10 L.A. Art Spaces That Change Our Idea of What an Art Space Is

www.facebook.com/itsallbeendonebefore

Austin Young occupies Chloë Flores

Chloë Flores is a curator who doesn't really like social media; she prefers old-fashioned, face-to-face contact. After her friends kept bugging her to get a Facebook account, however, a light went on in her head. Why not use her Facebook identity as a residence space for artists? After all, being on Facebook is essentially a performance, and the site's numerous mechanisms for social interaction open up subtle possibilities for subversion and critique -- in other words, for messing with people's heads.

In November 2011, Flores launched her residency project by posting a detailed statement on her Facebook page's "About" section. As it turns out, however, most people don't read the About page, and one of the first artists (Austin Young) caused confusion and alarm among Flores' friends by making up lengthy, revealing and uncomfortably personal status updates. Flores received concerned messages asking her if she was going through a crisis.

Later, many friends were incensed when the collective Finishing School took over and cheekily posted nothing but large JPEG swatches of bland colors. As Flores later explained, these colors were the approved palette for Internet use in its early days.
At this point, most people have become acclimated to the project, and Flores continues to program a new resident artist every month. She also lectures about it periodically at local schools, and has plans for a book to document it when it's over.

The Chloë Flores archive is fully accessible to the public, but for the complete experience, it's best to friend her. facebook.com/itsallbeendonebefore.

KCHUNG Radio

Yes, naked deejaying happens at KCHUNG Radio, courtesy of artists Guan Rong and John Burtle

KCHUNG, an upstart radio station founded in Chinatown by artist Solomon Bothwell, started as a joke. After an awkward interaction with a radio station owner who came to speak at the Mountain School (Piero Golia's alternative art university), Bothwell said to his friends, "I could start a radio station myself!" The more he said it to people, though, the more seriously they took him, and they started to contribute equipment, referrals and proposals for shows.

When KCHUNG did its first broadcast in February 2011 from the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Bothwell bicycled there with all of his radio gear stuffed into a backpack. A year later, KCHUNG's equipment could barely fit onto a truck bound for an art event in Joshua Tree.

The station, which broadcasts a tiny signal at 1630 AM and is best listened to online, recently moved into a shared studio space in Chinatown, where it is enjoying more spacious digs and a newfound stability. Programming, which can be heard Sunday through Thursday nights from 7 p.m. to midnight, is powered by diverse constituents of L.A.'s underground music and art scenes; you can hear anything from dial-up advice sessions to poetry readings to sonic experiments to straight-up deejay mixes. kchungradio.org.

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