Christy Roberts belts out “Bohemian Rhapsody” just for me. Janne Larsen’s scentless air freshener hangs on the mirror.
The latest edition of Los Angeles Road Concerts, an annual daylong art/performance/music/literary event that takes over the entire length of one of the city’s iconic boulevards, took place on Mulholland Drive yesterday. It was very cleverly named Mulholland Dérive, after a Situationist strategy for combating the numbing effects of capitalism. In the words of theorist Guy Debord, “In a dérive [people] drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.”
It’s a sexy proposition, and previous incarnations of the Road Concerts (taking place on Sunset Boulevard, Washington Boulevard, and San Fernando Road) have been filled with an exuberant, untamed diversity that reflected the nature of the city and its varied inhabitants. This year’s adventure was markedly different; in place of the gritty, unpredictable urban sprawl that characterizes the other streets, Mulholland is a rarefied, bucolic wonderland of uniform class privilege, closely patrolled by a phalanx of park rangers. The long ridge drive that extends from Hollywood to the Pacific Ocean is populated by wealthy home owners, obnoxious Porsche drivers, and a series of state-owned overlooks that provide stunning views as well as the sting of authority.
‘corey marc fogel’ explodes Facebook, then self-destructs. Save ‘corey marc fogel’!
Posted in reviews and commentary with tags Chloë Flores, Corey Fogel, Facebook art, internet art, social media intervention on December 20, 2012 by Carol ChehCourtesy Corey Fogel
Recently I included Chloë Flores’ Facebook residency, in which a different artist occupies the curator’s Facebook identity every month, in my list of 10 “alternatives to the alternative art spaces” on the LA Weekly. These residencies, which are rigorously curated and theorized by Flores, are in essence highly specialized spaces for performance and social practice. Although subversive in nature—especially in the beginning when few were hip to what was going on and thus subject to being “punked” by the fake Flores—the residency does have a few strict rules that can’t be broken: the settings can’t be changed, i.e. the page must remain public at all times; the About page, which explains the project, can’t be altered; and the password can’t be given out, so as to avoid unwanted hacking. In principle, everything on the page could be deleted by any of the participating artists, but so far no one has decided to go the Erased de Kooning route.
This past week, artist/musician Corey Fogel completely exploded the social media occupation model by granting admin privileges on his fan page, corey marc fogel, to 1,000 of his unsuspecting Facebook friends. Rampant chaos, alarm, and merriment ensued. Some, believing that their friend’s account had been hacked, valiantly attempted to delete the page. Others, understanding that it was a prank/performance/random action, played along, repeatedly saving the page from deletion, messing with its various controls, and running wild with the corey marc fogel identity.
For a couple of days, users’ newsfeeds were overrun by embarrassing cmf status updates, cranky demands for removal, and references to the über-meta nature of what was going on—some people posted screen shots of themselves as cmf responding to other posts from cmf, and so on. One ingenious interloper even got blogger Geoff Tuck to allow all cmf postings to show up as part of his Twitter feed, further complicating the identity stew.
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