Saturday, June 9, 2012

From Last Sunday to Telling the Futures.

A very warm thanks to all the participating artists and those who came out to see what futures will bring.  Here are a few images from last Sunday.


Detail of Flag For A Future, Present by Tucker Neel


Hero by Chad Person (Courtesy of Mark Moore Gallery)




Hell Yeah! by Jean Robison


Tools For Remembering by Katie Bachler

Detail from Tools For Remembering by Katie Bachler
Detail from Tools For Remembering by Katie Bachler
Vase of Tulips, Rose, and Other Flowers with Worms (#1) by Michiko Yao 
That's Just How I Express My Love by Michiko Yao

It Must have Been years, Silent Study II, Your Are In My Vision, and Down In The Park by Josh Peters
THE FUTURE IS LASER TAG!!!11one by Ray Hsu







Christine Nguyen in Guestroom





Sea Moon and Friends (many, many friends)










Jamie Bechtold


Saturday, May 12, 2012

TELLING THE FUTURES

Summercamp's ProjectProject 3119 Chadwick Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032

Opening Reception Sunday, June 3rd from 5—8PM
Sound Bath with Jamie Bechtold from 8:30—9:30PM (Spaces are limited, a sign up sheet will be available - the cost of the Sound Bath is $20)

Exhibition runs from June 3rd —June 17, 2012
Hours by appointment, please contact summercampprojectproject@gmail.com
Katie Bachler
Jamie Bechtold
Ray Hsu
Tucker Neel
Chad Person
Josh Peters
Jean Robison
Michiko Yao
and Christine Nguyen in Guestroom
Musical Performance by Sea Moon and Friends

Summercamp's ProjectProject presents TELLING THE FUTURES. An outdoor group exhibition placing many different future options into relation—a kind of choose your own adventure of apocryphal psychic visions of political election cycles for survival in a dystopian utopia. History+Present=Futures. Organized by Fatima Hoang, Elonda Billera & Janice Gomez.

Chad Person’s inflatable sculptures, dollar bill collages, and other highly conceptual works – reflect upon the confluence of money and power throughout history, and in particular considers current US attitudes that have filtered down from Westward Expansion and notions of Manifest Destiny. The result is a political and cultural critique that encompasses not only the shifting cultural changes that have taken place within his lifetime but also those throughout US history. Also mining her relationship to history, Michiko Yao investigates the psychology behind the unique social behaviors and fantasies of contemporary Japanese women, and the relationship of two imperialisms, Western and Japanese. Yao’s current body of video and photographic work depicting floral arrangements are inspired by the historical relationships between Dutch and Japanese cultures. During 250 years of Japanese national isolation in the Edo period, the Dutch were the only westerners permitted to come to Japan. These works expose Japanese social stereotypes in both Eastern and Western culture; confront the boundaries of socio-culturally constructed ideas of gender, race, and sexuality and their relation to power.

Canadian writer and artist, Ray Hsu will remotely organize The Future is Laser Tag, in which the bottom of the hill will become a military exercise: an obstacle course for four players. Four gallery-goers become avatars. They will strap cameras to themselves that transmit their first-person views to four remote players. These remote players can see from the first-person views of their avatars. But these remote players can also see in third-person: a camera at the top of the hill, a bird's-eye over the obstacle course. Also using the sky as the limit, Jean Robison traverses an adolescent desire for the end of the world in her group of large drawings, Hell Yeah!. Creating fantasies of apocalypse composed of gold coins, breasts, cola, pizza and weapons on large vinyl banners that can be seen from the sky. Tucker Neel explores the impulse to memorialize individual and collective experiences. Questioning how images, objects and events become memorable and shape nationalist allegiance and individual identity, Neel’s projects directly address the role design, decoration, and artifice, play in shaping political discourse and public opinion. Neel critically examines the way contingent and contested histories are made real by objects, events, and persistent narratives. Through these works he activates a larger discussion about how seemingly innocuous or overlooked objects or experiences contribute to individual and national memorial structures.
Interested in the map and the garden as symbols of being with the land and with ourselves, Katie Bachler deals with the complexities of the human/nature relationship and attempts to reconnect the two through tools for learning about place. By using an education model in her practice, each interaction is new and shifting. For TELLING THE FUTURES, Bachler will create new tools for survival after an apocalypse, and encourage people to use these tools in a special home-made structure. In another futures, Josh Peters’s physical and expressionistic paintings focus on psychologically charged groupings of figures, usually men and women living away from civilized society. The scenes are vaguely cult like- conjuring up a sense of impending violence or spiritual awakening lurking just under the surface.
And as a compliment to TELLING THE FUTURES, Christine Nguyen will be featured in Guestroom. Nguyen’s work draws upon the imagery of science, but it is not limited to technologies of the present. It imagines that the depths of the ocean reach into outer space, that through an organic prism, vision can fluctuate between the micro- and macroscopic. Nguyen’s personal cosmology in which commonalities among species, forms, and environment become visible and expressive, suggests past narratives and possible futures. The forms and environs in her work sometimes migrate into new pieces, establishing new systems. These systems imagine modes of transportation, communication, and regeneration. There are no waste materials in these worlds: vision is a renewable resource. As an extension to her practice, Nguyen will take part in collaborative musical performances as Sea Moon and Friends.
To close the evening (or extend and open...), Summercamp’s ProjectProject will host a Sound Bath with Jamie Bechtold. Bechtold orchestrates improvised concerts uses tuning forks, planetary gongs, crystal bowls, and other instruments, to apply sound directly on or over the body. Sound helps to re-tune the nervous system, which results in a significant decrease in stress, increase in immunity and nervous system functioning, and overall increase in general health and well being of the body and mind. Sound Baths are a great way to release sluggish energy, stress, and physical or emotional issues. The tones create harmony in your body...they assist in relaxation, meditation, and balance your energy. The term "Sound Bath" is used because you are "bathed" in the vibrations of all the instruments used. During a typical Sound Bath participants sit or lie on the floor, relax and allow the sounds to wash over them.
Please BYOB (Bring Your Own Blanket) to sit, lay on or keep you warm. The Sound Bath starts at 8:30 and spaces are limited. The cost is $20 at the door. 

