APRIL: Finding a New Current

Loose Land

— 7 min read
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APRIL: Finding a New Current
Photo: Constantine Manos, "Florida, USA" 1999

I’m about to have a baby, which means I’m about to jump into a cultural abyss. Though it’s my second time through the postpartum tunnel, it feels wholly different this time around. The first time was fall 2020, and we were all in a shared isolation. It was a radical and identity-reconfiguring moment, but I never had the sense that I was missing out on a cool show or a dinner party to tend to a tiny person. This time, however, I will have that sense. 

Since Loose Land was born in 2024, the cultural happenings of the city are always top of mind; I’m constantly pushing myself to get out more and expand my horizons. LA makes you fight extra hard to engage with it in a way that Chicago (my hometown) and New York (my 20’s home) didn’t. It really helped me curb my own introverted impulses to be in New York, where I could be carried along with the currents and stumble upon the city and its countless charms without trying. But when I moved to LA I got the rude awakening that there was no such current here; I would need to be proactive. Being here has forced me to remain engaged and active, and build a muscle that I don’t naturally have. What I’m scared of in this postpartum period is that the muscle may atrophy.

As I think about the impending future—when I leave the house with a baby strapped to my chest—and what it will be like to be a person in the world again, I feel a tumble of emotion and divergent longings: to surrender and savor every fleeting moment and to fight like hell to maintain whatever’s left of my autonomy. Which mirrors how I engage with the city as a parent. Much of the time I am doing things solely to delight and engage my 5-year-old (often at my own expense). I would happily take a hiatus from playgrounds, kids birthday parties, and public pools (not to mention kid museums, and 5pm dinners), but that’s not in the cards. When I’m not with my child, I am still able to to satisfy that other side of me pretty regularly by going to things that I want to attend. But with two kids, I’ll need a new approach as that window of childfree time shrinks. 

There is an argument for pragmatism here: for reducing the share of my time that goes to the cultural things that my kids can’t take part in, but I refuse to have that larger cultural life defined by motherhood. I don’t want my weekends to be dictated by kids, my friendships to be exclusively parental, and my Spotify algorithm to be overrun by the questionable taste of a preschooler. My parents were a good model for this with the balance tipped more in their direction for what we watched/ate/did. I resented it at the time, because it was so different from how other families operated, but I deeply respect it now. I will need to find an overlap where my child(ren) and I can both be somewhat satisfied. How that shakes out in this newsletter once I return is opaque, but you can be sure I’ll be on the hunt for these shared spaces—and will share any treasures I find!  

