CalArts
School of Critical Studies John D’Amico (ma 09), a graduate of the Aesthetics and Politics Program, has won a seat on the West Hollywood City Council. “Mr. D’Amico’s ascension to the city council dais stole the show,” WeHoNews said as the CalArts alum took the oath of office in March. “During the election, [D’Amico] demonstrated that a challenger could out-raise, out-campaign and out-poll established incumbents; his was only the second victorious non-incumbent election bid in the city’s history.” Faculty Bruce Bauman, representing CalArts’ literary journal Black Clock, and alumna Grace Krilanovich (mfa 05) and Lauren Strasnick (mfa 05) were roundtable panelists at this spring’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. For the past two-and-a-half years, writerproducer Lisa Dowda (mfa 04) and photographer Liz Ligon have been documenting the lives of New York City sanitation workers, whom the pair regard as the world’s best. The pictures and stories of the “san men” are gathered on the website ChasingSanitation.com (whose subhead is “Falling in Love with New York’s Strongest”). Dowda and Ligon also presented in February a photo and narrative exhibition, This is the Strongest, in downtown Manhattan. According to Marie Claire, Dowda and Ligon’s “visually arresting site Chasing Sanitation showcased the strength, pride, infectious grins, and impressive biceps of the [Department of Sanitation of New York] in ways they never imagined.”
24
The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance Sound artist and writer Brandon LaBelle (mfa 98) had a solo exhibition at London’s imt Gallery entitled Notes Toward a Sketch of a Sonic Body. Part of LaBelle’s ongoing investigation into the complex interaction of humans with sound, the show consisted of audio recordings of bodies contending with aspects of silence, language, music and dance. Strophe, a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary arts group founded by Janice Lee (mfa 08), Joseph Milazzo (mfa 08) and Laura Vena (mfa 08), has launched a new lecture series called “Novum: A Compendium of Theories, Ideas & Explorations For the Curious and the Creative.” The inaugural event, “The Biotechnic Opera: Eat the Mouth That Feeds You,” included readings by faculty member Arne de Boever and alumna Carribean Fragoza (mfa 10), as well as a presentation by Fallen Fruit—the trio of faculty Matias Viegener, alum David Burns (Art bfa 93) and Austin Young. The second event this spring, “Estranged Visions,” featured composer Sean Griffin (Music mfa 92), Writing Program visiting poet Will Alexander, and writer Amina Cain.
Two undergraduate dancers, Lexi Gibbons and Michael Tomlin iii, performed with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater during a 10-day run at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, as part of the series Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center. The CalArts pair appeared in a revival of Ailey’s 1979 work Memoria, set to the music of Keith Jarrett. Maria Hassabi (bfa 94) has received a muchcoveted Guggenheim Fellowship, joining Karolina Karlic (Art mfa 10, see previous page). The Cypriot-born choreographer and dancer has created both full-evening works and short pieces for numerous New York venues. Dean Stephan Koplowitz is featured in, and contributed an essay to, the first comprehensive study of site-specific choreography, a book titled Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Space. Charting the growing popularity of site-based dance in recent years—with leading choreographers choosing to leave traditional performance spaces for public venues—the book offers close examinations of the work of key figures like Koplowitz,
Europa Editions is publishing Steve Erickson’s latest novel, These Dreams of You, early next year. This is the ninth novel by the mfa Writing Program faculty member and editor of Black Clock. In other news, Erickson’s criticism for Los Angeles magazine earned top honors from the City and Regional Magazine Association. Finally, the ubiquitous James Franco—award-winning actor, nyu filmmaker, Yale doctoral student, writer, Oscars host—has optioned Erickson’s darkly comic, Hollywoodthemed novel Zeroville with an eye to direct. The 2007 novel was named a best book of the year by Newsweek, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The performance collective My Barbarian— comprising CalArts faculty member and alumnus Malik Gaines (mfa 99), Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade—has had its first museum exhibition at the ucla Hammer. The group’s “Hammer Projects” show, entitled The Night Epi$ode, was an installation of six videos that use science fiction tropes to link stories of the economic meltdown with the supernatural.
Wang Yuanyuan choreographed a ballet based on the long-banned Ming Dynasty text Jin Ping Me (“The Golden Lotus”) for this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival.
Joanna Haigood, Ann Carlson and Eiko Otake, among others. Published by the University Press of Florida, the amply illustrated 344page volume first appeared in hardcover last fall and, after two printings, came out in paperback in March. A month later, Koplowitz and his architectural partners, the Philadelphia-based firm kbas, won a competition to create a permanent sitespecific media installation for the new Salt Lake Community College Center for New Media. The Koplowitz-kbas proposal was selected from a total of 115 entries.