L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley Because NEA funding cuts recently prompted Art21.org to stage a telethon, because this is fundraising season (a number of non-profits, included Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, had their annual auctions, galas or other fundraisers this month), and because I’m preoccupied with MOCA’s recent Transmission L.A. festival — which I mentioned in last week’s[.....]

Leaving the crowds behind after the frenzied week of Frieze, I headed down to the New Museum after waiting for a month in anticipation to see some of my favorite artists show under one roof. Though there are numerous shows currently at the New Museum, I was there to see Phyllida Barlow, Tacita Dean and Nathalie Djurberg, all artists with whom I have had minimal[.....]

The revamped Museum of Contemporary Art Australia opened its doors with Marking Time, an exhibition exploring time, duration and mortality. Jim Campbell’s ‘Last Day in the Beginning of March 2003’, a reimagining of the last 24 hours in his brother’s life, is a transfixing experience. One enters the dark space into the sound of rain.  Pools of flickering light illuminate wall texts identifying single moments such as[.....]

Last week, I witnessed a birth. I know that it happened at 11:59 am on February 21st, 2012, that her grandmother made her a pink elephant blanket, and that she arrived an “overly punctual” three days ahead of schedule. I know this because she was tagged in seventy-three photos on Facebook; images that linked to her very own profile, created by her parents. Her birth[.....]

Isaac Julien’s Ten Thousand Waves is a nine-screen video installation interweaving three seemingly discrete narratives that explore the migratory journeys of people whose impetus for movement converges on the sole need to fulfil utopian desires for a better life. Set against the contrasting backgrounds of the blustery northwest coast of England, the rush hour in Shanghai and the misty bamboo forests and mountains of the[.....]

Sight, acknowledgment, and shared experience all figure prominently in Hybrid Narrative: Video Mediations of Self and the Imagined Self, currently at Mac Arthur B Arthur in Oakland, CA. Artists Liz Rosenfeld, Chris E. Vargas, Sofia Cordova and Shana Moulton make themselves “seen” though video, film transfer, installation and performance. Rosenfeld’s Untitled (Dyketactics Revisited), a 16mm film transfer to video, brings us to another time both[.....]

#Hashtags: Viral Thoughts on Politics, Arts, and Culture When I was a child, I spent countless hours poring over a Cold War–era National Geographic photo atlas. I traced every road and river, in every country, some which no longer existed or were currently in the process of brutal disintegration (à la balkanization). Sometimes, when I was really lucky, a country would be represented by two[.....]