L.A. FREEWAVES

by Bill Lasarow

See a complete list of L.A. Freewaves venues

The sprawling 7th biennial festival of media-based art L.A. Freewaves will be popping up--and quickly retreating, in proper guerilla fashion--all over Southern California throughout the month of November. The more than 100 artists have been brought together as though they are a military unit mobilized to “attack the banality that reduces our neighborhoods to sites of somnambulism,” to quote Festival Director JoAnn Hanley.

The deployment of the nearly fifty exhibits, screenings, “video bus tours,” performances, and cyberspace projects dramatize in one explosive, dizzying month the idea that art is not defined by its medium but just the reverse: any medium may be used to shape art. The spirit here is to offer a range of experiences that comment on, react to, and subvert the popular channels of mass media.

Nearly thirty host venues will range from the mainstream (MOCA and CSU Northridge will offer special installations), to alternative spaces (Side Street Projects alone will show experimental video and film on nine separate evenings), to non-art locations (The Rose Bowl in Pasadena will be turned into a drive-in theater for one night), to god-knows-what (the Festival Finale will be held at the Vermont Music Cafe, a Koreatown karaoke club. Yikes!). The sheer quantity of video and film screenings, exhibitions and performances guarantees that you can get out literally any day or evening this month to see new media art in some part of town. A series of six Video Bus Tours sound especially intriguing, all but one setting out to uncover hidden corners of Los Angeles you probably never knew were there. Another will offer a more conventional circuit of selected Festival sites.

Chance encounter is also part of the ubiquitous mix. While driving around town you might run across a couple of video billboards that will run commercial tag lines or philosophical platitudes at you. Or stay at home. A host of local public access cable television stations will be broadcasting an L.A. Freewaves-produced documentary that tells the story of new media developments in L.A. over the last decade. Then go online and check out about 15 original Web projects. Caveat: try to have a DSL connection to cope with all the graphics and animation starting out from the L.A. Freewaves site.

For a complete schedule or further information, contact the L.A. Free-waves office at (213) 617-3950, or go to the website at http://www.freewaves.org.

AIR RAIDS OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA