Los Angeles Visionaries Association

THE CACOPHONY SOCIETY – ZONE SHOW  is Grand Central Art Center’s retrospective look at the Cacophony Society, a national collective of guerrilla artists, dada pranksters, and various eccentrics pursuing “experiences beyond the mainstream.” Dedicated to activities mocking societal expectations, sacred cows, and good taste, The Cacophony Society evolved from the San Francisco Suicide Club and its members were chief organizers of the Burning Man Festival in Northern Nevada. The Society’s pranking served as inspiration for the activities of Project Mayhem in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. The exhibition transforms the museum's main gallery into a wildly immersive environment filled with photos, graphics, video, props, costumes, and original art from Society events. Exhibition runs through April 15. FREE!

BLOCK PARTY: The Feburary 4th opening will be celebrated with a block party featuring carnivalesque music and performance from artists associated with the Society, art cars, competing protestors, dangerous stunts, an on-call ambulance, and other surprises. That is if the Department of Homeland Security doesn't shut us down!

Check http://intothezonemovie.com for updates and complete lineup TBA.  FREE!

To sign up for this free event: First register as a user on this site, and then return to this page. Refresh the page and the signup tab will appear just to the left, above this paragraph. Click "signup" and reserve your spot. No plus-ones; each guest must register individually.

ABOUT THIS TOUR:

For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave's site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric bus adventures) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill, In SRO Land).

Part Two of the Victorian Downtown walking tour will cover First Street north to Aliso and Los Angeles Street west to Broadway. It is a distinct departure from Part One, which almost exclusively dealt with the development of the mature business block of the 1880s and ‘90s. This tour will deal, for the most part, with the hotels and early business blocks of the 1870s, whose unique stylistic developments in this “bust out” time are heavily influenced by the experiences of Angelenoes in the “tempestuous ‘60s.” This is an era which saw drought, disease, plagues (of grasshoppers no less), and the bottom falling out of the real estate market, and those citizens who dared remain were the toughest and most stubborn ones.

The Bella Union, US Hotel, Hotel de Paris, the Baker Block, the Temple Block, and the whole slew of county and city buildings surrounding Pound Cake Hill and Fort Moore will all be discussed as we orient you to their locations beneath what exists today.

It is a Los Angeles that you will not recognize, and yet, strangely, you will not be surprised at all. For as we hold as a vademecum for this tour that haunting quote from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.”

By the conclusion of Part Two of Victorian Downtown, with only the rich region of the Plaza left for Part Three, we will have covered sufficient ground and decades to begin to make sweeping generalizations about the aesthetics of Victorian Los Angeles and how they drove the growth, appearance and very spirit of the city.

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flâneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

As part of the Echo Park Shop Hop on December 10, Stories Cafe will host Dr. Paul Koudounaris, the author of The Empire of Death. He will present original photos from his book, as well as give a talk and slideshow related to his research and fantastical travel experiences in the process of compiling this unique tome of macabre art, which illustrates bone-decorated religious sanctuaries from around the world. The book, which entered the UK Amazon sales charts at number one in both religious history and social/cultural anthropology, was compiled over a five-year period of travel and research, which to took the author to four continents to document many sites which had never before been published. Information on the book and a preview of its content can be found at: http://www.tandhhighlights.co.uk/9780500251782.html

The photos will be on display at Stories through January 10.

This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs.

ABOUT THIS TOUR: For the fourth installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flaneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill).

On this excursion we’ll focus on several landmark buildings by the architectural firm of Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen. The firm’s significant contributions to the downtown skyline have been overshadowed by the massive structures erected since the 1957 ordinance permitting buildings to be taller than 150’. On this tour, we’ll ignore such behemoths while shining our spotlight on the modest beauties that Walker and Eisen constructed in the Historic Core.

Walker & Eisen made their mark on downtown during the building boom which immediately followed the first World War. What we think of as “Jazz Age” L.A. architecture is in large part defined by this very successful team. In the year 1923, Los Angeles recorded $185,000,000 in building expenditures. Walker & Eisen at that time employed fifty draftsmen in their office, while the great civic architectural firm Parkinson & Parkinson had just 13. In the 21 years of partnership (1920-41), Walker & Eisen were responsible for $40,000,000 worth of buildings.

