MISSION

LA Freewaves is a Los Angeles nonprofit that produces free, site-specific public art to engage artists and audiences on current social issues.

We produce art online and in the streets with our intersectional network of artists, staff, and curators, challenging society’s ideas about race and gender.

LA Freewaves began in 1989 as a multicultural video art festival on TV and in venues throughout SoCal. Since then, we have grown to host performance art events, IG Live dialogues, and one of the largest digital video art archives.

Can we learn together in public?

TIMELINE

1989: Freewaves’ 1st Festivalof New Media Art.

LEFT COLUMN: 1995. WORKSHOPS, Digi Days. Digi Days was a weekend of low-cost workshops, panels, lectures and demos on digital video and interactive media held at AFI. Freewaves gave 8 video programs to 66 L.A. libraries and 40 LAUSD high schools. “Artist and Activist CD ROMs” was a weekend workshop and demo held at USC that focused on the production and distribution of artists’ CD ROMs. RIGHT COLUMN: 1999. Launched, Open Studio/LA. In partnership with On Ramp and Visual Communications, Freewaves launched Open Studio/LA, a series of free workshops on internet and web design, an online residency for LA artists and arts organizations, and a lecture series with critiques by web artists and designers.

LEFT COLUMN: 2005, Launched Online Archive. We launched our own online video archive with approximately 25 videos from all continents, curated thematically, with attached artist video interviews and supporting materials. Another 100 artists’ videos became available without video interviews. RIGHT COLUMN: 2009, 10TH FESTIVAL, Too much freedom, The most international festival to date took place at the Hammer Museum, Pomona College Museum of Art, The National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and KCET-TV. Over 150 works of new media art were exhibited live and online.

LEFT: 2010, 20th ANNIVERSARY. Video on the Loose. Freewaves celebrated its 20th anniversary at the LACMA Late Night Art Event. The event animated the museum’s north plaza with 20+ experimental media art works produced over the previous two decades. The videos presented spanned perspectives from identity politics of the 1990s to post-9/11 reality checks, from deep inside the mass media landscape to observations from media makers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. RIGHT: 2016, opening reception. DIS...MISS. 60 outstanding L.A. artists are engaging in dialogues around evolving attitudes toward gender and intersectional feminism. The artworks present nuanced imagery and ideas on these complex topics as they simultaneously aim to confront stubborn inequalities and stereotypes. Audience engagements have taken the form of screenings, workshops, exhibitions, surveys and discussions. Learn more: freewaves.org/dismiss-calendar/

LEFT 2018 DIS...MISS. Ain’t I A Womxn? The first installment of the DIS…MISS project manifested as a promenade at LA Historic Park that brought together 20 independent artists, 10 art collectives, audiences, and activist organizations to collectively expand our definitions of feminism, gender, and intersectionality. RIGHT: 2019. DIS...MISS. LOVE &/OR FEAR. A Celebration of Genders. A public art event emerging as the second iteration for Dis…Miss, bringing together over 35+ artists, art collectives, and organizations to celebrate the spectrum of gender idenity, build community, and launch a “SEXUAL HARRASSMENT FREE ZONE” in partnership with the advocacy organization, Peace Over Violence.

LEFT:2019. RACIAL RADICAL @ USC Generating New Woke Words. Racial Radical was produced in connection with the Designing Equity initiative. Launched in 2016, Designing Equity is a partnership among Greater Together, Zeidler Group, MKELAX and Anne Bray (LA FREEWAVES), in collaboration with Milwaukee-based creatives and with support from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. With support from USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative and Race, Arts and Placemaking (RAP) Initiative. RIGHT: 2020. RACIAL RADICAL @ ONLINE. Generating New Woke Words. Racial Radical: Generating New “Woke” Words focuses on recognizing familiar but so far unnamed racial experiences and generating new vocabulary from those experiences.

2021. DIS...MISS @ online. Connecting The Dots. In 2020 and 2021, DIS…MISS artists, writers, and activists entered more cross dialogues through our new Instagram Live interview series DIS…MISS: connecting the dots and Zoomed with each other around curated groups and topics, summarized in the culminating book and archived at our IGTV. Learn more at: http://freewaves.org/dismiss-calendar 2022. X-aMEN-ing Masculinities. We engaged with our audience on instagram by creating a fictitious men’s magazine series.We then took the conversation offline with a night of Visual, Video and Performance Art at the LA State Historic Park on October 6, 2022, 7:30-10:30pm. Curated by Anne Bray, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario and Anuradha Vikram, the series will compared paradigms of masculinity including male bonding rituals, trans masculinity, masculine models of care, and uses of power.

PROJECTS

X-aMENing Masculinities considers and compares paradigms of masculinity including male bonding rituals, trans masculinity, masculine paradigms of care, and the uses of power through public artwork, postcards, digital discussions, and more.

DIS…MISS is a public art series with videos, postcards, and performances, plus ways to participate online and in person. 100 outstanding L.A. artists and writers are engaging in dialogues around evolving attitudes toward gender and intersectional feminism. Book in progress.

FREEWAVES ARCHIVE provides online access to one of the largest free digital collections of international video art from the 2000’s.

RACIAL RADICAL series is a public workshop generating new woke words with Milwaukee spoken word artists Fondé Bridges, Mikal Floyd-Pruitt, and Dasha Kelly Hamilton to recognize familiar but so-far-unnamed racial experiences and brainstorm new vocabulary around them.

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