Song of Yourselves Created by John P. Hogan May 24-25, 2013 Automata
Visual Artist/Writer/Musician/Performer John P. Hogan's new work Song of Yourselves is part performance art, part song cycle, part slide show, part karaoke. It looks at our world through the periscope of image, humor, puppets, text, and song.
As Hogan himself describes the piece: "It's an Irish Wake of sorts for American Exceptionalism. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Clint Eastwood’s iconic Chair Piece, and the fragmented micromanagement of the self and others through art, poetry, and bureaucracy will all come under consideration.”
Audiences are encouraged to “bring your own barbaric yawp, as festivities will include contextually appropriate songs sung by the audience, live music, and other spectacular delights yet to be determined.”
John P. Hogan is an artist, writer, and musician based in Los Angeles. His work has been seen at venues including MCASD, Yerba Buena Center, Fritz Haeg’s Sundown Salon, MAK Center, and Machine Project. His work satirizes the grandstanding of dominant ideologies, with a focus on male anti-heroes in situations that dramatize imperialistic, colonial, and institutional struggles. Hogan is interested in the integration of entertainment culture with mythology, and the ways this is expressed in American subculture. My performance art evokes populist forms such as Community Theater and garage rock, which resist professionalization and celebrate untrained enthusiasm.