Walker & Eisen were the spiritual heirs of the now-forgotten Victorian-era architects Robert A. Young & Burgess J. Reeve, who shaped Los Angeles during its early boom years and depressions, and on which our last tour focused. Standing on their shoulders, and in the shadow of C.C. Julian’s financial scandal, Walker & Eisen quietly, distinctly, and on budget, translated the hopes, dreams, and sometimes outright arrogance of their clients into beautiful meditations on surface treatment and the play between light, window and wall.

The two buildings of prime focus will be the Oviatt (1927) and the Fine Arts Building (1928). We will not be visiting the penthouse of the Oviatt, and it will be at the discretion of the building’s management if we are permitted a peek inside the the former Oviatt & Alexander haberdashery. The Fine Arts Building lobby will be open, and we plan on spending a fair amount of time in it, amongst the Batchelder tile.

While the calculus to minimize the route and maximize other Walker & Eisen buildings along its path has yet to be computed, attendees can be assured that there will be a great deal to see, and yet more to talk about.

The tour will begin in the exterior lobby of the Oviatt Building at 1:30pm. Please wear comfortable shoes and dress appropriately for the weather, as we will walking at least six blocks and possibly farther before the tour’s end.

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flaneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flaneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.

LA alternative arts organization, Carp, shows selections from its 1970s ephemera archives of contemporary art—mailers, letters, photos, and other documentation—from a cross-section of LA’s early performance and media arts. Artists include Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, Kim Jones, Alexis Smith, Richard Newton, and Bruce Nauman. Carp encouraged experimentation in non-traditional venues for art like television and print, sponsored LA’s first pop-up galleries, and organized a number of signficant public and private installations and actions. Carp was founded by Barbara Burden and Marilyn Nix in 1974, and was funded by NEA and private donors.

Carp’s mix of installation, performance, television, video, print magazine and street influenced many experimental art organizations that have followed. As part of Pacific Standard Time, this exhibit reflects an under-appreciated but growing-in-importance aspect of contemporary art—ephemera. It includes the early and experimental work of both well- and lesser-known LA artists in the 1970s.

After the Oct. 8 opening, the show will be open Saturdays Oct. 15, 22, 29 from 1 to 5 pm, and by appointment.

LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association is pleased to announce a free roof-top screening of a newly-discovered circa 1949 short color film of Main Street and other downtown Los Angeles locations, the Union Rescue Mission-produced Of Scrap & Steel. The screening celebrates the launch of a new series of downtown stories on the In SRO Land time travel blog, featuring material from the Union Rescue Mission Archives. 

ABOUT THE FILM: In mid-1948 the Board of Directors of the Union Rescue Mission approved the expenditure of $5,000 to make the 30-minute film Of Scrap & Steel which portrays the redemption and good works of Arthur Hawkins, an alcoholic executive who ended up on the streets of Los Angeles and whose life was saved when he turned to the URM for help. Porter Hall (Arthur Hawkins) is one of only two actors in a film otherwise populated by real Los Angeles characters. (You may recall Hall's performance as the pesky guy on the train in Double Indemnity.) 

Of Scrap & Steel  was only shown in screenings organized by the URM or related organizations, and would have been completely lost if Liz Mooradian, URM historian, had not saved a deteriorating 16mm print and had it transferred to video before it was too late. Of Scrap & Steel is just one of the remarkable artifacts discovered in the Union Rescue Mission archives and explored in the In SRO Land blog.

This entertaining and powerful short film is a compelling snapshot of life on Skid Row (Main Street) circa 1949, and a fascinating document of the important work that the URM continues to do with the most needy in the community. Although downtown Los Angeles features in numerous noir films, it is extremely rare to see color images of eastern downtown, and rarer still to see full-color live-action footage of the vibrant street scene that included rescue missions, pawn shops, amusement parlors, bars, restaurants and the ever-patrolling paddy wagon in search of drunkards to haul away to jail or County work crews.

This free rooftop screening is jointly organized by LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association, the In SRO Land time travel blog and the Union Rescue Mission. Seating will be provided, and attendees are encouraged to dress warmly for the cool night air. 

Gourmet box dinners: “Meals with a purpose” will be available for purchase ($7, cash only), with a choice of sandwich (vegetarian, roast beef or chicken), cookie, fruit, crackers and beverage. 100% of proceeds from your meal donation goes to the URM, and the proceeds from each dinner will feed two other people.

