More about ZŌO

In the LA Weekly Style Council blog — check it out!

Mastodon Mesa’s Zōo at Melrose Trading Post, Where You Can See Artists in Their Native Habitat

“People are so creative”

With the above phrase, one of Chris Weisbart’s opening-week patrons summed ZŌO up nicely after we answered her initial question — “What the hell is that?”

all photographs by Graham Kolbeins

What is Chris Weisbart?

Chris Weisbart is an artist, hardware hacker and multimedia developer at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles where he spends his time making exhibits that glow, talk, animate and interact with the public. While his typical habitat is in dark corners of the museum where light and projection can be carefully controlled, he is taking one month of Sundays and bringing his various electronic components and gadgetry out of the cave and into the light for the public to see first hand how some of these effects are created.

Joining him most days will be various collaborators and co-conspirators who will unite under the sole purpose of showing people that technology is not something to be afraid of, but instead something that can be beaten with submission using a soldering iron and some carefully placed whacks with a hammer.

Since it is October, the prospective projects he will be tinkering with on-site will probably have a ghoulish theme (Halloween, after all, is the multimedia developers favorite holiday), but there will be some hastily glued together projects such as holograms and hovercrafts and possibly even some robotically re-animated stuffed animals.

Join him and spend some time spinning old junk and bits of plastic into unique new creations… just be careful, like all zoo animals Chris and his cohorts do actually bite.

What is ZŌO?

ZOO the word is ancient Greek meaning: 1) an animal 2) life 3) to impregnate. ZOO the art show is a series of month-long residencies in which artists have been invited to create “the habitat that is natural to you.” Within these aesthetic visions of their unique idealized worlds, the artists will be present throughout the day to nest, dream, and create new work.

Equally important to Zōo is the expansion of both gallery visitors’ and participating artists’ notions of creativity beyond the private/solitary and into the limitless possibilities of the social sphere. So please feel free to speak to, participate with, and feed the artists (after first asking if they are vegetarian).

Albert Reyes Prints for Sale in New Mastodon Mesa Store!

Check out our new Store and feast your eyes on beautiful new prints from Albert Reyes — available in an extremely limited edition.

CALL and RESPONSE I: the art of Leonard Nimoy

March 22, 2011 – May 6, 2011
opening reception March 22 5:00pm- 8:30pm

Artists:
Leonard Nimoy
Ivory Lee Carlson
Megan May Daalder
Steven Andrew Garcia
Zena Grey
Lisa Katnic
Sage Keeler
Luke McGowan
James Merson, Kevin Blechdom & William Hutson
Suki-Rose Otter
Adam Villacin
Dorian Wood

“Call and response,” or antiphony, is a musical technique employed by various cultures, in which one partner offers a phrase, and, in turn, a second partner generates a phrase which connects in some way to the first.

Two of the most ancient traditions of call and response are found in African and Indian cultures:

Sub-Saharan Africa: this tradition has many echoes in contemporary American culture. It is part of what anthropologists regard as a “pervasive pattern of democratic participation” in the civic affairs and religions of the region.

Characteristically, a leader makes a statement, and the responder affirms it.

Those who are witnessing, speaking, or singing are encouraged by the responses and those who are about to experience issues are empowered to be victorious. — Brother Dennis L. Slaughter, History of Gospel Music

Sawaal-Javaab: “question and answer” is a tradition of North Indian classical music, in which one player issues a challenge to the other, who either replicates it identically, or embellishes it.

It is both competitive and collaborative. The two participants are friendly rivals. — Sound of India

Part of the fascination of this concept for Mastodon Mesa is the role this very same technique plays in the lives of…parrots.

Parrots are a prey animal, and therefore form flocks for safety in numbers. As they spend their days ranging over miles of thick forest seeking food, they have developed “contact calls,” in which one bird will make a characteristic sound, such as a complex whistle, which is given a particular response by either all who can hear it, or a specific addressee.

These sophisticated, proto-linguistic behaviors are complete with regional dialects and variations between individuals – all for reassurance that even when other parrots are out of eyesight, the bird is not alone, he or she is still a part of a warm, close flock.

Underneath the exponential increase in complexity, how much of human communication – the production of art included – is exactly the same?

The Calls: Leonard Nimoy

The calls have been selected from among the body of work of Leonard Nimoy as a photographer. Though many of the show’s participants, and likely, audience, are very familiar with Nimoy as an actor, he has maintained a less widely known lifelong artistic practice.

