Courtesy Michael Benevento

A still from Wu Tsang and Alexandro Segade's Mishima in Mexico (2012)

This week, an artist makes deadpan jokes in vintage photographs, whistlers convene in Glendale and a Japanese novelist's tragedy of frustrated love is re-staged in Mexico.

5. Crowd of copycats
It's not yet certain how many people will participate in artist Sara Roberts' Clump and Whistle, a group performance at Glendale's Civic Center, but it shouldn't be more than 100, the number Roberts chose as her cut-off point. Clump and Whistle will work in the way the wave works at a football game, only with whistles. One person blows out a quick tune on one of the multitone whistles Roberts has provided, then the person next to him or her mimics the tune and so on until this tune has spread -- like a wave -- through the crowd. Two rehearsals precede this weekend's event, which means the effect will be at least slightly honed. Glendale Civic Center Plaza, Broadway and Glendale Boulevard; Sun., May 19, 1 p.m.; RSVP requested. machineproject.org.

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Copyright Nan Goldin, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery

Nan Goldin's paired photographs, called Chimera (2013)

This week, an alien-inspired concert/party happens at an iconic bowling alley, and two artists make intricate renderings of mystery plants.

5. The art star with the bloody head
In Happy Song for You, the short film made by artists Stanya Kahn and Llyn Foulkes in 2011, Foulkes appears with blood dripping down his face and a bandage over his eyes, like the gory figures in the paintings he made in the 1970s and '80s. The camera also lingers over craggy rocks, dirt and funny toys, all things that might appear in a Foulkes artwork. This will screen along with other films, such as a 1959 short starring Foulkes as a deranged, eccentric artist, when the Hammer continues its months-long series of Foulkes programming with a "Starring Llyn" night. 10899 Wilshire Blvd.; Tues., May 14, 7:30 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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Photo by Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

Shana Lutker's sculpture A very tiny evening (2013) at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

This week, an Yves Saint Laurent suit hangs in an elementary school, Marilyn Monroe sings in a Century City bathroom, and a group of writers revises a 1980s tome on looking your best.

5. OK, kids, get ready for fancy dresses!
Artist Shinique Smith traveled from New York to Los Angeles a few times this winter and spring to meet with students at Charles White Elementary School, to talk to them about her work and to invite them to help her make one of her hanging sculptures: fabrics mashed together, then suspended to look like unwieldy creatures. LACMA's education department spearheaded this effort, called "Firsthand," and the best thing about it is that work Smith picked out from LACMA's collection -- a bold, red and pink women's suit by Yves Saint Laurent, a ruffle-top evening dress by Bill Blass -- has been on view at the elementary school's gallery along with collages by students there since February. 2401 Wilshire Blvd.; through July 19. (213) 487-9172, lacma.org.

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Courtesy Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND)

One of Liz Craft's "hairy guys" in West Hollywood Park

This week, two artists dance with hula-hoops, another uses graffiti to obscure paintings of high-heeled, made-up models and a third installs hairy bronze statues in WeHo.

5. Just say no
In 1962, Judson Dance Theater started at the Judson Church in Greenwich Village. Programming was informal; writers and artists contributed as much as dancers and choreographers did. Trisha Brown worked at Judson, as did Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, who developed her No Manifesto there. ("No to spectacle. No to virtuosity," it started, then continued to list all the tropes of performance Rainer wished to reject.) Rainer and Forti will be at the Hammer this weekend, along with a number of other artists, dancers, theorists and historians, talking about where the dance world and art world meet. 10899 Wilshire Blvd.; Fri., April 26, 5-9 p.m.; Sat., April 27, 10-2 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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Courtesy the artist

A still from Kelly Sears's film Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise (2011)

This week, haunting films about cold-war America play for 15 hours straight on Alvarado and an artist sells cellphone holders that make your phone as unwieldy as one from landline days.

5. Holes in the walls
Urs Fischer, the Swiss artist who stuck a fake tongue out of a hole in the New Museum's wall five years ago, does iconoclastic things in an almost-too-smooth way. He will cut into the Geffen Contemporary's walls for his new show at MOCA and display rough clay sculptures made onsite with the help of about 1,000 local volunteers. The show's opening day will be a multipart affair. Curator Jessica Morgan will speak about working with Fischer, KCHUNG radio will broadcast live and artist Morrisa Maltz, a kind of smooth iconoclast herself, will invite people to have "Mofone Emotional Moments." She'll let them call family or friends using her "Mofones," smartphone holders that look like old-school rotary phone handsets, seashells or tree trunks. 152 N. Central Ave.; Sunday, April 21, noon-5 p.m. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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Courtesy Richard Telles Fine Art

Dan Finsel's E-thay Inward-Yay Ourney-Jay

See also:
*Getty's Pacific Standard Time Series on L.A. Architecture: A Preview
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week, a panel of architects and a performance at a science fiction conference imagine a high-tech future L.A. and an artist uses Pig Latin to title the work in his half-biographical, half-fantastical show.

