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Tonight, Machine Project’s latest venture promises an evening of “performances that push the boundaries of our disbelief.” The Los Angeles-based arts space run by alumnus Mark Allen (Art MFA 99) hosts a performance of Spectral Psychography, a method for “psychic mark making” developed by artists Christian Cummings (Art BFA 05) and Michael Decker (Art BFA 05).
Blindfolded and using a Ouija board with a specially outfitted planchette, Cummings and Decker will create original drawings at the event by collaborating with unseen artistic forces.
“The hand forms an image while the mind remains unaware of what the hand is doing,” says Cummings, explaining their process.
The artists claim to have partnered with the ghosts of Barnett Newman, Paul Klee, Gertrude Stein, Walt Disney, Keith Haring, Tony Smith, David Smith, Sigmar Polke, Norman Rockwell and the 17th-Century English poet William Congreve, among other less famous apparitions, to make hundreds of drawings, paintings, poetry, sculptures and musical compositions.
The evening also features storyteller Michelle Levy, who discusses The Cornucopia Stromberg, an apparition of the floating head of Matthew Stromberg (a real living person) that appeared to her in a vision and continues to do so on occasion.
Stop Making Sense
Machine Project
1200-D N. Alvarado St., Los Angeles
Tonight, 8 pm
Free