In the context of this show, it is particularly intriguing to perceptually liberate the voice of Nimoy from the familiarity of performances embedded in the assembly-line process of popular culture, and to instead have the chance to examine these photos as wordless “calls” of unadulterated communication from the individual artist.

The Responses

The responses will be drawn from emerging young artists local to Los Angeles.
Curated by: Mya Stark & Suki-Rose Otter

Thoughts on Performance at the Mesa

Performance at the Mesa is telling a story about identity. The PDC is a space which has been built to function for people who are creating their homes. Homes are a way of performing one’s identity, both so that you can feel the comfort of being surrounded by a reflection of the self you want to be, and also to demonstrate to visitors who you are and how they should feel about you.

The Mesa feels that there are three types of identity it would like to explore by performing. These are: (1) the individual identity. The individual identity is developed by one singular person, such as an artist or an art patron, through the interactions they’ve had with every other element of the world with which they have come in contact since birth. These interactions have shaped them, within the potentialities set forth by their genetic starting point, into a creature which is likely to have certain responses to new interactions. We display the artist so that others can see the identity the artist has developed and compare it to their own; therefore providing them an opportunity to consciously look at their own identity. We also create certain interactions to evoke new or unfamiliar or thought-provoking responses in the identities of art patrons who are not usually exposed to this type of performance.

The second type of identity: (2) the tribal or cultural identity. That is the identity you consciously accept which groups you with others whom you consider significantly similar or related: women, Iranians, whites, queers, Christians, etc. You feel that your self is the same as their selves because of shared circumstances and sometimes genetic material, and you feel that because of that you should respond to them as brothers or confederates. You also feel that you should respond to those of a different tribe or group with mistrust and the assumption that they are very, very different. The Mesa has not yet mounted a show dealing with this identity yet because it’s the trickiest one, but we are working on it.

The third type of identity: (3) the human identity. All artists and art patrons attending Mesa shows are members of the same species of animal. 99.9% of everything about them, because it is dictated by a physical/neurological construction which originally evolved to adapt to the same conditions, is exactly the same. They all evolved to need the same basic elements to thrive. Yet most of them are completely unaware of this fact or what those elements are, because they’re unable to see themselves are a species of animal. If they could, it would permit them to investigate those needs objectively. However, they are completely enchanted (in the folkloric sense of the word) by the images of individual and tribal/cultural identity that they labor to construct and maintain. The Mesa would disenchant the captive by cutting through the other identities, evoking responses based on the basic human identity, and making the art patron aware of this split. To this end, the Mesa invites scientists with expertise in this species and its observable workings and traits, such as neurobiologists and anthropologists, to create performances outside the stereotypes of their usual academic ones; performances which are more visceral and more inviting of patron engagement by their complexity, based on this knowledge.

NakaMania pt 1

NakaMania pt 1 from Mya Stark on Vimeo.

This video was shot by Dr. NakaMats’ personal secretary, Hasegawa, on his recent trip out to Cinefamily/Mastodon Mesa and Show Cave. I trimmed it down into just a small taste of the world through his eyes. It just covers up to the introduction of the movie however, I’m hoping he’ll send more that covers his song and dance with Hadrian, the Mastodon Mesa art show on the patio, and the Show Cave lecture. Watch this space.

Back to the Cave

The mastodon is getting sewn at Walt’s. Tuesday the madness begins at photo l.a.. Friday… come see it.

Mastodon NakaMania 2010

When the Mesa first heard of artist and filmmaker Kasper Astrup Schröder’s documentary THE INVENTION OF DR. NAKAMATS from our friends at FLAUNT, the enthusiasm engine was instantly engaged. Unstoppably snowballing awesomeness eventually led to the creation of elaborate floppy disc flora, bouncy shoe demos, invention-inspired art, underwater cakes, and a seminude Dorian Wood performing covered in portraits of the good Dr. on the patio at Cinefamily’s Los Angeles premiere presentation of the film in concert with FLAUNT.  You’re going to have to wait til the next issue comes out to see pictures of that.

And of course… in getting to meet Dr. NakaMats himself.

Nakaportrait by Steven Andrew Garcia

Also in Dr. NakaMats getting to eat his first pastrami sandwich, courtesy of Claire and Sean (and Canter’s).

Video from the subsequent NakaLecture at Show Cave will be available as soon as we mail it to Kaspar in Denmark and he has a chance to edit it… which should give you enough time to get prepared for some major revelations about Cosmic Energy.

All in all… hell yea.