5. Home for a wayward shopping cart
The lot on Traction between Third and Fourth Street, in Little Tokyo, used to be a gas station. Recently, it has become a pop-up art spot for street artists. Right now, there's a reshaped shopping cart angling up off a concrete slab at the center of the triangle and an eagle at the top of a found-object totem pole along the outskirts. Traction Avenue, between Third and Fourth streets.

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Courtesy Night Gallery

"Made in Space" at Night Gallery

See also:
*Getty's Pacific Standard Time Series on L.A. Architecture: A Preview
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week, the painter who pushed for a "superflat" aesthetic brings his formerly 2-D monsters to the big screen, three artists clean an alt space from floor to ceiling, and a group show makes Night Gallery's big new space feel maze-like in a good way.

5. Mr. Clean as a conceptualist
Starting the morning of April 5, Human Resources, the vintage Chinatown theater-turned-art space, will be cleaned. The designated cleaners, who will use designated cleaning supplies (the press release mentions Mr. Clean), include Hailey Loman, whose wearable sculpture includes a blanket with a plastic sleeping compartment in the middle of it. Sleeping "wearers" of this sculpture look shrink-wrapped, safe in a sterile way. Cleaners also include Gaea Woods, who photographs objects of beauty, and Lucy Campana, who appeared in Opening Ceremony's ethereally clean "Spa Heaven" videos. Cleaning has been an art act before, but often to bring attention to labor hierarchies or gender roles. This time, the primary subject is the elusiveness of being perfectly clean. You can come to watch or help. 410 Cottage Home St.; Sat., April 5-7, starting 11 a.m.; free. (213) 290-4752; humanresourcesla.com.

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Courtesy of LACMA

View into the second gallery of "Ends and Exits"

This week, it's all about looking back: One artist revisits 1993 L.A., another borrows the palette of teen pop from 20-some years ago and a museum show features graphically bold, grittily political art of the '80s.

5. What art even is
When the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston changed its name from Institute of Modern Art in 1948, controversy erupted. One publication said the name change signaled the institute's rejection of the "cult of bewilderment" that abstract modernism represented. A group of artists, the iconic Jackson Pollock among them, went to New York to protest the institute soon after. Art historian Richard Meyer tells this story and others about the birth of "contemporary art," a designation no less bewildering than "modern art" ever was, in his new book What Was Contemporary Art? He'll talk about the book and that question with MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch in the museum's Ahmanson Auditorium. 250 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; Sat., March 30, 3 p.m.; free. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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Courtesy Roberts & Tilton

A view of Noah Davis' Stacked Cubicles (2013)

This week, another painted portrait of Kate Middleton debuts, an aesthetic terroist talks about fashion and tea time happens ten days in a row in Chinatown.

5. Man and the machine
Llyn Foulkes, the rash, visceral artist who has a solo show at the Hammer Museum now, also plays what he calls The Machine. It's a multi-part instrument that surrounds him when he performs, sitting amidst bass drum, symbols, xylophone and other brass and rubber horns. Filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Christopher Quilty have been making a documentary about Foulkes called One Man Band, a name inspired by the artist's Machine. They'll screen it as a work-in-progress at the Hammer and answer questions afterward. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Wstwd.; Thurs., March 21, 7:30 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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Courtesy Overduin and Kite

Will Benedict, 1 800 Bad Drug (2013)

See also:
*Asshole Festival 2013: Artists Yell at the Assholes of Los Angeles From a Street Corner in Chinatown
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week, a designer explains happiness in West Hollywood, a fact-blurring foreign correspondent's office opens in Highland Park and a single tear rolls down one cheek in Culver City.

5. High-tech domesticity
T. Kelly Mason's Typology of Glasses shows a line of casual-looking glassware painted against a baby blue background. The painting is inside a light box, backlit by gels and covered with glass. Above that glass, Mason has outlined his glassware in marker, so that the drawing begins to seem almost dimensional. This mix of high-tech and low recurs throughout his current show at Cherry and Martin gallery, and makes idiosyncratic domestic scenes flashy in a funny way. 2712 S. La Cienega Blvd.; through April 27. (310) 559-0100, cherryandmartin.com.

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