Lee Lozano's Dropout Piece Book Launch at Ooga Booga

On Sunday 30 March 2014, Ooga Booga in Los Angeles hosted a book launch and dialogue between Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer and Bruce Hainley to celebrate the release of Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece, part of Afterall's One Work series. Lehrer-Graiwer, a Los Angeles-based writer, examines Lozano's self-imposed transformation from art world insider to outsider, begun around 1970, as a large-scale action with lifelong consequences. Drawing on Lozano's private notebooks, she argues that Dropout Piece persists as oral history, ephemera, and fantasy, advancing the relationship between language and performance, and between private thought and urgent action. The discussion covered radical withdrawal, professionalism, and the effects of a life in art. Bruce Hainley, also a Los Angeles writer, recently published Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant's Volte-Face, the first English monograph on Sturtevant, with Semiotext(e). The free event ran from 15:00 to 18:00 at Ooga Booga, an art-books-clothing-music shop at 356 S. Mission Road. The book is available through MIT Press and independent bookstores.