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Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Exhibition Programs
    • Public Programs
    • Featured Media
    • Special Projects
    • Digital Projects
    • Schools / Community
  • Visit
  • About
    • Staff
    • Governance
    • Press
    • Partnerships
    • Opportunities
  • Shop
  • Get Involved
    • Incognito Revealed
    • Join
    • 1717
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
    • Institutional Support
    • Donate
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September 26, 2020
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January 10
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Back To Exhibitions
September 26, 2020
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January 10
2
Upcoming Events

Stanya Kahn:
No Go Backs

Exhibitions
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Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Stanya Kahn (b. 1968, San Francisco) works primarily in film and video, with a practice that includes drawing, sound, performance, sculpture and writing. Humor, pathos, and the uncanny are central to Kahn’s hybrid approach to moving image, which seeks to reorient relationships between fiction and document, the real and hyper-real, and varied expressions of time. Known for using improvisation and candid, real life scenarios, Kahn’s projects often center language as part of a long-term investigation of how rhetoric gains and loses power, as well as the impact of socio-political conditions on lived experience. This exhibition comprises three works by Kahn produced over the past ten years, including her latest short film, No Go Backs (2020), marking its Los Angeles debut. Together, these videos present an urgent reflection of our times, foregrounding global concerns such as climate change, racism, state power, and rebellion with the artist’s singular humor and embrace of experimental time and narrative.

Completed earlier this year, No Go Backs (2020), shot on Super 16mm film with an original sound score and no dialogue, follows two teenagers (and real life friends) who leave the city for the wild. Traveling north into the Eastern Sierra’s monumental landscapes, the pair traverse the haunted precarity of a collapsed world, in dreamlike states of distraction, malaise, and resilience. Braving harsh weather systems and difficult terrain minimally prepared, they travel quietly along sites connected to California’s historic water wars in the early 1900’s—conflicts between farmers, ranchers, and Los Angeles city government over water diversion projects which still impact the region today. The two eventually encounter other youth along the way, forming camaraderie in facing the unknown. A timely indictment of current crises and a meditation on an uncertain future, No Go Backs is a compressed, allegorical epic about an entire generation that must make a new way forward.

Stand in the Stream (2011–17) is an ambient digital feature film shot on multiple camera formats over the course of six years. The film’s vast and varied footage—all shot or screen-captured during livestreams by Kahn in real time—is edited to create a visceral reflection of life, power, and uprising in late capitalism. The film’s progression through different settings—domestic and public spaces, urban and natural scenes, online chat-rooms and home movies—is framed by the decline and death of the artist’s mother, a shipyard electrician and activist, with glimpses of Kahn’s own experience of motherhood and the toil of daily life. Stand in the Stream situates these intimacies within the shift of civic and digital landscapes over time, revealing the many intersections of the personal and the political.

It’s Cool, I’m Good (2010) features a severely injured protagonist (played by the artist), moving through twenty different locations in and around Los Angeles—from hospice to the desert and the sea—seducing, harassing and charming caretakers along the way. Sharing humorous anecdotes and questionable advice on living through difficult times, the bandaged character is at once narcissistic and self-deprecating, teetering between life and death. The video features a complex score, which simultaneously heightens and subverts the viewer’s experience of reality within the work. Economic collapse, urban tensions, and ecological demise are contexts for Kahn’s “patient,” whose metaphoric embodiment of overwhelming psychic and environmental stress remains relatable and prescient, ten years later.

Exhibition Screening Schedule
Wednesdays, Saturdays: No Go Backs (2020)
Total program runtime: 35 minutes
Screens at 12, 12:35, 1:05, 1:40, 2:15. 2:50, 3:25, 4, 4:35, 5:05

Thursdays: Stand in the Stream (2011–17) and No Go Backs (2020)
Total program runtime: 95 minutes
Stand in the Stream screens at 12, 1:35, 3:10, 4:45
No Go Backs screens at 1, 2:35, 4:10

Fridays, Sundays: No Go Backs (2020), Stand in the Stream (2011–17), and It’s Cool, I’m Good (2010)
Total program runtime: 130 minutes
No Go Backs screens at 12, 2:10, 4:20
Stand in the Stream screens at 12:35, 2:40, 4:55
It’s Cool, I’m Good screens at 1:35, 3:40

*Please note: times are approximate

Resources
Credits & Sponsors
About the Artist
Production Credits
Bilingual exhibition didactic for Stanya Kahn: No Go Backs
Exhibition didactic
Exhibition checklist for Stanya Kahn: No Go Backs
Exhibition checklist

Stanya Kahn: No Go Backs is organized by Jamillah James, Curator, ICA LA.

Support for the exhibition is provided by the Michael Asher Foundation and Vielmetter Los Angeles. Additional support is provided by the Angeles Art Fund, Wilhelm Family Foundation, C. Christine Nichols, and RF Jefferies and SL DeMartino.

No Go Backs was made with the support of the Film/Video Studio Program at the Wexner Center for the Arts and an Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Art.

ICA LA is supported by Curator’s Council, Fieldwork, and 1717 Collective.

Stanya Kahn is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow in Film/Video. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Contemporary Arts Museum, St. Louis; MoMA/PS1, New York; New Museum, New York; and Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the 2018 Gwangju Biennial; Centre Pompidou, Paris; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Hammer Museum; New Museum, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; MOCA San Diego; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Fearnley Astru Museet, Oslo; and the Orange County Museum of Art, among others. Her collaborative work with Harry Dodge has shown at the 2008 Whitney Biennial; Brooklyn Museum; the 54th Venice Bienniale; MOCA, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsrühe, DE; Sundance Film Festival; and the New York Underground Film Festival, among others.  She was a contributing writer and actor in the 2001 feature film By Hook or By Crook.  Her writings and drawings appear in multiple publications including Die Laughing (2nd Cannons, 2016), Moving Image (MIT Press), It’s Cool, I’m Good (Cornerhouse, 2012), and Abstract Video: The Moving Image in Contemporary Art (University of California Press, 2016) Her work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum; MoMA, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Goetz Museum, Munich, among others.

Production credits for No Go Backs:
Writer/Director/Producer/Editor/Sound design/Titles:  Stanya  Kahn 
Starring:  Lenny Dodge-Kahn, Elijah Parks, Marisol Prietto, Serafina Prietto 
Featuring:  Melissa Alonso, John Bello, Alexa Calderon, Dean Campo, Mae-Jean Campo, Angus Frazier-Herndon, Hollis Frazier-Herndon, Aero Greenfield, Ren Greenfield, Stephanie D. Kutsch, Dalia Lundquist, Kayla Parks, Gable Stinson, Kiana Wilson, Tynique  Wilso   
Camera:  Stanya  Kahn and  Consuelo Althous   
Assistant Camera: Simon  Gulergun  and Alisha Mehta
Colorist: Alexis McCrimmon  
Additional foley: Will Ogilvie 
Special thanks: Lucy Zimmerman, Jennifer Lange, Kiersten Puusemp, Michael Light, John Wentworth, Benjamin Weissman,  Liza Womack,  Hal Kahn, and Lenny Dodge-Kahn.

Production credits for Stand in the Stream:  
Writer/Director/Producer/Camera/Editor/Sound Design/Titles: Stanya Kahn  
Car repair footage: Mariah Garnett  
Additional original music: Alexia Riner and Stanya Kahn 
Special thanks: all the live-streamers

Production credits for It’s Cool, I’m Good: 
Writer/Director/Producer/Editor/Sound Design/Titles: Stanya Kahn
Camera: Stanya Kahn, Mariah Garnett, Anthony Lepore, Drew Heitzler, Trinie Dalton 
Craigslist guy: Marc Horowitz  

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Last updated at Friday, 02 Oct 2020 11:15 AM, by Jamillah James Log in
Database Exhibitions
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STATUS ID Title Start date End date Featured image Last updated
Active Published
79 Online Screening: Stanya Kahn’s No Go Backs and Earlier Works 2020-12-09 2021-01-10 11:43am Jan 12, 2021 Page
Active Published
77 Harold Mendez:
Let us gather in a flourishing way
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Hm16
5:37pm Jan 05, 2021 Page
Active Published
78 Stanya Kahn:
No Go Backs
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Sk1a
6:46pm Dec 04, 2020 Page
Active Published
69 Ree Morton:
The Plant That Heals May Also Poison
2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 025
2:53pm Dec 03, 2020 Page
Active Published
74 Ann Greene Kelly 2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 001
9:53am Jun 17, 2020 Page
Active Published
75 Agency of Assets x El Clasificado 2019-12-06 2020-01-26
Meztly cover
10:30am Dec 09, 2019 Page
Active Published
73 CURRENT:LA FOOD Public Art Triennial 2019 2019-10-05 2019-11-03
CURRENT:LA FOOD
11:04am Oct 07, 2019 Page
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67 No Wrong Holes:
Thirty Years of Nayland Blake
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica blake 5
3:57pm Oct 21, 2020 Page
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72 Sadie Barnette:
The New Eagle Creek Saloon
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica barnette 7
5:36pm Aug 26, 2020 Page
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70 Hervé Tullet: Ideal Exhibition 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
Icala96194
4:04pm Mar 27, 2020 Page
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71 Worldwide Orphans: Element of Play® 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
2. vietnam
5:44pm Jul 31, 2019 Page
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68 Brognon-Rollin:
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2019-03-17 2019-06-30
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2:28pm Nov 17, 2020 Page
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63 Patty Chang:
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2019-03-17 2019-08-04
Ica chang 24
3:05pm Oct 01, 2019 Page
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19 Maryam Jafri:
I Drank the Kool-Aid But I Didn’t Inhale
2019-02-10 2019-06-30
Icla2.12.19 60
4:45pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
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64 Lucas Blalock:
An Enormous Oar
2019-02-10 2019-08-04
Icla2.12.19 95
4:52pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
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62 Adrian Piper
What It’s Like, What It Is #3
2018-10-07 2019-01-06
1991 what its like 3
12:12pm Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
61 Agency of Assets:
Reality Augmented
2018-09-30 2019-01-06
Agencyofassets
1:44pm Apr 07, 2020 Page
Active Published
4 B. Wurtz:
This Has No Name
2018-09-30 2019-02-17
Wurtz install 05
4:54pm Apr 09, 2020 Page
Active Published
6 Nina Chanel Abney:
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2018-09-23 2019-01-20
Abney install 02
11:58am Jul 16, 2019 Page
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2 This Brush for Hire: Norm Laich & Many Other Artists 2018-06-03 2018-09-02
Brush for hire 14
3:54pm Oct 01, 2019 Page
Active Published
20 sisters and brothers 2018-04-22 2018-06-17
Brothers & sisters 02
11:54am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
18 Rafa Esparza: de la Calle 2018-04-22 2018-07-15
Esparza5
6:11pm Jul 09, 2018 Page
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9 Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us (1974) 2018-02-04 2018-04-22
Szeeman install 10
11:49am Jul 16, 2019 Page
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8 Skip Arnold: Truffle Hunt 2018-01-28 2018-04-08
Arnold install 11
11:45am Jul 16, 2019 Page
Active Published
1 Martín Ramírez: His Life in Pictures, Another Interpretation 2017-09-09 2017-12-31
Ramirez install 02
6:55pm Apr 02, 2020 Page
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