Limited free parking is available at the URM’s underground parking lot. Just tell the attendant you are there for the film. Please carpool: if each guest arrives with one other person in their car, there should be enough parking for all. Those arriving later will have to leave their keys with the parking attendant. Should the URM lot fill up, there is also off-site, paid parking available at Joe’s Parking Lot at 1st & San Pedro. A free shuttle will run between this parking lot and the Union Rescue Mission from 5pm-9pm. Nearest Metro station: Little Tokyo.

Rain check: if it's raining on October 20, this event will be rescheduled for October 27. 

Schedule

6pm Doors open (reserved guests check in at the main entrance and are sent up to the roof)

6pm-7pm Box dinners available for purchase, guests can watch the sunset (6:13pm)

7pm

• Introduction to the URM by Rev. Andy Bales, CEO
• Historians Nathan Marsak & Richard Schave introduce the film in the context of the neighborhood's history, and their work on the In SRO Land time travel blog.

7:30pm Film screening

8pm Q & A

8:30pm Event ends

To sign up for this free event: First register as a user on this site, and then return to this page. Refresh the page and the signup tab will appear just to the left, above this paragraph. Click "signup" and reserve your spot. No plus-ones; each guest must register individually.

Los Angeles art historian and author Paul Koudounaris presents his new publication, The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses (Thames & Hudson, October 2011). Question and answer and discussion afterward. Books will also be available for purchase. Lecture accompanied by slide show.

From the Publisher:

In this tour de force of original cultural history, Paul Koudounaris takes the reader on an unprecedented international tour of macabre and devotional architectural masterpieces in nearly 20 countries. This is the first book to bring together the world's most important charnel sites, ranging from the crypts of the Capuchin monasteries in Italy and the skull-encrusted columns of the ossuary in Évora in Portugal, to the strange tomb of a 1960s wealthy Peruvian nobleman decorated with the exhumed skeletons of his Spanish ancestors. Illustrated with specially taken photographs of sites rarely open to the public and forgotten archive images of others long destroyed, this mesmerising, shocking and deeply moving book is an essential memento mori for our modern age.

LAVA Visionary Paul Koudounaris signs his book The Empire of Death, and also select photos from the book will be on display. The work of several other artists will also be featured. 

ABOUT: For centuries religious establishments constructed decorated ossuaries and charnel houses from human bone. These unique structures, which stand as masterpieces of art, have been pushed into the footnotes of history; they were part of a dialogue with death that is now silent. Dr. Paul Koudounaris completed a PhD in Art History at UCLA in 2004. His interest in the bizarre and suspicious led him to an extraordinary charnel house in the crypt under the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in the Czeck Republic town of Melnik. It was gritty and dirty, but contained an arrangement of bones that reflected both a beauty in artistic principles and an understanding of philosophy and theology. Upon discovering that the local hostel receptionist had no idea of its existence, Dr. Koudounaris set his sights on discovering how many more of these charnel houses might still be standing, eventually visiting, researching, and photographing charnel houses on four continents - plus countless others he found in historic documents, grande dames which had fallen by the wayside of the passing centuries. They are presented in his book, which not only recovers their history, but the history of the religious movement which gave birth to them.

In addition to the LAVA talk I will be giving on this book on 9/25 at the monthly Sunday Salon, I will be doing a book signing and opening a photo show on 9/24 at La Luz de Jesus. Free, and fun for the family. Provided yours is the Addams Family. Read on for details.

For centuries, religious establishments constructed decorated ossuaries and charnel houses from human bone. These unique structures which stand as masterpieces of art have been pushed into the footnotes of history; they were part of a dialogue with death that is now silent.

In 2006, Dr. Paul Koudounaris who two years earlier completed a PhD in Art History at UCLA, found a research topic which would preoccupy the next four years of his existence. Koudounaris’ interest in the bizarre and suspicious led him to an extraordinary charnel house in the crypt under the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in the Czeck Republic town of Melnik. Unlike the “Bone Church” in nearby Sedlec, it was gritty and dirty, not for tourists and even unknown by most locals, but contained an arrangement of bones that reflected both a beauty in artistic principles and an understanding of philosophy and theology. Upon discovering that the local hostel receptionist had no idea of its existence, Dr. Koudounaris set his sights on discovering how many more of these charnel houses might still be standing.

