In Paper Over, The Family Room Collective will present a series of open work sessions over the course of four weekends. The gallery will double as our film set, evolving from an installation of newspaper cutouts and backdrops, where we will improvise live films using an online video chat room. Our movements within TSA, the Bendix building, its inhabitants, and the surrounding streets in downtown Los Angeles will be fed into the space, continuously projecting images and sounds we encounter. We will process phrases we read and overhear into cut-up texts and Markov chains to build sonic loops through our speaker system. Lastly, at different points in time, live performers will reference the visuals caught on our cameras to act out dramatic scenes. The addition, live looping cameras will expand, contract, and distort the scale of all material inside the installation.

These live events comprise our working methods, which, in this iteration, combine live theatrical improvisation with automated online tools. This structure allows us to quickly process and combine visual and textual debris to build narratives of the present day. These narratives reflect our positions in time and space as well as interpersonal relationships that are constantly evolving. The audience will thus inhabit our echo chamber of information overload, as we investigate what it means to collectively record the present moment.

SCHEDULE of EVENTS

Session 01:  April 20 12-5 PM
Opening Reception: April 20    6-8 PM
Session 02:  April 27, 12-5 PM
Session 03:  May 4, 12-5 PM
Session 04:  May 11, 12-5 PM
Closing Reception: May 11, 6-8 PM

THE FAMILY ROOM COLLECTIVE (TFRC) formed as a queer performing artists group in 2018. We got to know each other in the context of group relations processing, and understand our practice as interpersonal investigations of group dynamics. Our primary interest is to expand the idea of participatory performance art into the realm of the practices of everyday life. 

TODD MOELLENBERG is an interdisciplinary artist based in LA. He has published two chapbooks: Flood (2016) and Signs of Affection (2017). In 2017, he served as poet-in-residence for Parkeology, which published the Fruit Loop Field Guide, observational poetry from a cruising spot in San Diego. A classically-trained pianist, he received a Doctorate in music performance from UCSD. His dissertation, “Time and Again,” shows how dodecaphonic music can generate poetic forms.

SYLKE RENE MEYER is a writer, director, media artist, performer, educator, and co-founder of the performance group Studio 206 in Berlin, Germany. In 2018, she co-founded the performance group ‘The Family Room Collective (TFRC)’ in Los Angeles. Sylke studied theater, philosophy and law at the Free University of Berlin. After graduating from law school, she studied screenwriting and dramaturgy at the Konrad Wolf Potsdam-Babelsberg Film and Television University, and graduated from the Munich Screenplay Workshop at the University of Television and Film Munich in 2000. She has been Assistant Director at the Living Theater, and worked as a film editor, production designer, writer and director worldwide. Her practice is informed by and engages with film, media history, theory, and criticism, and encompasses feature and documentary filmmaking, as well as writing and collaborative experimentation across theater, new media and digital platforms. Her work has garnered numerous awards such as an Emmy Award, and Best Film Awards at major festivals such as Seattle, Chicago, and Montreal. She is a Professor of Creative Writing, and Director of the Institute for Interactive Arts, Research, and Technology at California State University in Los Angeles.

MATT SAVITSKY, aka Minty (b. 1982), is a multidisciplinary performance artist who lives and works Los Angeles. He received his MFA from UC San Diego in 2015 and his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2005. His video works have been screened in various programs, including Migrating Forms Film Festival (NY) and have been shown internationally in the Galeria Alternativa Once in Monterrey, Mexico and the Universidad del Pais Vasco Bilbao, Spain (2014). He has debuted performances at LACE (LA), NADA New York, and most recently at the ICA in Philadelphia. He was a selected to attend performance residencies hosted by Kembra Pfahler (Performance Art 101 and Incarnata Social Club) and La Pocha Nostra (Highways, LA and UABC, Tijuana, MX). He recently produced a solo show at Shoot the Lobster, LA and has shown his work nationally. His work has been included in exhibitions at; Torrance Art Museum; and Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York (2016); Highways, Los Angeles ; Fest Zoco, Tijuana; American University Museum, Washington DC (2015); Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles (2014); Foxy Production; ATM Gallery, and John Connelly Presents in New York (2013); Vox Populi and Little Berlin(2013) in Philadelphia. He is the third member of The Family Room collective, an interdisciplinary group comprised of Todd Moellenberg and Sylke-Rene Meyer. They have created and debuted their work with students at Cal State Los Angeles and will have their first exhibition at Tiger strikes Asteroid, LA this spring. He currently hold positions as a lecturer of film & video at the University of San Diego and of Photographic Practices at Cal State Fullerton.