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Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe:
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JONAH FREEMAN AND JUSTIN LOWE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE IN THE KALEIDOSCOPE ROOM (A REAL ESTATE ODYSSEY) COUNTRY CLUB | MIAMI 2010 Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe will continue to weave their inventive narrative during Art Basel Miami Beach at the Soho Beach House, following their recent critically celebrated Bright White Underground exhibition at Country Club in Los Angeles. Freeman and Lowe will present their invitation-only event in the form of a slide lecture that is overtaken by a quasi-fashion show, video projection and live musical performance. This project features collaborations with Jennifer Herrema, a California rock scene legend, and her band RTX. The narrative begins with a tour of the San San International, a megaconvention of staggering proportions located in the Granville Convention Center on the Pacific Coast of the San San Metroplex. The event is described by the journalist Elizabeth Stone in her book In The Kaleidoscope Room: “There are over 5000 exhibitors on the 13 floors of the convention center. It is the largest of its kind in the world. I’m told that they expect a surplus of three million people to attend. This hypertrophic scale is a result of the merger of several kinds of trade fairs, contemporary art exhibitions, technology displays, and performance festivals into one behemoth event. It is now truly without theme or cohesion, a fair ostensibly about everything and nothing at all.” Stone’s landmark of New Journalism is a hallucinatory tour through the multifarious objects and events. She shines an unusual light on the performative relationship between spectator and exhibitor, the rituals of identity transformation, and the dynamics of seduction and power that unfold within the dense conglomeration of displays. The artists use the Stone text as an anchor for a broad anthropological examination of this unique cultural phenomenon. The tour of the San San International leads us into a tale of the powerful psychotropic drug Marasa. Originally developed as an agent of mind control at the height of Cold War paranoia, it eventually became the basis for Shadow Pool, a popular New Age movement of identity erasure and restructuring in the 1970s and 1980s. The lecture switches from the slide format and begins to use live models, objects, and video as a conveyance through various fantasy personas and trends. The piece culminates as a type of theatrical collage where a fashion show, video showcase, and rock ‘n’ roll performance merge with the lecture into a quasi-spectacular interpretation of a situation that could be defined as pure spectacle. The performance will include many surprises and exciting elements. “Freeman and Lowe have become known for their rigor and attention to detail,” says Flaunt Magazine editor Maxwell Williams, “and the performance fits within the narrative seamlessly, yet with the usual amount of confusion and conflation.” In The Kaleidoscope Room (A Real Estate Odyssey) is organized by Flaunt Magazine in conjunction with Country Club and support from DeLeón Tequila, Thomas Wylde, and Smashbox Studios. For additional information please contact: |
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