Audrey Chan.

Audrey Chan as Judy Chicago on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, September 18, 2011. (Photo credit: Jason Pierre) Click for more images

PERFORMANCE:

Audrey Chan, “Walk of Cunts (Study After Judy Chicago)”
Sunset Blvd. (north side), between Gower and LaBrea
Sunday, September 18, 2011
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

In this homage to Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party”, Chicago’s Chinese-American doppelganger will render in chalk the glorious cunts of noteworthy women along a stretch of Sunset Boulevard parallel to the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

EVENT:

Road Concert on Sunset Boulevard
September 18, 2011
Organized by Stephen van Dyck

Los Angeles Road Concerts presents a showing of site-specific projects from over 100 Los Angeles artists in unused public outdoor spaces along the entire length of Sunset Boulevard’s 24 miles, from Downtown to the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.laroadconcerts.co.cc/

[Excerpt]

“The setup: Guillermo Gómez-Peña enters from stage right costumed in his signature “mariachi drag” walking with a stilted vaquero-dama strut, a boot on his right foot and stiletto pump on his left. His simple props for the evening consist of a table set with a megaphone, mineral water, a half-empty bottle of whiskey, a jar of salsa, sunglasses, a feather headdress, and a tall can of Right Guard men’s spray deodorant. Picking up the can of deodorant with intentionality, he performs a shamanic rite of invocation to bless the cardinal directions. Each 90-degree turn is punctuated by a shout—¡Norte! ¡Sur! ¡Este! ¡Oeste!—and a spray of artificial musk hissing into the stale air of the auditorium, defiling our lungs as we choke on our laughter.”

Read more of “Reports from a Strange Democracy: Guillermo Gómez-Peña” by Audrey Chan at East of Borneo.

Image and video of Guillermo Gómez-Peña courtesy of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Convening: Still Doin’ It: Fanning the Flames of the Woman’s Building
Symposium/convening/reunion, this two-day event offers a dialogue between feminist artists then and now.

Saturday, October 15, Ben Maltz Gallery / Antioch University
1-3pm: Share your WB story on video
3-4pm: Tour of the Otis exhibition with visiting scholars Viven Fryd Green, Alexandra Juhasz, Jennie Klein, Michelle Moravec, and Jenni Sorkin

7pm: Reading, Antioch University, 400 Corporate Pointe, Culver City, 90230, www.antiochla.edu
WB Writers: Gloria Alvarez, Wanda Coleman, Eloise Klein Healy, Bia Lowe, Deena Metzger, Terry Wolverton, and Mitsuye Yamada

Sunday, October 16, Ben Maltz Gallery / Skirball Cultural Center
9:00am-2:30pm: Artists’ presentations and conversation at Otis with Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Susan E. King, Suzanne Lacy, Audrey Chan, Onya Hogan-Finlay, Elana Mann, Feminist Art Workers, The Waitresses, and others.
Tickets: General $25; Students $10 and available online.

4-5pm: This is Your Life: the Woman’s Building, Hosted by Phranc, the All American Jewish Lesbian Folksinger, at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90049
Tickets: General $25; Students $15 and available online at www.skirball.org

More info: http://www.otis.edu/public_programs/ben_maltz_gallery/wb_tickets.html

Ben Maltz Gallery
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045 Map, directions, parking
Hours Tue-Sat 10-5 / Thu 10-7
galleryinfo@otis.edu
www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery

Conseil juridique et artistique / Legal and Artistic Counsel
by Audrey Chan
Paperback, 90 pp, black and white illustrations, French and English text
Translated by Audrey Chan, Michelle Fixot, and David Kerlogot
$15

Now available for purchase on amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1463540345

Description:

In 2009, American artist Audrey Chan was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the Nantes School of Fine Arts in France. She proposed an artistic investigation of the official portrait of President Nicolas Sarkozy, a subject that sparked debate about the ownership of images and the delicate relationship between politics and art in French law. The project led to a conversation between Chan and Bernard Edelman, renowned French jurist and philosopher and expert on author’s rights. What began as a legal counseling session between the artist and jurist-philosopher evolved into a larger debate about the very meaning of political and conceptual art. Conseil juridique et artistique / Legal and Artistic Counsel features the transcript of their conversation (French with English translation) and illustrations by the artist.

For more information, please visit: http://audreychan.net/conseil-juridique-et-artistique/

Conseil juridique et artistique (Legal and Artistic Counsel) will be featured in the upcoming exhibition:

By and For: Democracy and Art
An exhibition organized by the Southern California Women’s Caucus for the Arts, curated by Carol A. Wells

June 11-July 3, 2011
Opening Reception: June 11, 2011, 7-10pm
Closing Reception: July 3, 2011, 2-4pm
Avenue 50 Studio, 131 North Avenue 50, Los Angeles, CA 90042

Contemporary artists address the shifting meanings of freedom and equality, censorship and civil liberties and specifically, consider the role of art in a democracy in their works.

Thirty works were selected by curator, activist and art historian Carol A. Wells, who also serves as the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.

