L.A. Intersections (SOLD OUT)

Alice Bag + Kid Congo Powers Debut Live Collaborative Performance

“She's an icon in the punk world of Los Angeles and beyond.” - LA Weekly

“Alice Bag is a Latina punk rock pioneer and a product of the same scene that gave us Black Flag and the Germs.” - Stereogum

Alice Bag is a singer/songwriter, musician, author, artist, educator, and feminist. Alice was the lead singer and co-founder of the Bags, one of the first bands to form during the initial wave of punk in Los Angeles. The Alice Bag Band was featured in the seminal documentary on punk rock, The Decline of Western Civilization. She went on to perform in other groundbreaking bands including Castration Squad, Cholita, and Las Tres. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books Violence Girl and Pipe Bomb for the Soul. Her self-titled 2016 debut album received critical acclaim and was named one of the best albums of 2016 by AllMusic. Her second album, Blueprint, was named one of the Best Albums of 2018 by NPR and the Los Angeles Times. Bag’s third album, Sister Dynamite, was released in April 2020 on In The Red Records.

Photo: Luxehotelier

Brian Tristan

Brian Tristan (born March 27, 1959), better known by his stage name Kid Congo Powers, is an American rock guitarist, singer, and actor best known as a member of The Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He has also played with the Divine Horsemen, the Angels of Light, Die Haut, and Knoxville Girls. Since January 2015, Powers' primary musical project is the band The Pink Monkey Birds. Powers is the author of Some Kind of New Kick: A Memoir (Hachette Books, 2022). The Los Angeles Times Bestseller is an intimate coming-of-age memoir detailing his experiences as a young, queer, Mexican-American in 1970s Los Angeles through his rise in the glam rock and punk rock scenes.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Kamau Daaood and a Band of Griots featuring Dwight Trible

Kamau Daaood was honored with the California Art Council 2023 Legacy Fellowship for decades of creative excellence. An LA native, he is best known as a powerful performance poet whose early nurturing began in the late 1960s at the Watts Writers Workshop and as a member of The Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra. Among his crowning accomplishments was the co-founding the World Stage Performance Gallery with Master Drummer Billy Higgins 36 years ago, an institution which is still serving the Los Angeles community today. Daaood is the author of The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems of Kamau Daaood (City Lights, 2005) and Notes D 'un Griot De Los Angeles (Le Castor Astral, 2012), published during his artist residency at L'Universite Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, France. Daaood recorded the critically acclaimed CD Leimert Park (M.A.M.A. Records, 1997), and he has been the subject and featured poet in several documentaries, including Life is a Saxophone produced by S. Pearl Sharp (1984); the PBS documentary Race is the Place (Paradigm Productions, 2005); and Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central LA by Jeannette Lindsay (DVD, 2008). More recently, he appeared in And When I Die I Won 't Stay Dead, a film about Bob Kaufman by filmmaker Billy Woodbury (2016). Kamau Daaood is featured on 2022 CD release of The Gathering /Healing Suite on The Village records.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Slideshow of Sean DeLear’s Posthumously Discovered Photos + Short Film Sean DeLear Superstar: A Conversation with Seandy

Sean DeLear was the frontman for the Los Angeles punk/powerpop band Glue. He was a punk musician, visual artist, intercontinental scenester, video vixen, party host, marijuana farmer, and sometime-collaborator of artists such as Gelatin, Kembra Pfahler and Vaginal Davis. When DeLear died prematurely in Vienna in 2017, a friend discovered thousands of photographs stored on an old computer – fleeting images captured by DeLear, including delirious selfies and the detritus of the alternative culture he both inhabited and helped create. A selection of these photos will be presented as a slideshow in the Lobby of the museum for the duration of this event. In addition, we will be screening the short film Sean DeLear Superstar: A Conversation with Seandy in The Oculus Hall on the 2^nd floor of the museum. Filmmaker Stuart Swezey says of the short: “While we were filming interviews for the Desolation Center documentary, I was fortunate enough to run into the legendary L.A. musician/artist/scenester Sean DeLear at a Redd Kross show in May, 2017. The interview that followed was epic and covered all kinds of things about Seandy's life that didn't end up in the film. Sadly, a few months later, Seandy was no longer with us. With some help from friends of Seandy and Ben Is Dead Magazine, we have put together a short reel of some highlights on Seandy's interview as a tribute and a posthumous ‘thanks.’”

Photo: Sean DeLear, self-portrait, n.d.

