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Event Details
File Under: Slime – Book Launch and A Brief History of Slime
Thursday February 2, 2023
6pm
Ahmanson Auditorium, MOCA Grand Avenue
Artist Oliver Payne’s A Brief History of Slime (2022) borrows its title from Stephen Hawking’s best-selling book, A Brief History of Time (1988), and takes a Californian perspective on the global pervasiveness of American popular culture through the material phenomenon of slime. Payne's film is structured around the initial questions "What is California?" "What is Puke?" "What are Nukes?" and "What is Slime?" and unfolds as a whirlwind exposition of slime, consumerism, thrash metal, skateboard culture, and the Cold War, among other subjects. Payne's film deftly navigates East-West geopolitical divisions through a history of consumerism and cultural influences.
Artist and writer Christopher Michlig's book File Under: Slime (Hat & Beard Press, 2022) collates a cultural history of “slime” and “sliminess,” with particular emphasis on precedents in pop-culture, contemporary art, ecology, science fiction, literature, critical theory, and cinema. With a foreword by Los Angeles based writer and curator Jan Tumlir, File Under: Slime presents a chronological series of analyses of occurrences of slime, tracking its amorphous and pervasive seepage into the cultural conscience. File Under: Slime is rooted in Los Angeles' cinematic and artistic history, particularly in reference to Mike Kelley's writing on ufology and blob erotics. Former colleagues and students of Kelley, respectively, Michlig and Tumlir extend and develop an inquiry into the significance of slime as a cultural topos. File Under: Slime was designed by Los Angeles designer Brian Roettinger (Perron/Roettinger).
Following the moderated discussion there will be a book signing in the Reading Room.
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