#camlab

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😎 Come on down to ARTBOOK booth D05 at the #laabf2017 🌴sharing our booth with @steidlverlag 🌴signings with @clarerojasart @tobymott @davidmaisel1 @jameystillingsphoto @mattsiegle @souldawg_rise @elizcline #camlab #bobandbob & #maryclarestevens of #mikekelley foundation

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ForYourArt Supports MOCA's Engagement Party

MOCA, Los Angeles, CA

ForYourArt was the art media partner for MOCA's Engagement Party. The goal of the series was to provide opportunities for Southern California–based artist collectives and collaborators to create new artworks that engage with the museum and its resources in unexpected ways.

In January 2013, ForYourArt hosted a book launch at 6020 Wilshire Blvd. for Engagement Party Social Practice at MOCA, 2008-2012, fully illustrated examination of works creatd during the four-year run of the program.

MOCA Engagement Party: CamLab 

January – March, 2012

Engagement Party: CamLab was a three-month residency for artist group CamLab (Jemima Wyman and Anna Mayer) at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles. CamLab presented three free, nighttime events—together titled The Heart Wants What It Does—that involved interactive installations whose main ingredients were fabrics, art, and language. The artists encouraged visitors to engage physically with the materials they presented, in the form of a bed in the middle of MOCA’s galleries, word-covered tents set up in the MOCA Geffen parking lot, and money that was circulated among visitors to create a pop-up micro-economy. All three events featured new songs commissioned from the Los Angeles–based trio Hotel La Rut.

MOCA Engagement Party: Liz Glynn

October 2011 – December 2011

Engagement Party: Liz Glynn was a three-month residency with artist Liz Glynn at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In keeping with Glynn’s exploration of historical narratives and their relationship to the present, her three evening events at MOCA, entitled Loving You Is like Fucking the Dead, included an installation with video projections, blindfolded tours of the museum, and a large dinner interspersed with live and participatory performances.

MOCA Engagement Party: LA Urban Rangers

July 2011 – September 2011 

Engagement Party: LA Urban Rangers was a three-month residency with the artist group LA Urban Rangers at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The group organized three evenings of free hikes, tours, and events focused on Bunker Hill, the Los Angeles River, and downtown Los Angeles. Their goal was to both introduce visitors to these spaces and invite them to experience and understand them in new, dynamic ways.

MOCA Engagement Party: Neighborhood Public Radio 

April, 2011 – June, 2011

Engagement Party: Neighborhood Public Radio was a three-month residency with independent artist-run radio collaborative Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. NPR organized three free evening events—IN YOUR EAR, IN YOUR CAR, and culminating with IN THE AIR—that experimented with different methods of transmitting sounds, music, and information to an active listening public.

MOCA Engagement Party: The League of Imaginary Scientists

January 2011 – March 2011

Engagement Party: The League of Imaginary Scientists was a three-month residency with the art and science collective The League of Imaginary Scientists at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The group’s three free evening events included explorations of wormholes, automatons, and human flight, and involved artworks and presentations that engaged visitors in hands-on activities.

MOCA Engagement Party: Ryan Heffington

October 2010 – December 2010

Engagement Party: Ryan Heffington was a three-month residency with dancer and choreographer Ryan Heffington at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Culminating in three free nighttime events, the residency turned MOCA Geffen’s outdoor patio into a dance floor featuring performances by Heffington and L.A.-based dancers as well as dances that encouraged visitor participation and expression.

Image: Ryan Heffington Moves MOCA event for Engagement Party

[hammerstudentassociation-blog]

Catching Up with CamLab: A Q&A by Hillary Jacobs

CamLab, a performance-based artist collaboration between Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman, will stop by the Hammer Museum this Wednesday, April 18 for the annual UCLA Arts Party.

CamLab’s interactive performance works overtly engage the viewer to act and make choices, forcing them to think about their own agency. Not only do the performances reflect individual agency, they also highlight communal experiences and communal engagement. The pair also completed a three part series for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Engagement Party earlier this year. I was lucky enough to ask them a few questions in preparation for the Hammer’s upcoming Arts Party.

  CamLab, Studies for durational performances (Coyote Mountain), 2009 (Image courtesy of http://camlabia.blogspot.com/)

Hillary Jacobs: Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to work together?

CamLab: We met in grad school and started working together pretty quickly. We connected through a shared sense of humor, dagginess and an interested in the embodied eye. Basically one of us tried on the other's clothes, and a houndstooth cameltoe was birthed.

HJ: What are the best and most challenging parts about working collaboratively?

CL: Best – we get to spend a lot of time together and share the parts of (studio) art-making that are usually fairly isolated and, possibly, isolating. Most challenging – we have to be extremely well organized. We try to keep the bureaucracy to a minimum, but it’s hard when every meeting we schedule requires at least one other meeting beforehand between the two of us.

HJ: Many of your performances are interactive, are there any overarching ideas you hope participants get out of the experience? 

CL: We hope that people who experience our work will experience pleasure of some kind, while gaining embodied knowledge. That's what we want for ourselves (from the work), too. We aim to think and be touched by collective moments.

HJ: Fabric and textiles seem to play an important role in your performances. Can you explain why that is and how you choose the specific fabrics? 

CL: Fabric can materialize the space between bodies, making connection or disconnection not only visible but tangible. It's possible to make architecture on a large scale out of fabric. Even on a monumental scale, fabric can be not only shelter and at the same time skin and garment. It is economical and comforting.

CamLab, Gentle Extended Performance, 2008 and ongoing performance documentation (Image courtesy of http://camlabia.blogspot.com/)

  HJ: For the MOCA Engagement Party you created a relational garment. Do you see a second life for the garment in a museum or gallery setting or would that take away from the piece? 

CL: We are often very happy to have our garments be reused or re-staged. We have made several 'circulating suits' that are designed to travel and be engaged with by different people in different contexts. One of the suits has been traveling for three years. We like the way that the garments provide a set of material conditions for its users. Those conditions exist beyond us. For another one of the (Engagement Party) events we modified five yurts, in which we programmed different workshops on topics ranging from political theory to Emotional Freedom Technique. Now we loan out the yurts so other people can program their own events in them. We loan the yurts because we always are thinking about the underlying economics of making art. We don't want what we make to be dormant or redundant. We want things to keep moving and benefiting communities. 

HJ: Can you give us some clues about what you will be doing at the Arts Party?

CL: Recently we've been writing performance scores based on instances of PDA (Public Displays of Affection) that we've see around Los Angeles. For the Arts Party we're inviting visitors to the museum to choose a score they like and reenact it with one of us. There are scores from all different kinds of public displays – some are from parent-child relationships while others are from the hot and heavy couples action we've all witnessed at some point or another. We're interested in how PDAs are a common way that human-scaled pleasure and connection are made visible in the landscape, on the street, in spaces that are often primarily geared towards consumption or spectacle.

Check out more projects from CamLab on their blog: http://camlabia.blogspot.com/

Hillary Jacobs ‘13