Courtesy of the artist

Daido Moriyama's photograph Untitled (2011)

This week, artist and sunglasses designer Alex Israel debuts the talk show he shot in the Pacific Design Center, trombonists perform in a downtown art space, and fringe physicists reinvent gravity.

5. They're a collective, not a choir
The trombone is purportedly the brass instrument with a range closest to the human voice -- it's like a Southern preacher, only "with greater amplitude," said poet James Weldon Johnson. It's also one of the oldest instruments. "Trombone choirs" are old things, too, with centuries' worth of arrangements made just for them. But because the Los Angeles Trombone Collective is expressly not a choir, it avoids all of this. Its members favor retooled trombone solos or music not meant for trombone at all. This weekend, at alt-art space the Wulf, the collective will interpret John Cage and debut new live trombone electronica. 1026 S. Sante Fe Ave., #203, dwntwn.; Sat., May 19, 7:30 p.m. (213) 488-1182, thewulf.org.

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Courtesy of Performa

Actors Annie Fox and Rafael Jordan in Liz Magic Laser's work I Feel Your Pain (A Performa Commission)

Shakespeare famously wrote, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." He was speaking metaphorically, of course, but in this age of total media saturation and dominance, when everything we see on TV and in the movies is choreographed and manipulated for maximum audience response, his words have the disturbing ring of literal truth.

It is this observation that galvanizes much of the work of Liz Magic Laser (her real name), a New York-based artist who just opened "The Digital Face," a show of videos and collages at Various Small Fires in Venice. Laser is an up-and-coming artist known for directing provocative performance art pieces with a heavy degree of audience interaction. She has been receiving strong notices for her work from New York art critics, and this is her first showing in Los Angeles.

The centerpiece of this well-curated introduction to Laser's oeuvre is I Feel Your Pain, a long video work with several tricky layers. Laser first pored over thousands of hours of news interviews, political speeches, press conferences and even self-help and advice books, adapting and splicing together chunks of their texts to shape a melodramatic narrative script.

She then hired professional actors to bring life to the script and had them enact the play while sitting amongst a theater audience that had been gathered for this purpose. The play was filmed in episodic scenes and projected onto the screen of the theater, at the same time that it was being acted out. Thus, the audience members were both viewers of the play and extras acting in it.

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Terry Richardson's James Franco in Drag, Courtesy of the artist and OHWOW Gallery

Franco poses in drag for fashion photographer Terry Richardson, as part of the "Rebel" exhibit currently on display at JF Chen.

"There's just a lot of dicks in there. A lot of porno," painter Ty Williams says, shaking his head. "But I get it, though. I understand the prevalence of penises."

We're standing in the alleyway behind JF Chen, a collectible-furniture showroom and exhibit space, at the opening party for "Rebel," an off-site MOCA multimedia extravaganza produced by the world's most famous grad student, James Franco, in collaboration with an all-star cast of contemporary artists, including Ed Ruscha, Aaron Young, Terry Richardson, Paul McCarthy and Douglas Gordon.

Though Franco was somehow involved in all of the projects shown here, and his ongoing obsession with the sexual secrets and adolescent turmoil behind James Dean and Rebel Without a Cause drives the exhibit, the lineup of bigwigs confers an air of legitimacy lacking at some of Franco's previous shows and stunts.

The exhibit itself has been impressively built-out, looking like a soundstage resembling the Chateau Marmont, with videos playing in individual bungalows and shrubbery strewn with blow-up sex dolls and other detritus referencing the art.

And yes, there were a number of penises on display inside, as Franco and his partners grappled with the pent-up, feverish sexuality of adolescence by exploring, among other themes, the homoerotic tension on-screen in the 1955 film, Dean's real-life bisexuality and a smattering of behind-the-scenes affairs that reportedly took place before and during the shooting of the movie.

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Susan Vielmetter Projects

Karl Haendel's drawing Tired Dylan (2008)

[Update: This article previously referred to the MOCA festival curated by Mike D as a fundraiser for the museum. Mercedes sponsored the exhibit, but it was not intended as a fundraiser. The item has been corrected below.]

A festival run by a rapper, a Cadillac in a gallery, a soap opera cast with women in white, "taking account of oneself" taken to its extremes: It feels like spring.

5. So what'cha what'cha what'cha want
Until May 6, the Beastie Boy's Mike D is moonlighting as a MOCA curator. He's organized a festival of audio-video art at MOCA. Backed by Mercedes Benz, the festival has no admissions charge and will, MOCA hopes, bring in several thousand visitors. The artist line-up includes Public Fiction, which is the name of the experimental space Lauren Mackler runs in Highland Park. Mackler has orchestrated her own, quirky festival-within-a-festival at the Geffen. She'll present a panel on cults, a set by electronic improvisers NGUZUNGUZU and a broadcast by homeless, artist-run radio station KChung. 152 N. Central Ave., Little Tokyo; events daily through May 6. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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Diego, 10, plays the piano near LACMA

On a sunny but breezy Saturday, 10-year-old Diego Grijalva of Gabriella Charter School in Echo Park found himself at 5900 Wilshire Blvd., seated at a piano designed by local artist Evan Skrederstu. Diego, who has played on his school's piano, was intrigued by the street piano and was playing a simple tune.