Jobel Medina + Elliott “L” Sellers perform Kill The Monsters

Jobel Medina (b. 1990 Pasig, Philippines) is a Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist with a natural inclination for contradictions, often merging spectacle with experimental. He is known for his solo series, Kill The Monsters, recently exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art (2022) and his queer romance theatrical-dance, David, My Goliath, premiered at Redcat (2021). He has toured nationally and internationally as a dancer for Ate9 Dance Company (2017-2022) and YC Studio (2017-2018), and has worked with artists such as Tino Sehgal at The Hammer Museum; Simon McBurney with The LA Philharmonic at The Walt Disney Concert Hall; Christopher Bordenave at The San Francisco Symphony Hall, Shahar Binyamini, Tom Weinberger. Additionally, he has appeared in commercials including Calvin Klein, Lexus, OnStar, Adidas, as well as in multiple music videos including Anderson Pak, Noah Cyrus, Perfume Genius. Jobel received his Masters in Fine Arts at the California Institute of The Arts and has taught movement workshops at CSULB, CSULA, CSUF, CalArts.

Photo: Joey Navarrete

Elliott “L” Sellers

Elliott “L” Sellers is a director, producer, writer, cinematographer, editor, drummer and multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles. Sellers has released experimental albums like ‘Glasswerx’ with Chris ‘Mid-Air’ Harbach, made solely with sounds of glass. Ridley Scott hand selected “DREAMS” by Zhu+NERO as apart of Saatchi + Saatchi’s new directors showcase at Cannes Lions. Sellers has directed work for artists such as Raphael Saadiq, Broken Bells, John Legend, Terrace Martin, Simone Biles, Tame Impala, Willow Smith, Lil Miquela, Young Thug, Gunna, Lil baby, 2-Chains, Lil Jon, Offset, Zhu, Ty Dolla $ign, Nico Muhly, Yuna, Lil Wayne, and Portugal the Man.

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Medusa the Gangsta Goddess

In one of the rooms in the hip-hop culture house, engraved on the walls is a live account of the 1 Super Soul Sista who has the blessing to be dubbed “the Angela Davis of hip-hop”. Starting off MCing as a 16-year-old pop-locker, Medusa continues to cultivate hip-hop seeds in South Central and across the country in unprecedented numbers. You will find no other who will bring it to you like this, someone’s music that makes you feel strong, proud, and encourages with the manner of ONE Love. Coming up in the LA scene, she honed her skills At the Good Life Café and Leimert Park’s “Project Blowed” Workshop, around Freestyle Fellowship, Black Eye Peas, Macy Grey, and Xzibit, being the first in the LA hip hop scene with a live band. After blessing her already growing fans with her EP, Do It The Way You Feel It, Medusa gained an even stronger fan base overseas, in the country, and on college campuses across the nation, and has virtually become a guru to the underground hip-hop scene and artistic community. She is respected and adored as a Queen to the word and power of her music and what she stands for, not just the fact that she’s the undisputed Queen of West Coast underground hip-hop.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Jerry Stahl

Jerry Stahl (born September 28, 1953) is an American author and screenwriter. His works include the 1995 memoir of addiction Permanent Midnight which was followed by the 1998 film adaptation starring Ben Stiller. His works include memoirs, short stories, TV, films, and novels. He wrote novels including Bad Sex On Speed (2013), Happy Mutant Baby Pills: A Novel (2013), and a short story collection, Love Without: Stories (2007). His most recent book, Nein, Nein, Nein! (2022), was called “An audacious, emotional journey" by The Village Voice. Stahl has worked extensively in film and television

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Anna Luisa Petrisko featuring Lu Coy and Mark Golamco

Anna Luisa Petrisko is a musician and artist working in video, performance, sound, installation, and textiles. Her art is invested in the sacred as much as it is interested in technological speculation, exploring future and ancient ideas at a non-linear tempo. She investigates the body as a site of paradox - transcendent of time, space, and form. Her work is grounded in community and archiving histories. She collaborates with many artists and friends. These shared works build relationships and cultural communion. Her most recent project is an experimental opera entitled All Time Stop Now, a contemplation on listening, impermanence, and kinship. A chosen family invokes a spell to stop time. In this suspended reality, they grapple with their existence in a time-based world as they search for ways to rest, heal, and feel joy. All Time Stop Now premiered at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Fall 2023. 

