OJO
www.ojoojo.com
EXHIBITIONS
2011
(Upcoming)Los Angeles Goes Live, Pacific Standard Time, LACE, Hollywood, CA
OJO, Studio Sound, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
2010
Los Angeles Art & Music Festival, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA
2009
Engagement Party, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
2008
We, Curated by Jen Liu, Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Fall In, Fall Out, Fall Down, Get Ready!, Five Thirty Three, Los Angeles, CA
2007
En La Cumbre, A+D Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Collisions, The Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Passin' Thru The New Amazing, LAXART, Los Angeles, CA
You Are My, Bank Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2006
Good Times for Never, Queens Nails Annex, San Francisco, CA
Where, Sundown Salon, Los Angeles, CA (as Los Cremators)
We All, Us Three, ESL Projects, Los Angeles, CA
LIVE APPEARANCES
2008
Heaven, Silver Lake Lounge, Los Angeles, CA
2006
Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Trudi Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Instrumental, Hosted by Ned Learner, KXLU 88.9 FM, Los Angeles, CA
Let's Paint TV, "Paints from John's Mind (Parts 1 & 2)", Adelphia Public Access, Los Angeles, CA
RESIDENCIES
2010
Los Angeles Goes Live, LACE, Hollywood, CA
2009
Engagment Party, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Reynolds, Gretchen. "Weighing the Evidence on Exercise." The New York Times Magazine. 12 April 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18exercise-t.html?ref=magazine (Collaborative Video with James Welling).
Provo, Ben. OJO. ANP Quarterly. Vol. 2 No. 4. 2010. Pgs. 18-23.
McNeill, Mark "Frosty". "OJO-La Bolsa Blanca". Dublab. August 2010. http://dublab.com/mp3-blog/ojo-la-bolsa-blanca/
Firstenberg, Lauri. 2008 California Biennial. California: Orange County Museum of Art, 2009. Pg. 162.
"Flesh Car Crash". Brand X. 1 July 2009: Pg. 4.
Wagley, Catherine. "Making Culture". Artslant.com. July 2008. http://www.artslant.com/no/articles/show/1739
Bloom, Rebecca. "Delectable Collectables". LA Confidential Magazine. Fall 2007.
ABOUT OJO
OJO is a collaborative art and music group that consists of Joshua Aster, Chris Avitabile, Justin Cole, Moises Medina, Eamon Ore-Giron, Brenna Youngblood and various audiences. OJO performs experimental music that delves into transcendental rhythms and communal harmonics. One major aspect of OJO's events aims to remove the barrier between the audience and the performers, so that when one enters the show's environment they instantly become a member of the "band". The way in which this is achieved is by constructing compositions that involve simple music making gestures such as clapping, whistling, chanting, etc. and arranging these elements in a way that creates a texture of communal sound. The audience is coaxed into participating by direct contact with the "performers (OJO)".
OJO formed in 2005 over a love of improvisational acoustic guitar compositions (think John Fahey and Sandy Bull). Slowly new instrumentation and members crept in, expanding the sound and the possibilities of group performances. Shortly thereafter in 2006, OJO performed it's first audience based work entitled, We All, Us Three, at Esthetics as a Second Language in Eagle Rock, CA. Based on the idea of spontaneous crowd euphoria, OJO designed the performance to center around a large stack of amplifiers, as well as a blanket of salt covering the ground, and video and slide projections. The salt as it was kicked into the air by a shuffling and dancing crowd created an extra sensory experience as it could be tasted, smelled, and seen fluttering through the air. It also functioned as a unifying sound making element by incorporating the movements of the crowd into the pulse of the 808 beat and the vocalizations being chanted and yelped through the space by the audience members and OJO. The recording of this event was packaged into a CD produced by James Welling and features an electrifying remix that creates a new experience of the event. These ideas were continued in following works at Queens Nails Annex in the summer of 2006. Also in 2006, OJO performed live on KXLU 88.9FM and on Let's Paint TV hosted by John Kilfduff.
In 2007, OJO presented their individual art at bank in an exhibition entitled, You Are My. Following their exhibition at bank, OJO created another salt-based audience participatory event for LAXART entitled, Passin' Thru The New Amazing. This time OJO added more instrumentation to the event in addition to the 808 drum machine. The gallery released the recording of the event in 2008 as a 12" EP featuring the live recording of the performance and 2 remixes by Los Cremators (DJ Lengua) and The Collapsible Mammals. Also in 2007, OJO was invited to create an audience based work for the A+D Museum in Los Angeles, CA. The performance, En La Cumbre, unified the audience and OJO in a sea of intense red light. The performance centered on crowd vocalizations, percussion, and dance.
OJO challenged their practice of using the audience as the medium in the piece, Love Letter, for the exhibition, We, at Lizabeth Oliveria in 2008. The group, packed into a '79 Toyota Carolla, drove into the gallery space and performed amplified music while encapsulated in the vehicle, effectively sharing an intimate music experience while the audience looked on, behaving as an audience.
In 2009, OJO was invited to take part in the series, Engagement Party, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. OJO presented 3 new works that engaged the audience in different ways. The first performance, Color Chorus, was largely a continuation of previous audience participatory works, but this time the audience was bathed in red, yellow and blue light. The audience was also separated into red, yellow and blue groups. When the colored light that corresponded to their group came on, they would make noises specified by OJO. When their light was off, they would remain silent. This work utilized the audience as instrument.
The second work, Flesh Car Crash, was a continuation of Love Letter. This time OJO had the street in front of the museum blocked off, creating a space for two cars, each filled with three OJO members and their instruments, to be pushed around by audience members in a choreographed dance. The cars were wrapped in a collage of human skin and emanated the musical sounds produced from the inside of the cars. One car was producing only percussion sounds, the other only melody sounds. So depending where on the street one stood, as the cars passed by they would effectively pan the sound left, right, and center creating different musical combinations. The finale of the piece was when the cars were backed up to opposing sides of the street, and then pushed at a high speed into a head on collision. The sound of the crash was sampled and looped, creating an eerie crunching sound that continued to play after the piece had finished. The audience for this work was invited to document the work by photographing and videoing the event and then posting the results to the museum's web site.
The final event for the Engagement Party residency was Interactive Lecture Series. Here OJO created 3 different lecture events, each 30 minutes in length. The lectures were: The Fire Lecture, Mambo Freeform, and Science Fictions. OJO invited different people to collaborate with for each lecture. Kristin Calabrese presented a Werner Herzog lecture for Fire Lecture. Julio Cesar Morales, blended his expertise of mambo, dengue and Perez Prado to the Mambo Freeform. Science Fictions was a collaboration with Alex Rivera and included elements and a conversation with him about his film, Sleep Dealer. Each lecture involved audience participation, a lecture, and music from OJO, although presented in different ways each time, creating different experiences for each audience that saw each work. The audience was utilized as both instrument and content, as the collaborators were chosen from the audience before hand.
OJO is currently putting the finishing touches on a new album, Psycho Tropical. This album will contain new musical compositions by OJO as well as excerpts from various live performances. An interview with OJO will also be featured in the upcoming issue of ANP Quarterly to be released at the beginning of 2010.