Farmlab Public Salon
Dominique Vivant Denon
Friday May 9, 2008 @ Noon
Free Admission



SITES OF MODERNITY
Antiquario dell Statue and Museum of Modern Art


About the Salon
Join Dominique Vivant Denon for a preview of his upcoming exhibition, SITES OF MODERNITY: Antiquario dell Statue and Museum of Modern Art. The show will take place this June, at the Oberwelt Gallery in Stuttgart, Germany.

About Sites of Modernity
Some time around the year 1503, Pope Julius II placed the Apollo statue, which was in his possession, into the newly built Vatican garden named Belvedere. Soon after, the Laocoon group was excavated and brought to the garden as well. Then came other statues: Torso, Nile, Cleopatra, Venus, Comodus as Hercules, Tiber, etc. Those had been mostly broken marbles scattered around in various private palaces or buried for many centuries. Now, put on display together in the enclosed garden, they became exhibits, as if in an open-air wonder camera. Unlike the other wonder camera collections, this one was dedicated solely to the statues from ancient times. Those fragments from the past, placed among the orange trees and in specially built niches, emerged as a completely new sight for the contemporaries. This was a sight that had never been seen before. Soon it got the name Antiquario delle Statue, and that was the moment when the Antiquity was born. However, this particular display of the statues from the past became also the new vision of the past. Being the most novel invention of the time, this represents the birth of Modernity as well. Those statues were the first works of art and the first modern works of art. Thus the Belvedere Antiquarium itself was not only the first museum of art, but also the first museum of modern art. Since that moment, the Antiquario dell Statue, directly or indirectly, shaped the concept of art and art institutions throughout the entire Western World, for the next five centuries.

In 1929 The Museum of Modern Art opened in New York. After Pio-Clementino and the Louvre museums, this was the last important offspring of the Belvedere impulse. Being international in scope, the idea of Modern was to collect and exhibit the best and most advanced art of the time. At the 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art, instead of the dominant 19th century paradigm based on National Schools, the museum's founding director Alfred Barr introduced the idea of International Movements. This completely changed the character of the modern art narrative, and retroactively, the History of Art in general. And this is the narrative that has been shaping the art world ever since.

Today the old Belvedre collection of statues is in the Vatican Museum, while the most important collection of modern art is in the Museum of Modern Art. And today these two museums are both museums of antiquities. The exhibition Sites of Modernity brings together to life the fading memories on these two most important museums of modern art: Belvedere Romanum and Museum of Modern Art.

About the Salon Presenter
Dominique Vivant Denon is for the time being an associate of the Salon de Fleurus. He will move to the future 'Museum of Antiquity' when it opens eventually. Email him at FleurusNY [AT] gmail [DOT] com.



Images of Belvedere (top) and Pope Julius II (bottom) courtesy Dominique Vivant Denon

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Farmlab Public Salon
Marco Kusumawijaya
Friday May 2, 2008 @ Noon
Free Admission


Imagining Jakarta


About The Salon

Imagining Jakarta is a collaborative workshop by architects, poet, musician, graphic designer, photographer, and sculptor to reflect and develop alternative visions on some issues and spaces in Jakarta. Through a story of its process (a series of workshops) and product (a visual and audio exhibition), some problems and future possibilities of Jakarta are explored.

About The Salon Presenter

Marco Kusumawijaya, an architect by training, is a professional and activist in the fields of architecture, environment, arts, cultural heritage, urban planning and development with more than 20 years of experiences in places all over Indonesia. He has worked as architectural designer, urban designer and planner, researcher and consultant of urban management and urban governance. He has worked with private sector, governments, international and local NGO’s, international agencies such as the British Council, the World Bank and UNDP.

He also volunteers as a resource person and practical worker on urban issues for a number of NGO’s. He writes frequently for a number of print media in Jakarta, while his opinions are often requested by print and electronic media, as well as by several public institutions and citizens organizations. He contributes to journals and books on urban issues. He lectures in diverse fora: government-related policy formulation fora, training of NGO activists, training of members of parliaments, trainings of Buddhist monks, universities, and community-initiated advocacy and action planning exercises. His special interests include sustainable urbanization, urban studies of Jakarta, city and the arts, and social changes towards sustainability.

