Tonight As Maybe Echo Curio's Last Hurrah: "Picture Con Sequenzia" (a.k.a. Exquisite Corpse)

echo curio: leave an exquisite corpse

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Flogging a (not quite) dead corpse: for what must have been months, but seems like a decade in scene years, Echo Curio on Sunset Boulevard has served the all-ages community as a performance space, an art gallery, and a boutique for obscure music and zines--all the time teetering on the brink of the financial ruin that comes from the sin of trying to serve Los Angeles' cultural needs without also serving drinks. Now that the powers that be have finally put their zoning talons into the Curio's neck, that ruin is imminent, and the venue has announced it will be closing by the end of the year.

So perhaps it's fitting that tonight's likely last hurrah is also the closing night of Echo Curio's exquisite corpse workshop, or "Picture con sequenzia," as the flyers call it. You know the old Surrealist game: three or four people draw a picture on one piece of paper without ever seeing the other person's work. You can also do it as a poem, or a story, or a comic, all kinds of artistic permutations--in fact, there must be something in the zeitgeist, as 100 artists (including at least one of the Henry and Glenn Forever crew) just took part in the recently published The Exquisite Book, containing 10 artsy/comicy works flying blind, Tristan Tzara style.

The Echo Curio team may not have had Dave Eggers to write their forward, but their tropes of eager young collaborators--working in weekend shifts for the past couple months--somehow pushed out a caustic collusion of what must be more than a hundred exquisite corpse works, including a zine, a song (with artists as diverse as Moses Campbell and Charlyne Yi), video, wall-art, and so much more. Really, three hours is not enough to take it all in, so make sure to pressure the gallery guys and gals to let you know when and where they plan to open up their next all-ages art and community space once the dust settles on the corpse of this one.

'PICTURE CON SEQUENZIA' tonight at Echo Curio, 1519 W. Sunset Blvd. (213) 977-1279. 8 PM - 11 PM. echocurio.com.