Blog: EP-Silver Lake Alum Mike D Curates the MOCA

Mike Diamond of the Beastie Boys has curated his first art show, Transmission LA: AV Club.

It opens April 20 at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary and runs until May 6. Sponsored by Mercedes Benz, it is free to all.

The 17 featured artists come from a wide range of disciplines--audio, visual, video, and culinary. A good part of the exhibit features pieces that try to make you think of the interrelationships of the senses, and the rest of it is just plain cool to look at.

Click to see more about the artists.

MOCA is extending hours until 10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. It important to Mike to make it accessible to more people who can't always make it to a museum before 5 p.m.

Transmission LA: AV Club also features musical acts. Santigold opened the exhibit on Thursday night.

Saturday, April 21, artists from the Stones Throw roster take the stage just outside the exhibit hall.  And producer and DJ Diplo (who now lives in Los Feliz) is there on May 5.

I was able to sit down and ask a few questions to the curator Mike D.

Erik H: Why did you want to curate an art show?

Mike D: I wanted To be able to pick some artists that I get inspired by, and to give their work a platform. Here, at one of the most important art museums in the country.

EH: What was the biggest challenge to becoming a curator and transitioning?

MD: What I was naive about, was like with anything new. In music I know what the red tape involved is going to be. And I've been extraordinarily  lucky in that I can work with a bigger platform, that I can dictate or ignore the rules in a lot of the work that we did. So here I realized I had to re-learn what it's like to fight for every little thing you want to do if it's a little bit different than what the rules allow.

EH: How you feel about the Silver Lake-Echo Park creative community, and Los Angeles art in general? How has it inspired you?

MD: I live in New York now, but i went through a period of time where i lived here in L.A., and one of the first places I lived was Echo Park. This was a long time ago and Echo Park was vastly different than it is now. But even then, we lived there because there was a small artistic community, and we had a lot of friends that were there.Then we moved to Silver Lake and lived in that area for a long time. I never would have guessed that today it would be something completely different.

But I think Los Angeles as a whole was one of the reasons I was excited to do this show here, and one of the reasons I've brought up the Public Fiction gallery in the back. I think it is an interesting juncture in Los Angeles in terms of the art world. People have been talking for quite some time about sort of an exciting art scene coalescing in LA, and I think now that really is the case. I think the combination of... well, I don't know what it is, if it's the art schools, or because New York is so prohibitively expensive for anyone who is an artist and wants to move there and work. I think L.A. now is a really interesting hub of new stuff. One of the reasons I wanted to include Lauren [Mackler of Public Fiction  http://www.publicfiction.org/] is that she is a great gateway to a lot of stuff that is happening over on the Eastside there.

EH: Would you like to curate again?

MD: If I had a couple of months to rest, yes!

[Then came the question on the minds of most anyone who has seen or heard of the goings ons at this year's Coachella Festival.]

EH: What do you think if the Tupac hologram at Coachella?

MD: That's a great topic of discussion, Jim Drain (one of the show's artists) and I have talked about it alot. And we wanted to see if we could bring the Tupac hologram here... but it's got to be at Coachella. I would love to have a whole holographic universe in my home. I could just wake up in the morning. Have breakfast with Miles Davis and Jimi Hendix..... It'd be great!