Kevin Scanlon

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

See also: Jenna Marbles: Outtakes from our People Issue interview

One Friday in July 2010, Jenna Mourey drove home from her job at a tanning salon in Boston; she had to shower and change for her night gig as a go-go dancer. As she walked into her apartment, she decided to film herself getting ready.

She enjoyed go-go dancing (getting paid to dance -- in flats!). But she had a master's degree from Boston University in sports psychology and counseling. Her life was, as she says, "ridiculous."

"I went to school, tried really hard, did everything I was supposed to do, and now, like, what the fuck is this mess I'm in right now?" the 25-year-old recalls thinking. "I'm going to work dancing in my underwear, making myself look like a whore on purpose."

More >>

Robbie Shaw and Stephanie Nugent

Stephanie Nugent feathering her nest

It's like a reality game show crossed with an MFA program -- to put it crassly.

Dances Made to Order, a pay-to-watch, curated, online, dance film festival, is the brainchild of Los Angeles choreographer Kingsley Irons and filmmaker Bryan Koch. The site, going national this year, features movies created by choreographers from 11 different cities, beginning with L.A. The site will post three original, five-minute movies each month.

The filmmakers gave Irons a list of inspirational creative topics, but then the audience (i.e., subscribers to www.dancesmadetoorder.com, paying $10 a month or $50 for the season) voted for their favorites. The top three themes must be used in each dance, no matter how wacky a combination. This rare interaction between audience and filmmakers is what distinguishes the site -- and makes it fun, Irons said.

The three subjects/themes/adjectives/ for the L.A. films were:

(1) Sugary/salty. (2) A film within a film. (3) Would you be better off if you hadn't...

More >>

Special Entertainment

The iconic "What" zeppelin, projected onto MOCA downtown

In 1972 Asco spray-painted their signatures onto the walls of LACMA, asserting themselves as active members of the art community despite the fact that LACMA wasn't yet willing to show their work.

Last Wednesday night, Milwaukee-based Special Entertainment, the partnership between artists Andrew Swant and Bobby Ciraldo, also inserted their signature into the L.A. art world. Swant and Ciraldo, creators of Samwell's "What What (In the Butt)" viral video, which has gotten 45 million views since it was posted to YouTube five years ago, projected the video's iconic zeppelin with the word "What" on it onto MOCA downtown, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Scientology Center and various other cultural institutions and locations around Los Angeles.

Then, on Thursday, the duo presented video footage of the drive-by projection event at Nate Page's Machine Overnight Guerrilla Project at Storefront Plaza, hosted by Machine Project.

Special Entertainment's trip out West and its series of projections was organized in part by Sara Daleiden's MKE-LAX program, promoting artistic exchange between Milwaukee and L.A., fostered in celebration of the five-year anniversary of "What What (In the Butt)."

More >>

The theme of the 2012 New Frontier -- the Sundance section devoted to installation work, experimental film and video and art utilizing/ exploring emergent technology -- is "Future Normal." At a preview of the lineup held for press, programmer Shari Frilot defined that branded theme as reflective of an attempt to analyze the role of film in an age when "screen culture is evolving," to the point where "media technology integration really sustains humanity."

It's fitting the first piece visitors to the New Frontier gallery encounter, and by far the highlight of the whole exhibit, uses the trendiest technology of the moment to synopsize the past.

More >>

Diana Garcia

Piano, new-agey Himalayan salt lamps, and gorilla hands on a typewriter. What's not to like?

It's like that party you've been hoping to get invited to for months now and you finally did, only it's a Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Oh, well... Those of us not cool enough to arrive fashionably late mingled around amid the wafting perfume of tequila.

The expansive white cube that is Human Resources in Chinatown was sparsely occupied with posters. The center of the room housed an installation -- an upright piano, flanked by new-agey Himalayan salt crystal lamps, a Macbook, a couple of mic stands and a few other tchotchkes resting on top of a rug -- that would be the main feature of the evening. Projected on the rear wall, a video of gorillas grocery shopping and knockin' da boots.