Photo by Anthony Arrigali 

Lu Coy

Lu Coy (they/them) is a queer mixed media artist and musician of Mexican and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage based in Los Angeles, California. Known for their mastery of woodwinds, elegant use of electronics, and agile vocals, Coy embraces modern technologies and compositional techniques, while mining inspiration from ancient texts, stories, and musical traditions. Notably, Coy is an avid performer of Ashkenazi, Sephardi and various Latin American musical traditions, singing regularly in Spanish, Yiddish and Ladino. They have been featured prominently in various contemporary theatrical and operatic works, and as a recording artist, Coy’s winds and vocals can be found on records by artists such as Eyvind Kang, San Cha, Avey Tare and Blonde Redhead. They hold degrees in music performance and composition from the Boston Conservatory of Music and California Institute of the Arts and have taught for various institutions such as The Hammer Museum, California Institute of the Arts and Plaza de la Raza. This November their newest composition “Becoming the Moon,” was commissioned and premiered by the Getty Research Institute in celebration of the launch of the Getty’s Digital Florentine Codex project.

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Mark Golamco

Mark Golamco is a painter and singer/songwriter, a classically trained viola player his music background and visual art practice led him to create performances that combine original songs with his work in painting, drawing, dance, and video. His recent project, The Ghost of Ted Dragon was featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art and recently premiered at the REDCAT. Outcasts and oddballs often take center stage throughout Golamco’s work which is an evolving storytelling cycle of romantic relationships from generations past. It is his way of creating a living gay history, keeping their memory and spirit alive, and indicating the intensity, importance, and bittersweet longing of connecting with queer ancestors. He has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, The Judson Memorial Church, NY, Human Resources Los Angeles, the REDCAT, The Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, and The Broad.

Photo by Argel Rojo

Jeff Boxer

A native Angelino, Jeff Boxer has long engaged with creative cultures, whether sound, words, or visual. A photographer and a lawyer who often works in the fine art space, he prides himself on exploring all that Los Angeles offers—and especially its many former punk clubs. His favorite quote today is from Aquinas, “The things we love tell us who we are.”

Kamau Daaood

Kamau Daaood was honored with the California Art Council 2023 Legacy Fellowship for decades of creative excellence. An LA native, he is best known as a powerful performance poet whose early nurturing began in the late 1960s at the Watts Writers Workshop and as a member of The Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra. Among his crowning accomplishments was the co-founding the World Stage Performance Gallery with Master Drummer Billy Higgins 36 years ago, an institution which is still serving the Los Angeles community today. Daaood is the author of The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems of Kamau Daaood (City Lights, 2005) and Notes D 'un Griot De Los Angeles (Le Castor Astral, 2012), published during his artist residency at L'Universite Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, France. Daaood recorded the critically acclaimed CD Leimert Park (M.A.M.A. Records, 1997), and he has been the subject and featured poet in several documentaries, including Life is a Saxophone produced by S. Pearl Sharp (1984); the PBS documentary Race is the Place (Paradigm Productions, 2005); and Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central LA by Jeannette Lindsay (DVD, 2008). More recently, he appeared in And When I Die I Won 't Stay Dead, a film about Bob Kaufman by filmmaker Billy Woodbury (2016). Kamau Daaood is featured on 2022 CD release of The Gathering /Healing Suite on The Village records.

Pleasant Gehman

Pleasant Gehman is a writer, dancer, actor, musician, painter, show producer, punk rock historian, and tarot reader. She arrived in Los Angeles in 1975 and became a fixture in the nascent punk scene. Her fanzine Lobotomy, published from 1978 to 1982, lead to writing for LA Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, and national and international music publications. During the 1980s, Gehman was the talent booker at seminal clubs Cathay De Grande and Raji’s, booking artists including Nirvana, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Hole, The Bangles, The Blasters, and more. For thirteen years, her band The Ringling Sisters produced annual holiday fundraisers at The Palace to benefit the children at Hollygrove Orphanage. These shows included spoken word and dance as well as live music, featuring artists such as poet Jim Carroll, Henry Rollins, X, and The Gun Club’s final show. Also known as Princess Farhana, Gehman currently co-produces Belle, Book and Candle, a unique monthly event at El Cid run by and for witches featuring occult-inspired burlesque performances, gifted professional psychics, and more. Her popular podcast The Devil’s Music features off-the-cuff conversations with friends such as comedians Margaret Cho and Dana Gould, John Doe of X, Belinda Carlisle, John Waters star Mink Stole, the late Pee Wee Herman, and many more. Pleasant is the author of ten books, including Rock’n’Roll Witch (Punk Hostage Press), a memoir about her lifelong psychic and paranormal experiences from early childhood to the late 1970s underground music scene and into the present.  