In 2001 he started Green Map (www.greenmap.org) in Indonesia. He has published three books on architecture, urban studies, heritage, and citizen movements in Indonesia, and translated one book (David Bornstein, How to Change the World, Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Oxford University Press, 2004) into Indonesian. With the Imagining Jakarta program, he explored the new area of the relationship between culture and urban development with a group of artists and architects. His latest assignment with UPC (Urban Poor Consortium) – UPLINK in Aceh, May-December 2006, was the planning and early stage of reconstruction of 23 villages (with 3,331 houses) in Banda Aceh and nearby coastal subdistricts. He is currently (2006-2009) chair of Jakarta Arts Council (www.dkj.or.id)

Image courtesy Marco Kusumawijaya via he MAK Center

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Recent Photos of Farmlab and Under Spring
Spring 2008

























[FOR PAST PHOTOS, PLEASE CLICK HERE

Captions (From top, down)
  • Participants in the F.L.A.G. project, during a recent group meeting.

  • Corn sprouting, after a wedding and reception held at and around F.L.A.G. and Cornhenge.

  • LA aqueduct and the sprouting golf course attached to the brand new subdivision at its foot.

  • Mariachi 2000 performs during the recent Public Salon titled, "Mariachi Plaza & Hotel: Where the Music Still Lives."

  • From "Plant a F.L.A.G. (Farmlab Agbin Garden)" -- a work in progress also located on the park's north side.

  • Outside Farmlab's headquarters, high above a Junker Garden, a neon sign reads, "Another City is Possible."

  • Marco Kusumawijaya speaks with guests during a recent weekly Public Salon. Kusumawijaya's presentation was titled, "Imagining Jakarta."

  • During the April, 2008 Los Angeles Art Weekend, participants take a walk through the north side of the Los Angeles State Historic Park. Tended by the Farmlab team, this northern acreage is home to Cornhenge, the anabolic monument, as well as to a seasonal fireworks of flora, the planned result of hydroseeding at the conclusion of the Not A Cornfieldproject.

  • Said fireworks, in full bloom, with downtown's skyscrapers behind them.

  • Water towers and more, also from "Plant a F.L.A.G.

  • Another of Farmlab's neon signs -- this one has since been moved from the garage to its current home at Underspring, where it is part of an installation work-in-progress.

  • Sunrise in the Owens Valley, where Farmlab and associated team members continue to visit regularly, studying, learning, and listening.

  • Photo credits: Joshua White photos for Farmlab (third from top and fourth from top), and Farmlab photos by Sarah McCabe (second from bottom) and Kate Balug (all others)

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    Farmlab Public Salon
    Raj Patel
    Friday April 25, 2008 @ Noon
    Free Admission



    Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System


    About the Salon

    Join author Raj Patel for a discussion of his new book.

    Stuffed and Starved is a startling exposé of the global food system and how activists are gaining ground against its corporate control.

    Half the world is malnourished, the other half obese-both symptoms of the corporate food monopoly. To show how a few powerful distributors control the health of the entire world, Raj Patel conducts a global investigation, traveling from the "green deserts" of Brazil and protester-packed streets of South Korea to bankrupt Ugandan coffee farms and barren fields of India. What he uncovers is shocking-the real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa, an epidemic of farmer suicides, and the false choices and conveniences in supermarkets. Yet he also finds hope-in international resistance movements working to create a more democratic, sustainable, and joyful food system. From seed to store to plate, Stuffed and Starved explains the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance.

    About the Salon Presenter

    Raj Patel, former policy analyst for Food First, a leading food think tank, is a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies. He has written for the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian, and though he has worked for the World Bank, WTO, and the UN, he's also been tear-gassed on four continents protesting them.

    Praise for his recent work includes:

    "One of the most dazzling books I have read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a gift to a world hungering for justice."
    -Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine

    "Patel's broad treatment helps laymen connect the dots, [and] hear the voices of those [at the bottom] of the food chain."
    -Time Magazine

    "A book full of insight, that makes and important contribution."
    -The Guardian

    "Magesterial's the kind of book from which you emerge enlightened, surprised, angry, and determined."
    -The Independent

    Photo courtesy Raj Patel, via Jen Angel

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    Panel Podcast Features Farmlab's Bon


    Earlier this year, Farmlab's Lauren Bon was among the participants in a public discussion held downtown, at the Los Angeles Public Library's Central Branch.

