The image is an abandoned house foundation I wrapped in gift wrap.

“This two part program offers a rare glimpse at the current state of short, single channel video work being done in Los Angeles at the moment. As such, it touches on many of the themes that we have come to expect from LA artists, namely irreverence, confrontation, fantasy, eroticism, and the darkest of dark humor. So please join us for an afternoon of provocative short works (most are well under 10 minutes) that you surely won’t forget.”

34 Degrees North: A Selection of Artist Videos from Los Angeles
Curated by Paul Young
4pm-6pm Sunday Jan 31
Art LA Contemporary
Pacific Design Center
8687 Melrose Ave
West Hollywood 90069
Conference Room (second floor near Melrose escalator)

And don’t forget about Art LA Contemporary which this is a part of. It’s this weekend only.

“You are cordially invited to attend the opening reception to celebrate the second stage of Remote Viewing, the two-part video art exhibition curated by Paul Young. It features the work of nearly 25 contemporary artists including Andro Wekua, Marc Aschenbrenner, Regina Jose Galindo and Magnus Wallin, and an extraordinary environment designed by Joe Day and Deegan Day Design.”

Reception and Cocktails
Saturday, January 30, 4-7 pm

Gallery B-487 Blue Bldg.
(4th floor, near the Melrose-facing escalator)
Street or lot parking

Hope to see you there

I turned my account off a year ago and haven’t looked back, though for a while I felt like I may be the only one. I see Facebook as this insidious video game merged with life, hollowing out real life inside this virtual space to keep us tuned to the new media channel. It plays on nostalgia for the past, and the pleasures of juvenile level development, communication, and thinking. TV seem like a benign threat by today’s standards.

A few notes about quiting facebook. You can’t delete your account. You can only “deactivate” it. If you ever, through force of habit or otherwise log into facebook again it is automatically re-activated and the flow of bullshit will begin immediately. Even the process of deactivation is not straight forward, for starters you need to make sure you don’t leave this box checked or else you will still get emails from facebook. While deactivated I received an email warning me that there has been an update to privacy settings in Facebook and that I should check them out. Worried I logged in, and immediately as mentioned above I was re-activated and back on facebook. All the privacy settings they had warned me about were reset to allow people more access to my account which was now live again because well, I had logged in to check this issue out. Ugh. Oh and each time you try and deactivate there will be pictures of your “friends” and it will say…”don’t you want to talk to so and so any more?” oh and you are are required to have a reason to deactivate facebook and then they give a rebuttal to your reason. So for example If you say you spend too much time on facebook then they will offer you tips on how to be more balanced in your life. If there is a way to actually delete your account PLEASE let me know.

Update: the site Seppukoo.com which helped people kill their facebook addiction by deactivating their account via a virtual seppuku has been shut down by Facebook with a cease and desist order.

*UPDATE* SuicideMachine.org is another site that will help you get off Facebook. It will go in and remove your content and change your password to help kill your virtual life so you can start living your actual life. NPR is also running a story on this site here.
**UPDATE** Looks like the Facebook has the attack dogs out on this site as well and are trying to shut it down. The site has two days to decide to fight back or shut down.
This is starting to remind me of Star Trek’s Borg race that all live in a giant cube networked together. They act sorta like hi-tech zombies. They gobble up other races while spewing their catchphrase, “You will be assimilated, resistance is futile.”