April 24, 2009, published on the LACMA Blog about the hG, Spare Parts project The Last Book

I find myself thinking of artist Steve Fagin’s amalgam of criticism, fiction, visual arts, and numerous other disciplines as a productive model for a contemporary art curator working within an encyclopedic museum. I’ve been in discussion with Fagin ever since my graduate student years in the Visual Arts department at the University of California, San Diego. Fagin is exemplary of the hybrid and genre-bending artists that have created and sustained that department in the sunny beach town of La Jolla. (San Diego and the Origins of Conceptual Art in California, a fascinating show at a local gallery, recently chronicled this history.)

Recently, Fagin has been contemplating the next life of the book. In this age of the Kindle and E-Ink, there is an increased technological mediation of our reading experience. Fagin’s romantic, frenetic, and intellectually challenging response to the rebirth of the book as electronic (illuminated) manuscript—impishly titled The Last Book: This Ain’t Your Grandson’s Kindle—is a live performance involving an international roster of writers, artists, and filmmakers that will take place at the MAK Center at the Schindler House this Sunday. Fagin’s idea is to rekindle (pun intended) a physical and visual relationship to the book.

As Clive Phillpot once noted, “Artist books are distinguished by the fact that they sit provocatively at the juncture where art, documentation, and literature all come together.” Fagin, the wizard behind The Last Book, is staging what might be the future of reading as an amazing voyage into the twenty-first century, and I’m readjusting my reading specs accordingly.

-Rita Gonzalez, Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art
Rita Gonzalez is a media artist, writer and LACMA Assistant Curator who lives and works in Los Angeles. She has produced several short videos that express her interests in the constructions and elaborations of biography and myth. Her videos portray the manufactured transformations of everyday people into cultural icons–Margarita Cansino into Rita Hayworth, Michael Jackson into Peter Pan, and Lupe Velez into Hollywood Babylon celebrity. Gonzalez’ videos have been screened internationally at festivals such as MIX NY/Mexico City, Cine Festival in San Antonio, Women in the Director’s Chair, and L.A. Freewaves.

Rita Gonzalez is currently employed as Assistant Curator in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gonzalez’s curatorial collaboration with filmmaker Jesse Lerner, Mexperimental Cinema, was the first survey of experimental and avant-garde media art from Mexico and traveled to the Pacific Film Archives; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Harvard Film Archives; the Guggenheim Museums (New York and Bilbao), and film festivals internationally. Gonzalez has written for media and art journals including Wide Angle, Poliester, COIL, Signs, and RIM. Recent essays appear in Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography (Duke University Press), Recent Pasts: Art in Southern California from 90s to Now (JRP|Ringier Zurich), and California Video: Artists and Histories (Getty Publications).

On March 3, 2006 the haudenschildGarage presented the panel Alternative Universes in collaboration with the Visual Arts Department of UCSD. Alternative Universes took place at Estación Tijuana (Tijuana, Mexico) a space founded and run by Tijuana based artist Marcos Ramirez ERRE. A presentation at Lui Velazquez followed the panel.

Participants included Renoud Proch Founder and co-director of ART2102, Los Angeles; Nate Harrison Founder and co-director of ESL (Esthetics as a Second Language), Los Angeles; Mario Ybarra Jr. Founder and co-director of Slanguage, Wilmington; Sergio de la Torre Founder and co-director of Lui Velazquez, Tijuana. The moderator was C. Ondine Chavoya Assistant Professor, Department of Art, Williams College.

Conceptualized by Rita Gonzalez (Assistant Curator, LACMA) and Bill Kelley Jr. (Independent curator and PhD candidate, UCSD Visual Arts), they wrote:

Four innovative and independent art spaces were invited to discuss their work and their practice. Each of these alternative universes treats the white cube space in different ways, engaging their communities and mapping themselves in their urban setting while pointing to the educational institutions and relationships from which many are formed. Some act as wedges in the cultural matrix, some fill the gaps while others behave more parasitically on the city and its institutions. “Alternative Universes”  also provided a forum to discuss the ways artists and curators are working together to reinvigorate the counter-tradition of the alternative art space. We also hoped to address how spaces developed on the edges or in the barrios of major cosmopolitan spaces are specifically addressing issues such as marginalization, gentrification, and cultural tourism.

About the Alternative Spaces

ART2102, organized by Erlea Maneros, Renoud Proch, and Ronni Kimm is based in East Los Angeles. ART2102 acts as an option for research and exhibition practices unsuited for traditional institutional engagement. Click here to visit their website.

ESL (Esthetics as a Second Language) organized by Nate Harrison, Hugo Hopping, and Mario Garcia Torres brings together an interest in collaboration and a one night only exhibition project in Los Angeles. Click here to visit their website.

Lui Velazquez, organized by Shannon Spanhake, Camilo Ontiveros, and Sergio de la Torre in Tijuana, is an emerging residency program that brings together visiting scholars and writers for research based projects and presentations. Click here to visit their website.

Slanguage is organized by Mario Ybarra Jr. and Karla Diaz and is invested in community projects such as art classes for school kids and participating in the cultural space of Wilmington, the city adjacent to the largest port in the country. Click here to visit their website.