The piano, strategically placed adjacent to a line of food trucks across from LACMA is one of about 30 currently ensconced all over Los Angeles as part of the international public art installation "Play Me, I'm Yours."

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Courtesy of the artist

Corazon del Sol's More Time (2012)

A little girl in ballet slippers, a jean jacket and a tulle tutu began an art collection Tuesday night at Barney's Beanery. It was barter night there, and the room with the pool tables in it had been cordoned off and artworks hung above each booth. The idea was that those who wanted the art would come and bargain with an artist. "What kind of bargain? Like, art for food?" an onlooker seated in the adjoining room asked his waitress.

It was more specific than that, actually. Each artwork announced, in some way or another, what the artist wanted in return. Some artists wanted things pricey but tangible. Jonah Freeman's nostalgic collage on newsprint had words "2012 MacBook Pro" written in a thought bubble. Walead Beshty made an ink drawing of a 15" MacBook Air. Ry Rocklen wanted a kiln in exchange for the print he'd cut to resemble lace and then affixed to a mirror. Others' desires were open to interpretation, or difficult to procure. Anna Sew Hoy wanted a clean body. Shannon Ebner wanted sun. Zoe Crosher wanted an evening with ever-elusive, raw and worldly writer Eve Babitz.

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Haruko Tanaka

Joe Seely and Jasmine Orpilla in promo photo for See What Love the Father Has for Us

God and Jesus have a sex scene in act two of See What Love the Father Has Given Us, artist Asher Hartman's three-act trip into the weirdness of the Holy Trinity, currently at Machine Project in Echo Park. This scene plays out on top of a table that an audience of no more than twelve sits around.

Depending on where you're seated, the action might be uncomfortable, but it's not especially explicit. While there are tangled embraces, charged caresses and some crawling and mounting, no clothes come off, and the encounter ends abruptly when God, a taut, petite dark-haired girl, pulls away from the ganglier, milder Christ. "You would put your tongue in your own father's mouth?" she says with some disgust.

The table Father and Son are on is in a makeshift box-store break room. Both actors wear red Circuit City shirts with khakis, and they make sure their boss, Smoke, who channels the Holy Spirit when not chastising employees or pitching electronics, will not interrupt before they let things get heated.

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The Box L.A.

Leigh Ledare's Double Bind (2010)

Pacific Standard Time, that half-year, regionwide paean to L.A.'s art history, officially ends on March 31. A show of vintage photographs and one last performance event send it off. Everything else on this week's list is forward-looking.

5. Rebel with a camera
When MOCA staged its big Dennis Hopper retrospective in 2010, it showed glossy, blown-up versions of Hopper's The Fort Worth 400. The exhibit included none of the vintage, 6-by-9-inch 1960s prints of hippies, artists, the Kennedys, Warhol and roadways. Small, scuffed, yellowed and animated by time, these prints by the guy who seemed to be everywhere and know everyone are at Craig Krull Gallery as part of Pacific Standard Time. 2525 Michigan Ave., #B-3, Santa Monica; through April 17. (310) 828-6410, craigkrullgallery.com.

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Human Resources

Still from My Barbarian's video Shakuntala DuBois

Opening night of My Barbarian's new show, Broke People's Baroque Peoples' Theater, artist Anna Sew Hoy rolled and writhed on the floor while a backup band played. She'd been selected from the audience along with at least 15 others, costumed in a togalike, patterned gown and given a card with a "personification" on it. Her card said "Iraq and Afghanistan" and the writhing was an attempt to "personify" just that. "You dropped your phone in Afghanistan," acting MC Jade Gordon told Sew Hoy.

Gordon and artists Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade have been performing as My Barbarian since 2000. "We're always trying to find ways to have people act out complicated cultural ideas," says Gaines, and it's taken years to achieve what they did that night: create an energy that compels an audience to dance, sing and willingly personify overseas conflicts.

"We've found that if you tell [your audience] what the rules of the game are, then they can play along," Segade says. "The result is sort of like court entertainment, only we don't have a king."

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Susan Vielmetter Projects

Still from Stanya Kahn's

Our list this week includes not just a video with someone dressed in a penis costume but also Ellsworth Kelly, a hidden Koreatown gallery and the ubiquitous Judy Chicago.

5. Making money sing
CamLab, the two-person troupe Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman, wants art to be social, spontaneous and sensual, preferably all at once. They've staged two performances at MOCA since 2012 began, one of which involved rainbow pajamas and a bedroom installed in front of Rothko paintings. Their third and final performance is Thursday. Called Two in the Bush, it will include "instrumentalizing" money, so that currency actually produces sound, plus handcrafted costumes and a set by supersincere Highland Park band Hotel La Rut. 250 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; Thurs., March 1, 7-10 p.m. (213) 626-6222, moca.org/party/camlab/.

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