One of Web3’s busiest buzz words is “community.” As is the case with many far-reaching words, it’s not always clear just what “community” promises. Sometimes it can mean readership, other times it reflects a steadfast fanbase and then there are times when it boils down to social media engagement. Perhaps at its best, “community” represents landing in a foreign land and meeting internet friends in real life.
Few are the places with a richer, warmer, more dynamic network of blockchain clans than the City of Angels. Here are some of the best crypto-friendly spots to visit in LA.
If you’re deep in the weeds of blockchain culture and planning a trip to LA, you must include a Tuesday night in your itinerary. This diffident day of the week is when some of the brightest minds in Web3 meet to greet at a bar called El Cid on iconic Sunset Boulevard.
Founded by Cody Edison, Mieke Marple and Andrew McClintock, NFTuesday invites renowned digital artists and thought leaders to present once weekly before packed audiences, energizing the local Web3 community to such an extent that shock waves have been felt way beyond the Angeleno county lines.
Since onboarding wunder curator Dina Chang as Director, Cody Edison, NFTuesday’s beloved captain, has considerably ramped up weekly meetups. After a summer hiatus, recent presentations have featured the likes of Nancy Baker Cahill, Lauren Lee McCarthy and Andrew Benson.
No RSVP necessary, but be early if you want to grab a seat. They are in high demand and short supply, much like the digital art editions that NFTuesday releases to mark special presentations.
El Cid
Most Tuesday nights at 7:30 PM
4212 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
Since launching in 2021 with the aim of bridging museums and Web3, curatorial studio Cactoid Labs has opened doors for digital art in ways many thought impossible a short while ago. Via their momentous Remembrance of Things Future initiative with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in support of the museum’s Art & Tech Lab, Cactoid Labs regularly releases collections by some of the most luminous stars in the creative coding firmament, including IX Shells, Emily Xie and Monica Rizzolli.
Currently on display for a limited time at the LACMA’s Stark Bar is work by acclaimed French artist William Mapan, who will launch Distance on September 12 as part of the LACMA/Cactoid Labs partnership. Mapan’s Distance is a collection inspired by Paul Klee’s In the Kairouan Style, Transposed in a Moderate Way (part of the museum’s catalog though currently not on view).
Distance reinterprets Klee’s color theory, as expressed via this iconic work, expanding it into an investigation of the emotional power of aerial views—their ability to invite deep reflection upon our lives’ trajectories. “You’ll definitely feel some sunset vibes in the palettes,” muses Mapan on working with the Angeleno institution. “It’s a real honor to collaborate with such a prominent and important entity like the LACMA. Sharing a word with art history was an unspoken goal for me, and the work my collection is in conversation with holds such special cultural value. I’m happy the LACMA exists.”
Cactoid Labs doesn’t have a public headquarters, but they do host specialized tours of certain exhibitions, such as the LACMA’s recent Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age 1952-1982. They’re also planning a suite of IRL events as well as a solo focus project by Tyler Hobbs.
While these events get up and running, head to the Stark Bar to grab a bite, sip a spritz and let the magic of Mapan transport you away from the doingness of life before visiting the museum to be inspired.
Stark Bar
Open every day except Wednesday
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
The self-proclaimed birthplace of one of Web3’s most successful platforms is located behind an unassuming brick facade in Venice Beach, California. Traverse a rustic threshold to find a veritable urban headquarters, complete with hanging, sleek screens, shared wooden desks and a fully-stocked kitchen. This locale also boasts the title of being the birthplace of Rituals, a longform generative collection created by Aaron Penne and Boreta, awarded the Lumen Prize for Art & Technology.
Founded by Seth Goldstein a little over two years ago, Bright Moments has pioneered the concept of live minting. When an artwork is registered onto the blockchain, it is said to be “minted.” In the case of long-form generative code-based or AI projects, each iteration contains an element of surprise–not even the artists themselves know what, exactly, will be generated by the systems they create. Bright Moments invites collectors to special live minting sessions where they become active participants in the artworks they collect, facilitating intimate encounters with both artists and artworks that produce permanent memories, not just blockchain transactions.
