Cohesion by Daniel Shanken on screen at Space 55 with No Festival Required

Cloudy LA skies are welcome today following the brilliant, burning desert skies of Phoenix and Tucson for the past week. I even, perversely, imagined British winter chill for a moment in the deep heating sun. Just for a moment.

Model audiences. If you want model artists’ film audiences go to Tucson’s Exploded View Gallery and also arrange a screening with No Festival Required in Phoenix. My enormous thanks to Rebecca and David at Exploded View and to Steve Weiss of No Festival Required (who got me totally drunk in a Tiki bar in Phoenix, so drunk I woke up sideways on the hotel bed with my clothes and shoes still on).

Phoenix, with its mixture of sparkly new cultural venues (Phoenix Art Museum is well worth a visit, a mixture of permanent and temporary, contemporary and historic exhibits in a very nice building) and more raw, established and experimental spaces (Modified/Arts being a classic example), has a rich seam of art and culture running through it. The screening of Selected 3 takes place at one of the latter type of venues, an exciting performing arts space entitled Space 55; its delightful bar space with old couches and memorabilia beckons drinking.

The screening goes well, and the audience receives the work with pleasure; lots of discussion follows, with much interest in Sophie Beresford’s work, Making Adidas Mermaid, which fascinates, and with Nicholas Brook’s Arrastre. I’m deeply appreciative of Steve Weiss’s gathering of such model AMI fans. Other suggested organisations to consider from Steve include: Arizona State University, which has an excellent Intermedia programme; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (where No Festival Required has a regular programme); and, as mentioned, Modified/Arts.

I’m going to update on Tucson in a second post to follow…