Michael Grodner

Michael Grodner is the director of the critically acclaimed indie film The Icarus Line Must Die of which the Los Angeles Times said, “there’s never been a rock n’ roll film quite like [it].” The film won Best Feature at the Highland Park Independent Film Festival and Special Jury Award at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival. A graduate of the USC Film School, Michael cut his teeth directing award‐winning music videos and is the creative force behind the long‐running underground digital music and live concert series Dirty Laundry TV. He is currently developing a documentary feature based on Numero Group's Grammy-nominated "Ork Records: New York, NY" box set.

Medusa the Gangsta Goddess

In one of the rooms in the hip-hop culture house, engraved on the walls is a live account of the 1 Super Soul Sista who has the blessing to be dubbed “the Angela Davis of hip-hop”. Starting off MCing as a 16-year-old pop-locker, Medusa continues to cultivate hip-hop seeds in South Central and across the country in unprecedented numbers. You will find no other who will bring it to you like this, someone’s music that makes you feel strong, proud, and encourages with the manner of ONE Love. Coming up in the LA scene, she honed her skills At the Good Life Café and Leimert Park’s “Project Blowed” Workshop, around Freestyle Fellowship, Black Eye Peas, Macy Grey, and Xzibit, being the first in the LA hip hop scene with a live band. After blessing her already growing fans with her EP, Do It The Way You Feel It, Medusa gained an even stronger fan base overseas, in the country, and on college campuses across the nation, and has virtually become a guru to the underground hip-hop scene and artistic community. She is respected and adored as a Queen to the word and power of her music and what she stands for, not just the fact that she’s the undisputed Queen of West Coast underground hip-hop.

Stuart Swezey

Stuart Swezey is the producer/director of the punk desert festival documentary Desolation Center, chronicling his early career organizing events featuring groups such as Sonic Youth, Survival Research Laboratories, Swans, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Einstürzende Neubauten, and others capturing a time when pushing the boundaries of music, art, and performance felt almost like an unspoken obligation. The film relates the previously untold story of a series of Reagan-era guerrilla music and art performance happenings in Southern California that are recognized to have paved the way for Burning Man, Lollapalooza, and Coachella, collective experiences that have become crucial parts of alternative culture in the 21st century. The Los Angeles Times described the film as “a historical record of this short-lived time and this singularly L.A. scene . . . pure to the punk ethos.” Desolation Center premiered at CPH:DOX  and screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2018 and Slamdance festival in 2019. It has won multiple audience awards and best feature documentary nominations, was selected as “Best of Music 2019” by ARTFORUM, and was featured as a selection of the Smithsonian Year of Music. Swezey is a co-founder and publisher of the influential LA-based underground sourcebook/bookstore/press Amok Books. His book Amok Fifth Dispatch: Sourcebook of Extremes of Information in Print was nominated for the Best Nonfiction Book Title in the Firecracker Alternative Book awards. As an event curator, Swezey has also presented such wildly diverse offerings as the legendary “Nailed!” performance with the late BDSM poet Bob Flanagan and a comeback pipe organ concert by Exotica legend Korla Pandit along with influential dance clubs such as Mecca and Monsanto, and numerous readings at the Amok Bookstore with the likes of noir author John Gilmore, art writer Ralph Rugoff, British anarcho-situationist novelist Stewart Home and others. Swezey produced the rave culture documentary Better Living Through Circuitry and was VP, Development (“Ice Road Truckers”), network executive (Syfy Channel) and producer for National Geographic Channel and others.

Micaela Tobin

Micaela Tobin is a soprano, sound artist, and teacher based in Los Angeles, CA who specializes in experimental voice and contemporary opera. Composing under the moniker White Boy Scream, Tobin dissects her operatic and extended vocal techniques through electronics, oscillating between extreme textures of noise, drone, and choral sound-walls. Her work challenges colonial stories and systems, and explores her diasporic identity as a first-generation Filipino-American woman. Her most recent full-length album, BAKUNAWA includes elements of sonic ritual, Filipino myth, and ancestral memory. Tobin premiered the cinematic adaptation of the album through REDCAT in May 2021. In July 2023, she premiered her second opera, titled APOLAKI: Opera of the Scorched Earth, which will be adapted into her next release. Micaela Tobin is currently a voice teacher on faculty at the California Institute for the Arts and teaches through her private studio, HOWL SPACE.