Sartre says hell is other people, but Freud insists that’s just a projection. Performance goes so deep these days that we forget that we sit in the audience of our own life-show. We cross paths in the closet, elevator, booth, gloryhole, dark alley, transient half-formed space, and I become your audience of one–acting as your placeholder. The door closes. I hold up the mirror for you, even if it hurts to look into. If it makes you feel better, sometimes it hurts to hold it up too. You ask me a question, I make a photo of the answer. Change of perspective. The door opens. You move on, I stay on.
I’m excited to announce an intimate performance I’ll be making (with you) inside a static elevator Monday 8/14/17 from 7-10pm. As part of Elevator Mondays‘ LUNAR PERFORMANCES throughout the month of August, Seven Minutes in Hell will be a brand new performance focused on one-on-one exchange. Please read on for more details regarding the full LUNAR PERFORMANCE series below…
ELEVATOR MONDAYS is pleased to announce LUNAR PERFORMANCE, a four-person show focusing on performance featuring Ali Kheradyar, Georgia Lassner, Lara Salmon and Kim Ye. For this exhibition, ELEVATOR MONDAYS will host a different site-specific performance each Monday evening throughout the month of August.
On August 21, 2017 the Moon will pass between the Earth and the Sun. This event will be seen across North America as a total and partial solar eclipse, LUNAR PERFORMANCE is a celebration of this celestial happening. Contemporary western performance originated in the experimental “happenings” organized by John Cage and Allan Kaprow at Black Mountain College in the 1950s and later matured and flourished in the politically charged performances of artists such as Barbara T. Smith, Carolee Schneemann and Yoko Ono. This new form of art grew out of frustrations with the limits of object-based works and the social and political structures they represent. LUNAR PERFORMANCE features artists working against the failures of the objects, histories and politics of our time.
PROGRAM SERIES
08/07/2017
On Monday, August 7th, Lara Salmon will present Havana Intoxication,a durational performance featuring a forty gallon Mojito made with Havana Club Rum sourced via a recent direct flight from Havana to LAX, and mint taken from MOCA Los Angeles. Inspired by an illegal trip to the Caribbean socialist state in 2014, Salmon questions her role as an American traveling abroad and the history of Cuban-American cultural exchange throughout evolving international relations.
Lara Salmon works predominantly in performance. She received an MFA from Claremont Graduate University, and a BA from UC Berkeley. She uses her body as a means to relate to specific materiality and location. Pushing the boundaries of her own biology, the performances use inherent identity to demonstrate alternate realities. She has most recently shown at PØST; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; and BBQLA, Los Angeles. She was a recipient of The Friedman Grant in 2015. Salmon lives and works in Los Angeles.
08/14/2017
On Monday, August 14th, Kim Ye will present 7 minutes in hell. In this psychophotographic exchange, Ye will invite viewers to lock themselves into the confined 4 ft x 6 ft x 10 ft space that is ELEVATOR MONDAYS for private seven-minute sessions with the artist and her camera. Once inside, Ye will direct the viewer through a series of questions and prompts. This intimate experience will challenge the viewer’s understanding of personal space and personal boundaries.
Kim Ye is a multidisciplinary artist whose work incorporates performance, sculpture, video, installation, and painting. She received her MFA from UCLA and her BA in studio art from Pomona College. Exploring themes of intimacy, taboo, sexuality, and the exchange between an artist and their audience, Ye uses the body and its accessories to give form to power as a non-binary force. She has exhibited and performed at the Hammer Museum; the Getty Center, and Visitor Welcome Center, Los Angeles. Ye Lives and Works in Los Angeles.
08/21/2017
On Monday, August 21st, Ali Kheradyar will present the wait of us, a series of intimate movement scores created by the artist. The scores will be generated in response to a text written by Kheradyar reflecting on the social responsibility of the individual. In this three hour performance, Kheradyar negotiates cycles of time, weight, balance, and burden in an elevator chamber under the indirect light of a solar eclipse.
Ali Kheradyar’s interdisciplinary practice explores gender and sexuality through performative gestures in photography, video, movement, sound, and text. Kheradyar’s Iranian heritage informs the work and the representation of the body; elements are veiled yet revealed, while a tendency towards minimalism brings the body to the forefront. Kheradyar received a Bachelor of Arts in Dance, Music, and Performance from NYU’s Gallatin School, a Master of Arts in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. Kheradyar’s work has been exhibited at the Torrance Art Museum, Visitor Welcome Center, PØST, and Project Space Kreuzberg. Ali Kheradyar lives and works in Los Angeles.
08/28/2017
On Monday, August 28th, Georgia Lassner will present the third iteration of “A Traveling Exhibition” an ongoing series of site-specific projects that Lassner began while an artist-in-residence at Bennington College in 2016. Revolving around varying forms of labor in relation to the production, distribution and exhibition of objects, “A Traveling Exhibition” evolves from one iteration to the next in response to the spatial and conceptual infrastructure of the site.
Georgia Lassner is a self-identified conceptual artist whose varied work often incorporates an element of performance. Usually determined by location and pretext, she is less concerned with making “lasting” works and more concerned with fulfilling an idea’s momentary potential. Lassner received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and her BA from Bennington College. She has recently shown at AR Projects in Los Angeles and Human Resources LA, and was an inaugural recipient of the Bennington College Alumni Artist Residency. Lassner lives and works in Los Angeles.
ELEVATOR MONDAYS and LUNAR PERFORMANCE is proud to participate in the 2nd iteration of MAIDEN LA, a county-wide network of LA-based ‘happenings’ taking place throughout the month of August 2017. Maiden LA is an inclusive and expansive county-wide survey of art happenings that in encouraging the use of alternative spaces, considers the city as a platform for generative discourse and exchange. Maiden LA is an egalitarian program aiming to dissolve hierarchies by including artists, collectives, curators, galleries, museums, et cetera. For more information and other event listings please visit http://www.maiden.la/
ELEVATOR MONDAYS is an artist-run curatorial project inside a converted freight elevator founded by Don Edler. The project focuses on bringing together working artists in a social exhibition space to foster dialogue and community through exhibitions and special programing. ELEVATOR MONDAYS is open Mondays from 7PM-10PM and by appointment.