Artists: Mariona Barkus, Ulla Barr, Yvonne Beatty, Christine Behnen, Tristan Blodgett, Christina Carroll, Audrey Chan, Bayesteh Ghaffary, Michael Graham, Leslie Gray, Karen Gutfreund, Sinan Leong Revell, Larry Lytle, Barbara Margolies, Silva Matossian, Felicia Montes, O O, Sheila Pinkel, Chris Ramos, Jeffrey Robison, Catherine Ruanne, Amy Spain and France White

“I Voted for Shirley”, temporary text installation with twine at Friends of Distinction/Dan Graham, 1842 Glendale Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, December 2009 (photo credit: Audrey Chan)

Vincent invited us to think about the year 1969. He was putting together a show and performance event at our friend Aaron’s project space, Dan Graham, a call center-turned-gallery originally located where the 2 Freeway spits out onto a busy stretch of Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park. I consider the prompt. As an object and an idea, 1969 has been refracted to me through movies now available streaming online, via my mother’s memories of dancing to American pop as a Taiwanese co-ed, and through Wikipedia pages that chronicle nameable things as networks of linked crumbs to be followed on divergent paths through high-bandwidth woods. Time slips and stutters as it turns into histories.

Yes we can.

It was November 2009, the one-year anniversary of the historic day that changed the complexion of power in our proud nation. My thoughts turned to Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm, elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968, representing New York’s 12th congressional district, which included parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Some of her legislative initiatives included: fighting for domestic workers’ right to a minimum wage, opposing the Vietnam War and the draft, improving opportunities in inner cities, and seeking reductions in military spending. Road pavers allow us to walk on the back of their labor. We have only to stop the bulldozers that nip at their heels.

Surely we must.

In 1972, Shirley ran for President of the United States. Her campaign slogan—Unbought and Unbossed—set forth principles that challenge the traditional narrative of political ethics. She was a black woman who did not believe that either of those simple facts precluded her from seeking high office. Her spirited campaign led her to the Democratic National Convention, where she won 152 votes from delegates. The National Organization of Women, then led by Gloria and Betty, initially backed Shirley but ultimately threw their support to Senator George McGovern. He was deemed to be a safer bet given her “hopeless odds” (Shirley’s own words).

No we can’t.

Republican Richard Nixon was the victor that year by a landslide. Call up the picture in your mind of Tricky Dick stepping out of a plane wagging V’s to the press corps and you can start to feel the crushing vacuum of the status quo. It is where we live now. Now picture Shirley stepping onto that same tarmac, her chin held high and her pursed lips bursting into a wide, satisfied grin. Close your eyes slowly and you will feel the mild breeze of a real future as it gently blows by your cheek. Open your eyes and blink back the fact that history is never so easy. Shirley survived three assassination attempts during the campaign.

Maybe we could.

In 2008, I voted for a Shirley in my own time. As history will tell from this point forward, Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States on November 4, 2008. Forty years after stately Shirley stepped into in her very own office on Capitol Hill in 1969, Barack was inaugurated and took his seat in the Oval Office. He rode into office on a wave of adulation, buoyed by a splintered opposition and a shell-shocked public. We voted for Barack, sick of the broken war, the Orwellian doublespeak and bullying talking heads, coldly rational torture documents, our self-financed bankruptcy…the bought and bossed bullshit of the Bush status quo. We’re still living in it, this house of cards that has been burning before and since our hero’s arrival.

Yes we will.

The photograph that accompanies this text is documentation of the artwork that I made for Vincent’s show. My mother, Susy, and I made the installation together using a box of twine that we bought from Home Depot. For the performance we stood on opposite sides of the grating as we “embroidered” the façade of the space with the crudely-scrawled message for passing motorists. She later remarked that while she waited for me to pass the twine back to her, she was observing all the “beautiful, smoking people”—artists and artists’ friends and art watchers—who were milling about, time traveling to a resurrected ghost of 1969 through objects and actions in an ordinary time called 2009.

Yes we did.

– Audrey Chan, Los Angeles, 2011

FULL-LENGTH VIDEO DOCUMENTATION:

Introduction by Leslie Dick and presentation of “c. 7,500″

Panel discussion with Elana Mann (moderator), Andrea Fraser, Catherine Lord, and Mary Kelly

Panel discussion with Theresa Masangkay (moderator), María Cruz, Chitra Ganesh, Faith Wilding, and Emily Roysdon

Panel discussion with Martha Rosler, Dorit Cypis, Andrea Bowers, and Audrey Chan (moderator)

Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions: 2007 CalArts Feminist Art Symposium was a student-organized project that took place at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California in March 2007. For more information, please visit: exquisiteacts.org.

Video credits:
Cameras - Adam Feldmeth, Nicholas Grider
Video Editor - Audrey Chan
Sound - Emery Martin

As part of my work as a gallery teacher at the J. Paul Getty Museum, I wrote a post for The Getty Iris blog about visitors’ questions regarding the exhibition Imagining the Past in France, 1250-1500, which featured a deluxe selection of French historical illuminated manuscripts. In my opinion, it never hurts to know a little something about parchment making, the Hundred Years’ War, and medieval narrative strategies.

Read it here: “Did Parchment Smell? Your Manuscript Questions, Answered”

The Trial of the Duke of Alençon, Jean Fouquet, about 1459-60. In Concerning the Fates of Illustrious Men and Women (Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes; original text in Latin); Giovanni Boccaccio, author; Laurent de Premierfait, translator. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. Ms. Cod. Gall. 6, fol. 2v