Machine Project

The contemporary art space announced last week that it will soon be closing, but not before throwing a farewell party and print sale this Saturday.

The artist-run space Machine Project, based in Los Angeles, is shutting its doors after 15 years, reports Artforum. If you've gone through LA as a poet, there's a chance you may have read here, or in the 18­-seat Victorian opera house in the basement, where Anthony McCann hosted the Mystery Theater Poetry readings, with guest curators Joseph Mosconi, Dolores Dorantes, and Machine Project Founder and Executive Director, Mark Allen, in 2015. More recently, Machine welcomed the Wave Books 5-day poetry marathon, in conjunction with AWP.

Machine Project, an artist-run performance and installation nonprofit space located in Los Angeles, has announced that it will close. Founded by artist, educator, and curator Mark Allen in 2003, the alternative arts space investigated art, technology, natural history, science, music, literature, and food through shows it hosted in its storefront in Echo Park and events staged at major art institutions such as the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum.

The opening was short and sweet. In fact, the 2003 debut piece by Kelly Sears at Machine Project, the artist-run space in Echo Park, took all of 10 minutes. “It was her and this guy, Ian, and they had this 10-minute metal show,” says founder Mark Allen of Sears’ “Sexy Midi.” “They had videos, these animations of wizards and crystals. The doors opened at exactly 10 p.m. and the doors were locked at 10:10 p.m. By 10:21 everyone had to leave.”

It is in the context of more rigorous expectations for contemporary institutions that I consider Machine Project: The Platinum Collection (Live by Special Request), the documentation of Machine Project’s 2015 exhibition at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, New York. The Platinum Collection makes clear Machine’s goal of affecting the inner workings of museum culture, one invitation at a time.

Sorry, Atlantis: Eden’s Achin’ Organ Seeks Revenge fuses classical mythology, slapstick comedy, and 1930s cartoons to tell a timely story about war, race, power, and sexual repression.

As you pull into the parking lot, the 46 mile-long structure winds as far as you can see in the rear-view mirror. Ahead, the wall drops to the shore and runs into the Pacific Ocean. This was the setting that artist Diego Palacios chose for “Surf Border”—held last month. Palacios invited surfers from either side of the wall to meet in the open ocean and, as the California-native put it, “catch waves in the spirit of brotherly love.”

Los Angeles-based artist Diego Palacios is standing near the wall – really a steel fence dividing the shore into north and south portions. It extends a couple hundred feet into the water, cutting through the surf break. On this Saturday at Border Field State Park, in the southwest corner of the continental United States, about 10 people are paddling surf boards past the barrier.

Where the U.S. Meets Mexico, a Surfer-Artist Is Making a Statement About the Absurdity of Borders. In Border Field State Park, on the beach where San Diego and Tijuana meet, a fence made of poles placed a few inches apart, stretches from the sand into the water, extending just past the surf break. While it's still illegal to cross from one “side” to another, there’s no tangible difference between the waves and, once you’re beyond the wall, no barrier.

From Sunrise to Sunset on Saturday, a Giant Performance Party Is Taking Over Echo Park Lake. Hungover hipsters drag their feet into brunch spots or keel over onto patches of grass to rest their heads. A paletero sounds the tinny chime of his bell and kids flocks to him. At the nearby lake, yellow paddle boats float on the water, their attendant ripples reaching to the lotus flowers. This is your typical Saturday morning in Echo Park, but that routine will be pleasantly disrupted by a series of “13 interventions,” as experimental vocalist, artist and performer Carmina Escobar calls them.