| Page 2 | LACA

5/12/2023 to 6/12/2023

In 1980, Darby Crash, lead singer of the Los Angeles punk band, the Germs, died from an intentional overdose at the age of 22. In his suicide note, Crash confessed his love for fellow bandmate, David 'Bosco' Danford.

Later, Crash’s friend, Casey Cola, with whom he’d made his death pact with (she survived) recalled their last night together— “...He wrote a note, which he didn't show me, but which I think said, 'My life, my leather, my love goes to Bosco.’ … He held me up for a second... laid himself against the wall and pulled me to him… And then he kissed me and said, 'Well, 'bye.’”

—

From May 12th to June 12th, the public is invited to share mementos and ephemera relating to experiences of addiction, harm reduction, and/or grief within the enclosed bulletin board outside of LACA. These items will be collected and archived in an ongoing collection dedicated to harm reduction practices.

Please feel free to mail your materials to:

Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA)
709 N Hill Street
Suite 104/8 (upstairs)
LA, CA 90012

5/12/2023 to 6/12/2023

Checking In is a collection of art ephemera and personal mementos that share ways we use art to inform each other about harm reduction during moments of rest, leisure, stress and joy. These include visual materials related to rave care artist books, ticket stubs, Fentanyl test strip brochures, doodles on Narcan packaging, text messages, venmo request collateral, lost and found items, oral histories and journaling related to overdose, loss, and grief, and other materials that offers insights into how we take care of each other on and off of the dance floor.

Checking In was informed by artists who have contributed to this conversation about harm reduction with materials from Nacho Nava Jr’s of memorial (Mustache Monday), items from the alley, and artist books about Jewels Catch One. We have now organized an open call inviting people to grow the conversation and contribute their ephemera related to overdose prevention and the ways we take care of each other.

4/28/2023

Friday April 28, 8pm
FREE

Western Mass based electro-acoustic percussionist Jake Meginsky performs live.

“…adventurous vein of pointillist minimalism: stark, oblique, cerebral, fluid. It’s free music in both form and function, liberated from rhythm, pattern, or expectation. Abrupt flurries of metallic reverberations ping and echo against charged silences like avant-garde morse code.”

Plus L.A.-based musician, artist, and creative broadcaster Sam Rowell performs a rare in-person iteration of SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.

Via thematic collages, Rowell pulls sound from a world of noises culled from archives, scientific research, crowd-sourced field recordings, and other audio ephemera.

Brought to you by UPEND.

3/21/2023

The Cloud Still Doesn't Love You

March 21, 7-9 PM

The Cloud still doesn’t love you looks at digital storage and how artists can use it to meet their needs. Led by Los Angeles-based artist, Christopher Richmond, the lab addresses strategies for artists in different disciplines, from painting to photography to video. Other topics will include the pros and cons of specific storage options, including the Cloud, external drives, optical disc, and tape. The lab will be in a conversational format, and attendees are encouraged to ask questions about their unique digital storage needs during the presentation.

Organized by Christopher Richmond

2/14/2023 to 2/15/2023

14 Minute Mix

For this Valentines Day LACA wants to leave a treat in your inbox with a special gift from the archive. 14 Minute Mix brings together mixes by artists, musicians, writers, archivists, and DJs, to assemble songs of love and longing to share with others. The mix will go LIVE February 14th 8PM PST on LACA’s YouTube Channel and be available on LACA’s online database thereafter.

2/11/2023 to 3/10/2023

Hande Sever
To Thread Air

Opening February 11, 7-9 PM
February 11-March 10 2023

Hande Sever’s To Thread Air brings together a series of photographs and a film essay to reveal the media-based materialities which undergird histories affected by the Cold War. The work is primarily structured around a montage of footage excavated during the artist’s research at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. Sever began producing To Thread Air in 2019 after coming across the archival remnants of a ceremony held in the White House in which Kenan Evren—the right-wing leader of the 1980 Turkish coup—received the legion of merit from President Ronald Reagan.

12/8/2022

Beyond Sunsetting: Common Field’s Collection

FREE

Thursday, 8, 2022, 7–9 PM

from the depth of the furious piling up of appalling dreams
new dawns were
rising

from Beyond by Aimé Césaire

The Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) and Common Field are glad to invite you to join us on the arrival of the Common Field archival collection at LACA. Common Field has worked to support a nation-wide network of independent artists and arts organizations. Following an organizational audit and an internal financial survey process in 2021, Common Field announced its decision to intentionally sunset, or close, as an organization in 2022. (Information on the sunset process is available here.) Common Field believes that their struggles are not novel ones and have generously agreed to share their vulnerabilities and learning with us through their archival collection. The evening's aim is to engage the collection with questions so that we may all better know ourselves

10/28/2022

LACA Haunted [Commercial Gallery]
Halloween Fundraiser

Friday, October 28, 2022
8–11 PM PT

Tickets $10–$20

The Los Angeles Contemporary Archive presents LACA Haunted, a Halloween environment and fundraiser. Something is rotten in the art field! See the archives transformed into a swampy abyss of despair, where play the demonic wraiths of the aristocracy’s interior decorators—the commercial art gallery!

10/23/2022

Puerto Rico Resource Library Fundraiser

Sunday, October 23, 2022, 2-6 PM

Our loved ones and friends continue to be harmed by the disasters in Puerto Rico. Join us Sunday, October 23, 2-6 PM hosted at the archive for an afternoon of food and resource gathering, to assist and imagine different ways we can care for one another. There will be a reading table with books and articles about the situation in Puerto Rico, as well as a station with materials for making and sending postcards to government officials.

Puerto Rican lunch will be available for a $10 donation towards El Departamento de la Comida de Puerto Rico, a non-profit collective that acts as an alternative agency in support of small-scaled, decentralized, local food projects in the Island. Your donations will also contribute to the department's Abono brigade program - implemented in 2019 to directly support small farmers all over the island and focusing on agroecological practices that care for both the natural and social ecosystem.

7/3/2022 to 7/31/2022

Silence is Information

Clémence de Montgolfier

Los Angeles Contemporary Archive is pleased to present Silence is Information, a on-site research project by Clémence de Montgolfier. De Montgolfier (b.1987, lives and works in Paris) is a visual artist whose works investigates the politics of public speaking, representation, and the mediations of speech, also a Dr. in Media studies from the Sorbonne University in Paris. She has collaborated with Niki Korth in their Franco American project The Big Conversation Space for more than ten years. She has started to work on the multifaceted research entitled Les Médiation impossibles (Impossible Mediations) in 2020, a project which examines conflict resolution, the government of the self and others and the concepts of "truth" and "reconciliation".

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