    Titled, "The Height of Ambition: New Development Downtown," the program was part of the Library's "Aloud" lecture series. The panel was moderated by Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, and in addition to Bon also featured charismatic developer Dan Rosenfeld (Urban Partners LLC), as well as Martha Welborne (Grand Avenue Committee) and Brian Girard (Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates).

    A free-of-charge podcast of the evening is available.

    Image via lapl.org

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    Farmlab Public Salon
    Alexis Bhagat
    Friday, April 18, 2008 @ Noon
    Free Admission


    "Radical Cartography"


    About the Salon

    Join a conversation with Alexis Bhagat, one of the editors of "An Atlas of Radical Cartography." Bhagat will discuss the implicit politics of cartography and "radical cartography" as an explicitly political practice, and examine in detail some of the projects included in "An Atlas."

    Artists (and maps) featured in the book include:

    *An Architektur (Geography of the Departure Center - Furth)
    *Center for Urban Pedagogy (New York City Garbage Machine)
    *Ashley Hunt (A World Map in which we see...)
    *Institute for Applied Autonomy with Site-R (Routes of Least Surveillance)
    *Pedro Lasch (Route Guides)
    *Lize Mogel (From South to North)
    *Trevor Paglen & John Emerson (Select Rendition Flights 2001-2006)
    *Brooke Singer (The US Oil Fix)
    *Jane Tsong (The Los angeles water cycle...)
    *Unnayan (Untitled Marginal Land Settlement)

    About the Salon Presenter

    Alexis Bhagat is a writer, sound artist and activist. He is the co-editor (with curator Gregory Gangemi) of Sound Generation, a collection of interviews with contemporary sound artists and composers (Autonomedia, 2008).
    More info: www.nadalex.net


    Image courtesy Alexis Bhagat

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    EPFC Youth Film Festival
    Sunday, May 18, 2008 @ 2-10pm



    For more information, please visit the Echo Park Film Center website. (This is not a Farmlab production.)

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    Cluster, In Concert @ Under Spring
    With Lucky Dragons
    (Presented by Donuts)


    The iconic German band, Cluster, will perform at Under Spring on Thursday, May 22, 2008.

    Cluster is said to be making only their second-ever Los Angeles appearance.

    Also on the night's bill:

    Lucky Dragons (Los Angeles) Mi Ami (San Francisco), DJs Lovefingers & Nitedog, DJ Pickpocket & Live Visuals by AC, plus a DIY Fashion Show featuring a local designer. Presented by Donuts.

    For more information, including ticket prices and show time, please visit the official website.

    The time of the show will be announced soon by DONUTS, the evening's organizers.

    (This program is not a Farmlab production.)

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    Farmlab Public Salon
    Douglas McCulloh
    Friday, July 17, 2009 @ Noon
    Free Admission

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    Farmlab Pair Interviewed on "Off Ramp"

    Farmlab's Lauren Bon and Salvador Bautista were interviewed last week by journalist Jon Rabe for his radio show, "Off Ramp."

    The subject of Rabe's piece: The wildflowers blooming in the Los Angeles State Historic Park -- which are both a legacy of Bon's Not A Cornfield, as well as an example of a lower-cost, budget-crunch alternative for reinvigorating other browfields, citywide.

    The Off Ramp episode aired locally in Los Angeles on Saturday, April 5, 2008 @ noon, and Sunday, April 6, 2008 @ 8pm, and is now available as a free-of-charge podcast by visiting here.

    (Make sure to click on the 4/5/08 program. And note that Bon and Bautista's segment with host Jon Rabe ocurrs about 52 minutes into the hour-long show.)

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    Farmlab Honored at Downtown Banquet

    Farmlab received a "Rose" award last Tuesday morning at the 28th annual "Roses & Lemons" ceremony.

    Farmlab's win came in the category: "Good Ideas, We'd Like To See More."

    The breakfast-time fete celebrates "the best projects Downtown over the past year, and also offer a sour retort to the year's most disappointing entity/person/tren," according to the Downtown News paper.

    The program's lone "Lemon" award went to the City of Los Angeles' Parks & Recreation Department, for its failure to use millions of mandated dollars to create parks.

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