Dr. Koudounaris eventually visited researched and photographed charnel houses on four continents – plus countless others he found in historic documents, grande dames which had fallen by the wayside of the passing centuries. They are presented in the book The Empire of Death which, with detailed photos and text not only recovers their history, but the history of the religious movement which gave birth to them. This is not a book about the macabre or death. It is a book about beauty and salvation.

In this tour de force of original cultural history, Dr. Koudounaris takes the reader on an unprecedented international tour of macabre and devotional architectural masterpieces in nearly 20 countries. The sites in this brilliantly original study range from the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Palermo, where the living would visit mummified or skeletal remains and lovingly dress them, to the Paris catacombs, to elaborate bone-encrusted creations in Austria, Cambodia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Koudounaris photographed and analyzed the role of these remarkable memorials within the cultures that created them, as well as the mythology and folklore that developed around them, and skillfully traces a remarkable human endeavor with 250 full-color and 50 black-and-white photographs in a beautifully bound leather covered book.

This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs.

For the latest installment of urban historian Richard Schave’s site-specific discussion series “The Flâneur & The City,” Richard (Esotouric bus adventures) is joined by architectural historian Nathan Marsak (1947project, On Bunker Hill, In SRO Land).

On this excursion we’ll explore the mostly lost architectural landmarks of the Northern Historic Core, starting from 3rd & Spring, east to Main, then north to the lawn of City Hall, then westward to 2nd & Spring. Within this small footprint, we will discover some of the most fascinating structures in L.A. history, most of them quite forgotten.

The tour is inspired by the September 2011 launch of a new series on the In SRO Land time travel blog featuring archival material from the collection of the Union Rescue Mission, which presents an opportunity for exploring the lost lore of the old commercial neighborhood which was largely cleared via eminent domain in the 1920s and 1930s in order to provide a clean slate for the erection of City Hall and other government buildings. This was a precursor to the much larger and more destructive eminent domain project by which the residential neighborhood Bunker Hill was cleared in the 1950s and 1960s.

Locations on the walking tour will include Joseph Newsom’s exquisite Bryson-Bonebrake Block (1888), first two Union Rescue Mission locations, and the original “civic center” encompassing the Courthouse (1887), the Hall of Records (1911) and the State Building (1931).

To start, we will seek to answer some basic questions about the early development of downtown Los Angeles:

• Who were the architects and financiers of 19th Century Los Angeles?

• Which buildings were most representative of these individuals’ aims, and which were the most significant architecturally?

• What did the Victorian-era Angeleno think of the architecture of his city?

• How did architecture reflect the growth of the city?

Having established these early themes, we will start to ask questions about the emotional and spiritual core of the city of Los Angeles –-its zeitgeist—and begin to draw the connection between architecture and the city’s culture.

An example is the discussion of the Union Rescue Mission’s first two buildings at 145 N. Main Street and 226 S. Main Street. More than a century ago, the URM’s unique mission brought them to the heart of Skid Row, a place filled with characters and scenery worthy of Victor Hugo, and it keeps them there to this day. The city has twice forced a move of the URM as it seeks to “move along” the disenfranchised and those who seek to aid them. These snapshots of lost architectural spaces that were once an intrinsic part of a dynamic urban core tell us much about the tensions and forces still at play in the community.

The tour’s closing thoughts are inspired by a quote from Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: “When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.”

TAKING THIS TOUR: This tour is now full. If you want to try to get a space on the tour, you may attend the LAVA Sunday Salon and ask about openings before the tour departs. -- Reservations will be required for this free walking tour, and space is very limited for all events in this series. Reserve your space for the September 25 event by clicking “Signups” (THERE ARE NO "PLUS-ONES" - ONE RESERVATION PER PERSON, PLEASE!).

ABOUT THE TOUR SERIES: “The Flâneur & The City” is an ongoing attempt to explore some of the more important issues revealed by the constantly changing heart of the metropolis. The core notion of the series is of culture and history as commodities that are packaged and sold to a target demographic; meanwhile, it’s the ignored and seemingly worthless scraps of meaning found on the sidewalks and marketplaces where the true remnants of positive public space can be found. All interpretations and nuisances of the word flâneur are examined—from the modern-day aesthete dreaming of Baudelaire while carried along in the human tide past the stalls and shops of Broadway, to its more recent and perhaps relevant use, someone who is loitering. At its heart this series is a celebration of the simple act of getting out of your car, walking through a neighborhood and learning to see it with your own eyes.