10/4/2007
West of Rome
Westwood, Los Angeles
T. Kelly Mason and Diana Thater's 'Relay' is a new installation, a theatre comprised of a mirrored room in the Los Angeles Arboretum where a rock band played the song Why Can't I Touch It, written by Pete Shelley and recorded by the Buzzcocks in 1979.
Relay
Emi Fontana is presenting her third West of Rome project: T. Kelly Mason and Diana
Thater's ‘relay’ to be installed in a retail space in Westwood, formerly a bridal
shop. This project follows the inaugural West of Rome installation, Meant to be
lived in (Today I’m feeling prismatic) by Olafur Eliasson (2005) and Monica
Bonvicini’s Not for you (2006).
After the tremendous success of JUMP, shown at the Tate Modern and at the 2006
Whitney Biennale and their first work, the live performance The future that almost
wasn’t, ‘relay’ is Mason and Thater’s third collaboration.
Mason and Thater designed a new installation, a theatre comprised of a mirrored room
in the Los Angeles Arboretum where a rock band played the song Why Can’t I Touch It,
written by Pete Shelley and recorded by the Buzzcocks in 1979. The song is
constructed as a round. The same music and verse are played repeatedly, with no
actual ending to the song. The lyrics are four simple sentences that are swapped
with each new verse.
The song reads: “It looks so real I can see it and it sounds so real I can hear it
and it feels so real I can feel it and it tastes so real I can taste it, so why why
why can’t I touch it?” to become: “It looks so real I can hear it and it sounds so
real I can feel it and it feels so real I can taste it and it tastes so real I can
feel it, so why why why can’t I touch it?”
The song and the video shot in the Arboretum are in continuous loops. The visuals
are attentively edited to form repetitions and invisible changes. As a work of
non-narrative video / installation, ‘relay’ references 1970’s American structuralist
(experimental) cinema.
Once installed, the video will be reflected around a mirrored room in order to
multiply its already infinite reflections. The viewer will see the video on the
screen and also be reflected in the surrounding installation. The actual and the
reflected are confused so that both become the real.
T. Kelly Mason lives and works in Los Angeles. Education: B.A. in Music from C.S.U.
Long Beach and his MFA from Art Center College of Design. Selected Exhibitions:
Daniel Hug Gallery, Galerie Catherine Bastide and the FestSpiele: Munich Opera
Festival in Munich, the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Residencies: the Det Fynske
Kunstakademie, Denmark, Fulbright residency in the Panama Canal Zone Region and the
Gottlieb Foundation.
Diana Thater lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Education: undergraduate
degree in Art History from NYU; MFA from Art Center College of Design. Selected Solo
Exhibitions: Dia Center for the Arts, The Renaissance Society, the Vienna Secession,
the Basel Kunsthalle. In March of 2004 the Siegen Museum for Contemporary Art and
the Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany opened a simultaneous two-museum survey exhibition
of her work from 1993 to 2003. Group Exhibitions: three Whitney Biennials, the
Sydney Biennial, the Carnegie International, 1997 Sculpture Projects in
Munster.
Related Event
Thater will speak with Michael Govan at LACMA on April 12 on Western films and the
myth of America in relation to the film-series presented in the show The Modern West
currently at LACMA.
West of Rome
West of Rome is a series of contemporary art projects conceived and curated by Emi
Fontana. Initiated in 2005 out of a desire to activate the relationship between the
audience and the city, the projects exist in a variety of venues according to the
conditions specified by each of the invited artists.
Special thanks to J.S. Rosenfield & Co. and Topa Properties
Public Opening: April 11, 2007, 6-8 PM
Westwood
1033 Westwood Boulevard - Los Angeles
Hours: Thursday through Saturday 11AM – 6PM; Sunday 12PM – 5PM and by appointment