Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Matthew Anthony Stokes solo show Camouflage opened in Los Angeles, which illustrates his unique multi-disciplinary background in performance, corporeal dramaturgy, dance, sculpture, assemblage, film, photography, and poetry. Multiple videos from the experimental MAQUETTE Theatre, which he co-founded, create a visionary alternative universe replete with silent dances and visual poems that “unveil” ephemeral sculpture, including costumes, sets and masks.
The first band ever to be called “industrial,” Throbbing Gristle’s confrontational live performances and use of disturbing imagery, mixed with pre-recorded tape samples and special effects, created a distorted sound performance, quite ground-breaking in its time. Spinoff bands Psychic TV and Chris and Cosey continued to shock and beautify into the 1980s.
As bassist for Joy Division – one of the most important bands of the post-punk movement in England – Peter Hook kept the rhythm together, a kind-of-distorted lamentation, after Ian Curtis’ suicide and for better or worse into mega-stardom of the New Wave synth phenomena New Order.
Punk Rock: the thrashing, slamming, moshing…and the art. First you smash all the institutions, but then find the institutions have enshrined you. Here is a history of Black Flag told through the mesmerizing and beyond-satirical art of Raymond Pettibon.