AUGUST 11
I am that timeless NGH that swings on pendulums like vines through mines of booby trapped minds that are enslaved by time. I am the life that supersedes lifetimes, I am. It was me with serpentine hair and a timeless stare that with a mortal glare turned mortal fear into stone time capsules. They still exist as the walking dead. As I do, the original suffer-head, symbol of life and matriarchy’s severed head: Medusa, I am. It was me, the ecclesiastical one, that pointed out that there was nothing new under the sun. and in times of laughter and times of tears, saw that no times were real times, ‘cause all times were fear. The wise seer, Solomon, I am. It was me with tattered clothes that made you scatter as you shuffled past me on the street. Yes, you shuffled past me on the street as I stood there conversing with wind blown spirits. And I fear it’s your loss that you didn’t stop and talk to me. I could have told you your future as I explained your present, but instead, I’m the homeless schizophrenic that you resent for being aimless. The in-tuned nameless, I am. I am that NGH. I am that NGH. I am that NGH. I am a negro. Yes, negro from necro, meaning death. I overcame it so they named me after it. And I be spitting at death from behind and putting “kick me†signs on it’s back, because, I am not the son of Sha Clack Clack . I am before that. I am before. I am before before. Before death is eternity. After death is eternity. There is no death there’s only eternity. And I be ridin’ on the wings of eternity, like yah, yah, Sha Clack Clack.
MUSIC: House DJs Jason Eldredge of KCRW and Scott Silva spin
Jason Eldredge is the host of KCRW’s Accidental Rhythm program and Scott Silva is the former host of KCRW’s Connections program.
FOOD AND DRINK: Light fare at Patinette Café and outdoor cash bar
SCREENING: Music videos from Film Independent’s Los Angeles Film Festival
ARTMAKING: Workshop with artist Karthik Pandian
SCREENING: Richard Tuttle: Never Not an Artist
Filmed at Tuttle’s home in New Mexico, his studio in Manhattan, and the galleries at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the film offers an intense, intimate portrait of the artist’s working process.
TOUR: Exhibition walkthrough with a MOCA educator. Space is limited to 20. Sign up at the information desk inside the galleries beginning at 6pm.
SCREENING: Music videos from Film Independent’s Los Angeles Film Festival
SPOKEN WORD: David St. John
David St. John has been honored, over the course of his career, with many of the most significant prizes for poets, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, both the Rome Fellowship in Literature and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the O. B. Hardison Prize from The Folger Shakespeare Library, and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. His work has been published in countless literary magazines, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Harper’s, Antaeus, and The New Republic, and has been widely anthologized. He has taught creative writing at Oberlin College and The Johns Hopkins University and currently teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. David St. John is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Face: A Novella in Verse (2004), as well as a volume of essays, interviews, and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us (1995).
MUSIC: Feature Performer: Saul Williams
TOUR: Exhibition walkthrough with a MOCA educator. Space is limited to 20. Sign up at the information desk inside the galleries beginning at 6pm.
SCREENING: Screaming Masterpiece
Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon’s documentary explores 1000 years of Icelandic popular music—from current artists Björk and Sigur Rós to medieval Icelandic poetry and music.
TOUR: Exhibition walkthrough with a MOCA educator. Space is limited to 20. Sign up at the information desk inside the galleries beginning at 6pm.