Of note: Bright Moments recently hosted an epic six-city live minting tour for Empty Rooms, a collection created by Casey Reas, a UCLA professor who co-founded leading global art gallery Feral File and is considered by most as the father of creative coding. The tour launched in Tokyo, circled the world, and concluded in Venice, CA.
“The energy of Venice Beach is entirely original,” highlights talented poet and performer Chris Wood, charged with running the location’s event space, “the people who gather here bring a unique blend of tech, art, healing, music and so much more. It’s really a community of communities converging as we move into the future.”
Bright Moments
46 Market Street
Venice Beach, CA 90291
Polished, contextualized, smart. Many words could be used to describe this gallery founded by Sinziana Velicescu and located on a bustling corner on Melrose Avenue, but perhaps the most accurate is “visible.’’ A massive window affords a street view of the curved screen that occupies an entire gallery apse, allowing exhibiting works to spill out, educating the civilian world about the brave possibilities of digital art. Case in point: the recently held PostGender: Human After All, an exhibition organized in partnership with Istanbul-based NFTBiennial and UnicornDAO, with curation by Alice Scope and Chanel Verdult. This exhibition asked: “What if we as a culture moved past traditional gender roles into a new state of identity. What would we call it?”
VellumLA also collaborated with NFTuesday to alight a massive StandardVision billboard in Downtown LA for two weeks at the turn of 2022, featuring works from Unsigned, a project created by renowned artist duo Operator and star curator Anika Meier to invert the bone-crushing truth that art by a woman artist is devalued the instant she signs her creation by transforming signatures by women artists into artworks.
Free, open and highly visible to the public from Thursday through Sunday from 1pm to 6pm.
VellumLA
7673 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
Though this trailblazing, new media gallery doesn’t always specialize in art rendered transactable via blockchain provenance, it sometimes hosts Web3-native exhibitions, such as Catalyst, which is currently on display and is co-presented with Epoch Gallery, a platform revolutionizing experiential group exhibitions by presenting them as acquirable, interactive works of art.
It’s always worth looking into what this gallery has on its walls, as well as on its event calendar. Honor Fraser’s ongoing speaker series has welcomed the scholars who are most eloquently and critically situating the Web3 digital art resurgence within the larger art-historical context, such as Charlotte Kent, Brian Droitcour, Jesse Damiani, Katie Peyton Hoffstadter and Mishinko Firunts Hakopian.
Honor Fraser
2622 La Cienaga Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Housed in a large warehouse southwest of downtown LA, Superchief Gallery offers visitors a welcoming, vibrant yet über-relaxed ambiance. Their digital art exhibitions change rapidly, so check online to see what they have on display, though you can rest assured the works will be provocative. Superchief is known for its bold and generous curation, hosting large, gutsy, inclusive exhibitions all over the world at a dizzyingly consistent rate.
Open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 to 7pm. Call or write for an appointment—you’ll be sure to hear back quickly from their friendly staff, or even from Ed, Superchief’s tireless co-founder.
Superchief Gallery LA
1965 Los Angeles St
Los Angeles, CA 90011
As more and more galleries enter Web3, the event roster in LA will no doubt expand, so it’s a good idea to run a quick internet search before you go. Collectives such as Proof sometimes host meetups and rumor has it that the legendary New York new media gallery bitforms has partnered with local outfit PR for Artists to launch a pop-up soon.
Web3 moves quickly. Los Angeles does, too.
Disclosure: I’ve exhibited with Epoch Gallery and bitforms and will exhibit with Bright Moments in the future. My signature was included, along with those of 200 other women artists, in Unsigned. I presented on poetry on the blockchain at NFTuesday in 2022.
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