-Betsy Kalven

Cultural Events

Clockwise L to R: “Sueño Perro: Instalación Celuloide de Alejandro G. Iñárritu”, ph. DSL Studio – Delfino Sisto Legnani and Melania Dalle Grave, Courtesy Fondazione Prada; This Party is Killing You; Installation View of Ellsworth Kelly: The Naming of Colors; Los Angeles Festival of Movies; Clare Crespo, Image from her book, Oralee: A Field Guide to a Young Human Who Learns to Glow in the Dark; Heavy Manners Zine Fair
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April 3 - This Party Is Killing You (Chinatown) Several times in this newsletter we’ve asked readers: what cultural indulgence would you plan your schedule around (and drop a week’s salary on)? For me, it’s Robyn! I’m going to see her at the Kia Forum in September and I cannot wait. Until then, I recommend we all go to this internationally renowned Robyn-themed party, which - kudos to its organizers - has been spreading the gospel of Robyn all over the world for fourteen years and counting. It will be an extra bonus to check out Chinatown’s newest venue, the Pacific Electric. (BK/MR)
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Through April 11 - Ellsworth Kelly: The Naming of Colors (West Hollywood) The current exhibition at the Matthew Marks Gallery showcases six paintings that Kelly made between 1953 and 2014, and although they’re iconic now, it’s worth remembering how controversial and challenging his work was when it first appeared. It’s part of our visual grammar now, but as with grammar, first you need the building blocks: the words. (DH)
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April 9-12 - Los Angeles Festival of Movies (Eagle Rock and elsewhere) The third annual LA Festival of Movies will be happening across a number of (largely East-side) venues this month, and it’s an exciting slate they’ve put together overall, but the U.S. premiers of John Early’s Maddie’s Secret and Sophie Romvary’s Blue Heron are sure to be particularly hot tickets. (And if you can’t attend, consider seeking out Romvary’s previous short film work, which is extraordinary!) (DH)
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Anytime - SUEÑO PERRO: A Film Installation by Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Mid-City) My cinematographer boyfriend, Nico, is, understandably, a tough movie critic. So when he returned from LACMA to report that Sueño Perro was the best film installation he had seen in a long time, I knew I’d better make time to see it. The installation, which debuted at the Fondazione Prada in Milan last year in celebration of the film’s 25th anniversary, gives new life to over a million feet of film archives that were left on the cutting room floor. The installation serves as an ode to film’s materiality (via the 35mm projectors), and an “invitation,” as Iñarritu describes it, to “feel what never was.” I can totally understand why Nico loved it. (MR)
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April 11-12 - Heavy Manners Zine Fair (Echo Park) I’ll pop into just about any old bookstore, but generally speaking I like my bookstores like I like my English Sheepdogs: old, loose, and shaggy. I want to discover something—extra points if it’s out of print or otherwise neglected—and as a result I always appreciate it when a bookstore (whether new or used) manages to stock a collection of local zines. They may sound quaint, but man that scene still bustles, and the work that’s done in this space has the same blend of personal projects, niche examinations, and popular appeal that you’d find in any other medium. (DH)
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April 19 - Member Previews: David Geffen Galleries Grand Opening (Mid-City) In past installments I’ve mentioned how I used to work at LACMA and I remember when Director Michael Govan announced to the staff that there would be a new museum (back in 2014!). Many, many years later we are about to see the doors of this organism-like feat of concrete from Swiss architect Peter Zumthor finally open. The museum collection will be curated across chronologies, locales, and themes—a striking approach to traditional museum curatorial practice. If you join as a member ($90 per year) you can see the galleries before they open to the public in May. I must admit, I’m thinking about it! (MR)
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April 24 - Clare Crespo: Oralee Book Launch (Los Feliz) May I invite you to take some respite from the circular news cycle and dive into a fairy tale for adults? (There should be more art in this genre, in my opinion.) Clare Crespo, a “fantasist” living in LA, creates magical worlds where anything is possible. PRS will be celebrating the launch of her new book, Oralee: A Field Guide to a Young Human Who Learns to Glow in the Dark—published by the independent press Hat & Beard—with a Q&A between the artist and film director, Mike Mills. Get your tickets now before a magical owl swoops down and grabs them first! (MR)
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April 26 - Mad God (Fairfax) Let me be honest: this film is not my usual cup of tea. I heard about it via Defector, where Pete Segall had a great piece in celebration of the “ambient and inchoate brutality” of this film. It comes from Phil Tippett—the man behind the 3D chess sequence in Star Wars—and it’s the result of 30-years’ labor: an obsessive project about unending violence, done in stop motion. If I’m brave enough that day, I’ll be there. (DH)

City Scraps #3: The Majesty of the Urban Possum

Who doesn’t love a good diorama? And honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a bad diorama, since they’re usually either made by children (and somewhat exempt from aesthetic judgment) or commissioned by natural history museums (and therefore irreproachable). But my favorite diorama (by a raccoon’s hair) is the natural history museum’s representation of LA’s urban wildlife. If I were a dead possum, I couldn’t ask for a better afterlife than being stuffed and posed in a great hall alongside bisons, grey wolves, and pronghorns. And yeah, possums and raccoons a little more workaday than those guys, but they’re still quite impressive in their own right. (Can a bison rip the tiles off of your roof and allow an entire new ecosystem to flourish in a formerly antiseptic attic space?! I don’t think so!) That diorama is a great reminder that whatever else Los Angeles may be, it is not entirely unnatural. There’s wilderness here, too. It practically defines us. 

But we’re here to talk scraps, and a glass-encased diorama in the hall of North American Mammals is certainly no scrap. Instead, what I’d like to talk about right now  is (pivot!) what I glimpse as I go tumbling to the ground in my Sunday afternoon soccer league: because what I glimpse then is mountains. I don’t see them when I’m stretching or warming up; they’re just background then. But sometimes, after I’ve miscalculated the flight of a ball, jumped too late, and been knocked backwards by a defender’s brutal challenge, then the mountains do seem to rise suddenly up (upside down), and in a flash, I see them. And I understand that there are many people who interact with mountains (and forests! and seas!) on a regular basis—even recreationally!—but for the rest of us, it’s easy to forget that these dramatic backdrops are more than just scenery: they’re part of what defines the city that we live in. It’s all just a matter of perspective. 

And I guess maybe that’s my point: for the opossum, the city isn’t the city; it’s a habitat. And as long as we remain unstuffed and un-posed, we can do more than just helplessly eyeball the majesty that surrounds us; we can make it part of our home too. (And in case of emergency, break glass.)

-Daniel Harmon

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