Screening and Archiving Station
Saturday, May 12
8:30pm
Free

The Signal Archive is the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of the immaterial residues of our everyday devices.

This ongoing archive defines the backbone of our techno culture. May it be discovered one day and utilized as historical reference, research, or affection development with electronic devices. This event will include 13 screenings from the Archive and the Archiving Station for visitors to have their device recorded.

The archive frames the development and history of Morse Code as a point of reference. A point in time when our modes of communication were at the early stages of mediation. The electrical telegraph, the mediator of the time, was a device to communicate the spoken word through a codified system of dots and dashes. The electrical telegraph and its intrinsic physical properties and technology, coupled with this codified system, quickly transformed into a sound object as it became evident that listening to the device was just as effective than reading the dots and dashes. This compelled the research and collection of the intrinsic sonic qualities of our contemporary communication devices: the mobile device.

Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara
Thursday, April 12
Doors at 8pm; movie starts at 8:30pm
Free

To enjoy Bollywood films, you generally have to submit to their logic. Characters are going to be thin, motivations sketchy. The plots will twist and turn, often unbelievably. They will sing about what just happened, what is going to happen, what they wish would happen. Bollywood films are not, in a word, “realistic.” At least not inasmuch as how we in the West understand reality. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is of course, first, escapism, which has its uses. But this distance from the real also often places the stories on the level of allegory. Amongst the artifice and the stereotypes there is a reach for the universal.

But every once in a while an Indian film is able to have it both ways, to still delight in the trappings of the form while simultaneously reaching a realistically rendered depth of characterization and, indeed, emotion. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, the story of three friends who go on a road trip in Spain as a sort of “bachelor trip” before one of them gets married, is such a film. It is a buddy movie and a romantic comedy and a musical and a crowd-pleaser, but it is also about three men struggling to find their places in the world. It may not all be “realistic,” but it is most certainly feels real.

Live Electronic Music

Casey Anderson, Scott Cazan, Tim Perkis, and Mark Trayle
Friday, March 2nd
8:30pm
Free

Featuring Solos and Duos! (Anderson/Cazan, Perkis/Trayle)

Tim Perkis

Mark Trayle

Casey Anderson

Scott Cazan

Thursday, January 19th 2012
8pm
FREE

The meeting of European Improvisers and American Hardcore. A duo of improvisers from Europe have come to the west coast to do improv battle with local musicians. Be prepared for metallic sound sculptures, electronics, traditional scottish music, cassettes, feedback, and things we found on our way to the show. Field recordings will be played from watering cans, and may or may not involve baked goods and carhorns.

ABODE is a duo by Caroline Pugh and Paul Stapleton. (Europe)
A BOAT is a duo by Chris Kallmyer and Casey Anderson. (Los Angeles)

Music by Dent-de-Lion, Last Nights of Paris, and Traditional

Monday December 12 at 8:30pm
Free

Dent-de-Lion

Dent-de-Lion is a project by French musician Aymeric Hainaux, who uses voice, mouth, some harmonicas, bells, accordion, and an echo pedal as the only effect.

Video
Audio

Traditional

Analog and granular synthesis through digital delay cascade.

Last Nights of Paris

Last Nights of Paris, solo project of David Eng, will be performing a work-in-progress entitled “Aeon/Chronos” influenced by Deleuze & Guattari’s ideas of “virtual, non-pulsed and floating unmarked time” and the “actual, pulsed metrical time of regular repeated intervals.”

Saturday, October 29
8pm
Free

Five Rounds of Brutal Mysteries!

MAGIC 8-BALL MINEFIELD

Will forces from the Beyond guide you towards your doom?
Signs Point to Yes!

PSYCIK PICTIONARY

The audience mentally beams a word at you!
Will you draw it correctly or will you be driven mad?!

SPEED PHRENOLOGY

Master this 19th century pseudo-science… OR ELSE!

COMPETITIVE OUIJA

With Olympic-Sized Board and Mega Planchette!
It is not “cheating” if you Win!

PARNORMAL TRIVIA

Q: Is your brain ready?
A: NO. IT IS NOT!

Also!