The video and various posters, each carried out by different artists associated with the man behind the project, Gregory Rogove, are variations, "remixes" as he calls them, of the score he's written for Piana, his upcoming album. Piana's website describes it as "an album of instrumental, solo piano pieces written by Gregory Rogove and performed by John Medeski." The album, to be released Jan. 31, will also include a DVD of the visual reinterpretations -- video, photographs, various 2D media and a sculpture -- of the piano pieces composed by Rogove.

More >>

Josh White, courtesy Honor Fraser Gallery

Totally doesn't doesn't do its awesomeness justice. But cool...

Shipsearching, Mie Olise's awesome treehouse of an artwork at Honor Fraser gallery, stole the opening-night-in-Culver-City scene for me. You may be wondering, what's a treehouse of an artwork? Is that some newfangled whipper-snapper term for awesome? No, that would make me redundant.

A treehouse of an artwork is one you climb up and sit inside, as if hiding from the world below, with your trusty sleeping bag for comfort, while spying on the gallery-goers below through the spaces between wood slats.

Maybe "treehouse" isn't exactly the vibe it's going for, as the didactic says that Shipsearching speaks to the "intimate and poetic experience of being onboard a ship during a journey." That it does, too. There's a picture of a sailboat projected inside the constructed space.

More >>

Nanette Gonzales

This week in print, Tony Cella and Simone Wilson look at L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich's war on public murals and the moratorium that has left many artists seeing their sanctioned work get buffed almost before the paint has even had time to dry.

Two such artists are Sand One and Vyal One, who recently painted a mural on a downtown restaurant with the owner's permission. It lasted less than a week. Good thing Nanette Gonzales was there to document its creation.

More >>

Poet Jamie Criss performing at one of Synchronicity LA's monthly "artistic salons."

LA Weekly is now taking poetry submissions. Interested in having your work posted right here on our arts blog? Send previously unpublished poems along with an image to go with it to poetry@laweekly.com. Major bonus points if you send us a video of you performing your work, as today's poet, Jamie Criss, has done.

Criss' poem, "Westmoreland" refers to the location of Synchronicity L.A., an artist cooperative in Harvard Heights. She lives in an extension of it next door called "The Treehouse." Synchronicity houses creatives who share chores and financial obligations, work and play together, and host visitors. As their mission statement indicates, it's a place for "generating community through hospitality, intentionality, artistic action, and a dedication to the reduction of harm." This poem reflects Criss' experience there.

Check out the video and text of her poem after the jump.

More >>

LA Weekly is now taking poetry submissions. Interested in having your work posted right here on our arts blog? Send previously unpublished poems along with an image to go with it to poetry@laweekly.com. Major bonus points if you send us a video of you performing your work in a public space. As today's poet, JP Martinez, a.k.a. Poet John Paul The Third, did. In his own words:

"JP Martinez is a performance artist, poet, and dreamer that seeks to create an experience of words, imagery and emotion that can invoke in each person the inspiration to believe in themselves as brave artists and bold creators exploring their truest path. Born and raised in Los Angeles, JP began performing in venues from L.A. to the Inland Empire. He currently lives in Northern California and is working on new material for his next book and set of performance pieces. For more info on his work and writing you can visit his blog at www.poetjohnpaul.wordpress.com."

Check out the video and text of his poem after the jump.

More >>

Courtesy Kenneth Tam

Artist Kenneth Tam receiving a massage from a man he solicited over Craigslist to make a video with him

One of L.A. artist Kenneth Tam's most recent videos begins with Tam taping shut a big cardboard box. There's a man inside, we quickly realize, and he has an agenda.

"Have you ever wanted to be an exhibitionist?" the man asks calmly from inside the box like a doctor trying to cajole the truth out of a resistant patient. "Do you ever walk around the house with no clothes on?"

The box man keeps talking as Tam circles, eventually convincing Tam to undress so that the man can caress him through holes awkwardly cut in the cardboard. This video, which can be seen through Sunday at Latned Atsar gallery, is fueled by tension. It's not clear who has more control: the man who clearly wants into Tam's pants or the artist who's constrained him to a box.

More >>