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Fresh, spring, clean, new, shiny, uh-huh!

Good morning! We are coming out of hibernation- excited to catch fish, eat honey, plan our first show of the summer season and beyond! We are thrilled to partner with Side Street Projects with the help of a grant from The Pasadena Art Alliance. Check back soon to hear about the future.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Something to write home about

Dedicated Summercamper, Janice, measures the spot for our soon to be booth at the LA Mart
It's back to school and back to work here at Summercamp. We are excited to be in the planning stages for the Co/Lab Alternative Art Fair in conjunction with Art Platform Los Angeles at the end of the month (more details to follow sooooon), but until then we cannot let a fabulous summer season end without sharing some exciting news...

Liza Wade Green, writer/director and performer of Hill House Mine and Janice Gomez were recently interviewed by Monica Hicks at GYST Radio. Take a listen here.

While you are following links, take a look at the amazing review by Carol Cheh of our last show Friday Night Lights & Sunday Afternoons in the LA Weekly.

symchronaut/ synchronot by Constantina Zavitsanos

Thank you for all of your support this summer. Please keep it coming and let us introduce you to our 2011 Fall Resident Artist, Constantina Zavitsanos. You may remember her holographic paint bucket and stopwatch and compass on headphones from Slick during our first summer. A New York based artist, we are very excited and preparing to have Tina in residence to build a site specific work for Home Sweet Away from Home at the the Co/Lab Alternative Art Fair.

conjuggle visit by Constanina Zavitsanos 

with small fans (apart for the hole) by Constantina Zavitsanos

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Tuesday Evening Recap of Friday Night Lights & Sunday Afternoons.


Alison Owen's House Rules


Thanks to all who came out this weekend, especially those who came for the whole shebang - Friday night and Sunday afternoon.

Friday started off with Maya Gurantz's Floormap: Seduction, a self guided dance on our temporarily erected dance floor and ended with Liza Wade Green's full blown dance party - part of Hill House Mine - on the very same floor.

As the sun set, we soaked in Endurance Performance Proposition (Fade to Black, Sunset / Denoument) by Maya Gurantz.

Endurance Performance Proposition (Fade to Black, Sunset / Denoument) by Maya Gurantz

 We lounged on beanbag chairs with magazines and tequila shots while watching CamLab's Under the Blanet, a live feed performance from bedroom to Goatspace.

Summercampers watching CamLab's Under the Blanet


Sunday was a different affair. . . we traded the cool evening of Friday Night Lights for the warmth and sunshine of an afternoon on the hillside.  Marcus Durkheim treats us with a careful installation of paintings and repaintings in Goatspace.  Michael Carter's Appetite for Destruction tempted and repelled people with champagne and a roasted suckling pig. Suzanne Fontaine spent the afternoon interacting with guests using cellphones, string and forces in A New Kind of Fortune Telling while Erin Payne's Memory Lane for Langerstroemia gives the Crape Myrtle tree a chance to see itself for the first time in it's native setting.  Matt Wardell and his rolling melon lead us down the hill with his "longish and flattish site specific installation" entitled Fig to Pataya (Ramp). Greeting us at the bottom of the hill is Aili Schmeltz's Tailings. 

Fig to Pataya (Ramp) by Matt Wardell

Tailings by Aili Schmeltz


Appetite for Destruction by Michael Carter


Erin Payne's Memory Lane for Lagerstroemia

A New Kind of Fortune Telling by Suzanne Fontaine


Is this not four paintings by Marcus Durkheim?

Alison Owen's solo show, House Rules in Guestroom adds and intertwines old and new elements to the house and it's story with repeated patterns and built succulents. And as on Friday night, we closed out the evening with Hill House Mine, a dance/theatre performance written and directed by Liza Wade Green with traveling audience members moving about the house with beer, champagne, cookies...oh, and swedish fish. 

Liza Wade Green's Hill House Mine Finale with Steven Wendt, Liza Wade Green, Janice Gomez, David Gochfeld, Yanghee Lee and Andrew Thacher
 (Photo by Devon Tsuno)

Many thanks and shoutouts to Technical Director of Hill House Mine and usher, Danny Green; Intern and usher, Sean Tan; usher and huge supporter Tom Norris; beat giving & fist pumping inducing DJ Legion; Ryan Taber's gift of a birdhouse and its silent role; our neighbors for their patience and attendance; and to John & Dan Kaelin for coming to see their old home.  

For more pictures from the shows, check out our *new* flickr site here!