AURA PHOTO BOOTH!

With photographs of your REAL AURA!
As far as you know!!!

Special Appearance by:
DEAD AUNT JEAN!

Plus!

Master of Paranormal Ceremonies:

COLIN DICKEY and his Three-Eyed Cat Sweater

Sounds of the Invisible by:

DJ THE HAPACALYPSE

Capricious yet Final Judgement by:

THUNKER and the Council of Wise Ones

It does not matter if you Believe!
Paranormal Olympics is REAL!
IT IS HAPPENING!!!

Friday Octoper 21 at 8pm

Music by John Bischoff, Scott Cazan, GX Jupitter-Larsen, and Mark Trayle

John Bischoff

Scott Cazan

GX Jupitter-Larsen

Mark Trayle

Now in its third year, The Experimental Music Yearbook is a repository for composers, performers, and the public to glean the methods and styles of various artists working in the experimental music tradition. As the modes of experimentation in the arts change from year to year, the Experimental Music Yearbook’s annual issues will build into a comprehensive, and varied, database of experimentation in music/sound. An annual festival will accompany the online portion of the Experimental Music Yearbook.

Experimental Music Yearbook Concerts for 2011:

Concert 1: 10/14 8pm — the wulf., Los Angeles, CA
The music of Hans W. Koch

Concert 2 10/15 8pm — Presents Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Jessie Marino / On Structure

Concert 3: 10/21 8pm — BETALEVEL, Los Angeles, CA
John Bischoff, Scott Cazan, GX Jupitter-Larsen, and Mark Trayle.

Concert 4: 10/22 8pm — the wulf. Los Angeles, CA
Casey Anderson, John P. Hastings, Albert Ortega, and C. Spencer Yeh.

Concert 5: 10/29 8pm — Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, CA
Tashi Wada with Paul Clipson

Thursday, September 29th
Doors at 8pm; movie at 8:30pm
FREE

Thursday wraps up this month’s installment of the Wasp & Orchid Martial Arts Film Series. We started off with Ip Man and we shall conclude with Ip Man 2 (if you have yet to see the first one, it’s streaming on netflix).

One wouldn’t think the combat sequences could have become any more elaborate, but, indeed, that is the case with this sequel (just peep the snippets from the trailer below!) The film follows Ip man to Hong Kong, where he attempts to start anew by opening a Wing Chun school. But first he has to earn the respect of all the local martial arts masters, which, as you can imagine, is no problem for Ip Man! But he has an even bigger foe to contend with: British colonialism (as pictured above). Action choreographed by and starring Sammo Hung in a role reminiscent of Apollo Creed (I shall say no more).

Check it out!

Friday September 23 at 8pm

Music by Casey Anderson, Jason Kahn, Scott Cazan

Presenting Live Dyadic and Triadic Arrangements for Live Electronics! Happening Live!

Thursday, September 22nd
Doors at 8pm; movie at 8:30pm
FREE

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself makes you fearless.” – Lao Tzu

Greetings. This is David, curator of the Wasp & Orchid Martial Arts Film Series. When I was but a wee little hapa kid, my father would tell me stories about how, as a young Chinese dude in San Francisco, he would spend time in between college and work watching kung fu flicks at various theaters in Chinatown. Little did he know then that, some decades later and in Los Angeles, he would have a son who ended up screening kung fu flicks in Chinatown.

In honor of my pops, who raised me with a particular love for martial arts movies, I’m going to keep it “mad Chinese” this month and contunue screening some of my favorite films from the motherland. This Thursday we’re going to watch Ronny Yu & Yuen Wo Ping’s Fearless, made in 2006 and starring none other than international superstar Jet Li. Similar in many ways to Ip Man shown earlier this month, Fearless is inspired by the life of martial arts master Huo Yuanjia (1868-1910), one of the founders of the Chin Woo Athletic Association. It’s a story of redemption, but more importantly, it’s a story of kicking some serious colonial ass (see photo above). Because if there’s one thing I’d like people to take away from this month’s Wasp & Orchid Martial Arts Choreography Film Series, it’s that Chinese people are amazing (and not to be fucked with!).

Check out the trailer: