Armory Center for the Arts will present “State of the Union,” a pre-Election Day debate on Zoom where artists Paul Pescador and Maura Brewer will face off on a variety of themes including victim complexes, tautological loops, and the fantasy of escape, on Sunday, November 1, 5 p.m.
As a background, the 1996 film, “Scream,” will serve as a guide through which the artists explore archetypes of victim and killer in contemporary politics.
This one-night Zoom performance will be followed by a conversation between the artists moderated by Mandy Harris Williams.
Brewer and Pescador are artists who collaborate on holidays and, together, make videos and performances at the intersection of politics and pop culture.
Brewer explores the construction of female subjects in mass culture through her work in video, performance, and experimental fashion design. Her video essays combine footage from Hollywood films, television, and Internet subcultures to question the ways that popular culture mimes the language of feminism in the service of patriarchal capitalism.
Brewer’s projects, videos, and performances have been shown at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; and the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève in Switzerland. Her work has been the subject of solo projects at the University of California, Irvine; Art in General, New York; and Queens, Los Angeles. Her video work is included in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Brewer is a founding member of the Rational Dress Society, a counter-fashion collective, and Arts Research Collective, an experimental art school. She is a 2017 California Community Foundation Fellow and a 2016 and 2018 Creative Economic Development Fund grantee. She was a Whitney Independent Study Program fellow from 2014-2015 and received her MFA from UC Irvine in 2011. Brewer lives and works in Los Angeles.
Pescador is a trans-nonbinary artist who works in film, photography, and performance. Select exhibitions and screenings include UV Estudios, Buenos Aires; Biquini Wax, and LADRÓNgalería, both in Mexico City; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Main Museum, gallery1993, Marathon Screenings, Vacancy, Ashes/Ashes, Park View, and Human Resources, all in Los Angeles; 18th Street Art Center and 5 Car Garage, both in Santa Monica; The Pit at Glendale; Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro; and LAND at The Gamble House, Pasadena. Select performances include Machine Projects, Los Angeles Contemporary Archives, REDCAT, KCHUNG TV, ForYourArt, and PAM, all in Los Angeles; Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, Orange; Performa 2015 and Colony, both in New York City; UC Berkeley; and Durham Studio Theater, North Carolina.
Pescador graduated with an MFA from UC Irvine and a BA from USC. Their first collection of writing, “Crushes: A Novella,” was published by Econo Textual Objects in Spring 2017.
To watch “State of the Union” on Zoom, click the link at www.armoryarts.org/schedule/
Note that Daylight Saving Time ends on November 1, so be sure to set your clocks back one hour.
