Dennis Hollingsworth

Talking about Writing about Art in LA

I'ved been checking out Art.Blogging.LA more regularly nowadays and this morning, I came across this little tidbit:

Are We On the Same Page? :: Panel Discussion

Everyone might not be able to agree about art publications in Los Angeles, at least it seems that the topic of the need for Los Angeles publications is in full force. (See the "Art Criticism Panel Today" at artLA and the recent "Arts Journalism" panel last month). Well get ready because here goes another one - this time focusing on independent publishing on the arts in Los Angeles. It's a diverse line-up of people and I think, or I hope anyway, that this will provide some focus and in-sight into people who are doing writing about art with a DIY touch.

Are We On The Same Page? :: LA art journals, artists? publications and independent publishers & imprints
Sunday 17 April starting at 4pm
@ LACE (?Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) - 6522 Hollywood Blvd.

The Southern California Consortium of Art Schools (SoCCAS) is pleased to present, in conjunction with Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, a panel discussion featuring representatives from eight Los Angeles-based independent arts publishing initiatives: Afterall (Tom Lawson), art.blogging.la (Caryn Coleman), Bedwetter (Christopher Russell), Semiotext(e) (Mark von Schlegell), The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (Robby & Marc Herbst), the Rambler (Joel Mesler), Tongues (Raquel Gutierrez), and X-TRA (Jan Tumlir). The panel will be moderated by historian and critic, Juli Carson (UCI).

For my eyes, it read: "...blah blah blah Tom Lawson blah blah blah Mark von Schlegell (!) blah blah blah Joel Mesler (!!) blah blah blah Jan Tumlir..." Then I got a little excited, reading on:

"Are We On The Same Page?" brings together for the first time a group of innovative publishing ventures spanning a wide range of initiatives from semi-commercial magazines and journals to alternative blogs, zines and broadsheets. Despite the fact that Artforum started life here in the mid-1960s, the nation?s second city has long been viewed as a place where art publications are occasionally kick-started, only to wither on the bough. This afternoon?s event looks to challenge this received wisdom. Some of the questions on our agenda:

* who has been given, and who has taken, voice in the recent text-based mini-boom?
* how have blogs and other electronic and web-based delivery systems challenged the traditional printed page?
* how do these initiatives distribute activism, gossip and ?conventional? criticism?
* what has happened to the question of ?style??
* what part do institutions, academies and local communities play in all this?
* have these ventures disturbed or simply rearticulated ideas of the local, the metropolitan, the regional and the international or global?

Muy bien, hombres.

Then clicking the link, I find little bios on my pals:

Mark von Schlegell's art criticism and science fiction have appeared internationally. In L.A., his work has appeared in Art/Text, X-tra, Afterall, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, and the Rambler. His work with Semiotext(e) began around 2000, when he edited large portions of the Hatred of Capitalism reader. Since then, he?s been on the ground floor as Semiotext(e) begins to reposition itself for change. His first novel, Venusia, comes out in October as the first work in Semiotext(e)?s new line of science fiction.

I look forward to reading it soon! But what does it mean to be "on the ground floor" at Semiotext(e)?

Here is a description of Venusia from the Semiotext(e) website:

It's the end of the twenty-third century. Earth has violently self-destructed. Venusia, an experimental off-world colony, survives under the enlightened totalitarianism of the Princeps Crittendon regime. Using industrialized narcotics, holographic entertainment, and memory control, Crittendon has turned Venusia into a self-sustaining system of relative historical inertia. But when mild-mannered junk dealer Rogers Collectibles finds a book about early Venusian history, the colony -- once fully immersed in the present -- begins losing its grip on the real. With his Reality-V girlfriend Martha Dobbs, neuroscop operator Sylvia Yang, his midget friend Niftus Norrington, and a sentient plant, Rogers wages a war to alter the shape of spacetime, and in the process, revisions the whole human (and vegetable) condition.

(his midget freind Niftus? This, I gotta read.)

And now, Joel's bio:

Joel Mesler received a MFA for Fine Art from SFAI, but when he moved back to Los Angeles in 2000 he found his interests lay in the organization and dissemination of art production. Mesler began to define himself as an artist of ephemera. He founded Diannepruess gallery in Chinatown, an important early space in the area and began to publish books and music. By 2002, he decided to convert the gallery into a full-time press. Since then Pruess Press, from its new location on Bernard Street, has pioneered alternative artworld distribution and resisted high-market gentrification of art production, producing artist prints by international and local artists, publishing the Rambler newspaper and assorted artist books, launching the film company 2/3/2 studios (already with four productions behind it), a record label and producing the web-site pruesspress.com.

Funny, the tag as "an artist of ephemera"... I'm still chewing on it. And I think I broke a tooth on "...organization and dissemination of art production...". Jeez.

But it would be very nice to sit in on the discussion.... ah well.

Posted by Dennis at April 13, 2005 12:00 PM