"Open and Closed" by Brin Constant Gordon
Opening Reception: Friday, February 25th 6pm-10pm
Open Hours: Saturday, February 26th 2pm- 6pm
Sunday, February 27th, 2pm-6pm

These events are in-person located at Coaxial Arts Foundation: 1815 S Main St, Los Angeles 90015

Masks are required indoors at all times. N-96 or KN-95 or. surgical masks are recommended.

Brin Constant Gordon’s piece “Open and Closed” is a 12 channel video installation which grew out of a conversation they had on a walk in a garden not too long ago about an idea for a video that they’ve had in the back of their mind which came from a conversation they had in a coffeeshop in 2017 with a friend who they accidentally ran into there, briefly interrupting Brins reading of Umberto Eco’s ‘The Open Work”, and who they haven’t seen again since.

This piece, or a primordial version of it, entered my mind suddenly on an afternoon in November of 2017 while sitting at Crema Cafe in Minneapolis, MN. I was reading Umberto Eco’s collection of essays “The Open Work”, and was interrupted by an old friend who had walked in to the coffee shop- the first time I had seen her in about six months. We had both moved up to the city from a small town an hour South after finishing college the prior Spring. Most tables in this building were old and wooden and had lamps on them as the sole source of lighting aside from the Sun, which was getting smaller every day in the Northern Autumn. These lamps appeared to be taken from old libraries- green glass, warm lighting. We talked for no more than five minutes. It turns out that in the time while she was living up there and I was out of town, she had dated the a close friend of mine who had left the country and whose room I had taken over, and had sadly left town just days after I returned. I was getting ready for a bigger move across the country now, and we both new that this was most likely the last time we would see each other for a very long time, potentially spanning to whatever lays after life. That of course if very big unknown, both what happens after you die and also what will happen before then. She sat down at a table just around the corner, which I was thankful for so we wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally making eye contact and feeling any obligation to interact further. Then I went back to reading, and had the idea for this piece, or at least a primordial version of it.

Bio: Brin Constant Gordon is an animator, dramaturg, and pataphysician whose working and thinking is spirals around the syzygy of genre, subjectivity and play, with a special love of bodily metaphors (as well as bodily literals). Their explorations focus on the ways in which we jam meaning making in our lives, and how we can constantly find new ways to resolve those contradictions. They are a founding member of Experience Cult Research Group, with whom they have been hosting paratheaterical retreats since 2018, and the Administrative Director at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, where they pet dogs for around an hour each day.

Artist in Residencies are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Wilhelm Family Foundation & the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles.