AV Club
A seventeen-day festival at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary, curated by Mike D of the Beastie Boys for Mercedes-Benz.
Summary
Overview
AV Club ran seventeen days at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, in April and May of 2012. Mike D of the Beastie Boys curated it. Mercedes-Benz presented it through The Avant/Garde Diaries. Gallery shows, concerts, and installs from more than a dozen artists, all under one mark.
Challenge
One mark had to carry exhibitions, concerts, DJ nights, food, and installations. It had to hold on a screen, on a poster, on a vehicle wrap, and on a stage backdrop. All of it ran on a festival timeline.
Process
One mark, and the guide that told everyone else how to use it.
Posters, banners, and web ads, all reading as one event.
Entrance signage, murals, backdrops, lighting, and a wrapped van.
The same direction held through seventeen days of programming.
The Festival Mark
Mike D did not do it alone. He invited artists and musicians to build the festival with him. Benjamin Jones, Mike Mills, Tom Sachs, Lauren Mackler, Sage Vaughn, Peter Coffin, Roy Choi, and Will Fowler were among them.
The identity had to sit inside that company, not above it. Two triangles, meeting at a point. The mark is nearer a signal diagram than a logo. Mercedes-Benz Transmission LA sits over it and The Audio-Visual Club under it. The sponsor and the festival share one lockup. Neither has to take the top of every piece.
One Mark, Every Surface
Digital and print went out together for the launch, and the system stretched further than a launch usually asks. The furthest it went was a Mercedes van.
The Backdrop and the Opening Wall
For the backdrop I took the perforation of a speaker grille and blew it up to a burst, with the lockup sitting in the clear middle of it. The opening wall tiles the mark itself until the geometry becomes a pattern and the pattern becomes a room.
Both are the same two triangles at a size the first drawing never planned for. That is the test a mark built from geometry passes and a drawn one does not.
The Invitation
A molded red head. The invitation puts the mark across its eyes. It is the one piece where the lockup stops being a lockup and becomes a mask. That is the register the whole festival was pitched in.
The Equipment Wall
The largest piece was a wall. Audio visual equipment, drawn in outline. Every unit is wired to the next with cable runs and set beside its serial number. They pack edge to edge for the length of the Geffen Contemporary.
It is a festival about sound and image, drawn as the machines that make both, at the size of a building.
The Wall, Quarter by Quarter
Up close it stops being a texture and becomes a drawing. Cameras, speakers, microphones, a cassette, an arcade panel, a Super 8 body carrying the Transmission LA lockup where a maker's badge would be. Mike D signed it off. The full black and white view.
The Pieces In Place
The pieces were made for a building full of people. That is where they ended up. A Mercedes star hung in steel over the entrance. The backdrop behind a live stage at night. The artists who built it, lined up outside on the painted deck.
