, which raises controversial
issues of racial and gender politics. The performance will put on display Antin’s alter-ego, the
black Russian ballerina Eleanora Antinova. Also on the closing day, the Eagle Rock’s Welcome
Inn will be transformed into a venue for Welcome Inn Time Machine, a free, six-hour event
featuring experimental music originating in Southern California. Organized by the Society for the
Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound, the “micro concerts” will take place in
individual motel rooms, allowing key moments in sound and music history to be experienced
simultaneously and sequentially. Among the 11 works presented will be Bruce Nauman’s Violin
Tuned D.E.A.D., Pauline Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations, LAFMS’s Pyramid Headphones, and
James Tenney’s Postal Pieces.
Support for Pacific Standard Time
Presenting sponsors of Pacific Standard Time are The Getty and Bank of America.
Generous support has been provided by South Coast Plaza, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Tiffany & Co.,
Art Platform-Los Angeles, John and Louise Bryson, David and Marianna Fisher, The Mohn Family
Foundation, Anne and Jim Rothenberg, Elizabeth and Henry Segerstrom, Christina and Mark Siegel,
Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Holmes Tuttle.
Additional support has been provided by The Ahmanson Foundation, The Broad Art Foundation,
California Community Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, W. M. Keck Foundation, The Ralph M.
Parsons Foundation, Weingart Foundation, Sotheby’s, Media Sponsor 89.3 KPCC, Angeleno magazine,
Turon Travel-Preferred Travel Agency, Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills-Official Luxury
Hotel and LA INC.
Major funding for the Performance and Public Art Festival comes from the Getty Foundation.
About Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980
Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California,
coming together for six months from October 2011 to April 2012 to tell the story of the birth of the Los
Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. By presenting a multitude of
simultaneous exhibitions and programs, each institution is making its own contribution to this grand-scale
story of artistic innovation and social change. Exploring and celebrating the significance of the crucial
years after World War II through the tumultuous period of the 1960s and 70s, Pacific Standard Time
encompasses developments from L.A. Pop to post-minimalism; from modernist architecture and design to
multi-media installations; from the films of the African-American L.A. Rebellion to the feminist activities of
the Woman’s Building; from ceramics to Chicano performance art; and from Japanese-American design
to the pioneering work of artists’ collectives.
Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.
Image: Judy Chicago, Lloyd Hamrol, and Eric Orr’s 1968 art installation Disappearing Environments. Photo: Lloyd Hamrol
Press Contacts
Ruder Finn Arts & Communications Counselors
Rachel Bauch (310) 882-4013 / bauchr@ruderfinn.com
Whitney Snow (212) 583-2743 / snoww@ruderfinn.com