Instant Architecture: Gilmorehill Theatre 2019

Part of a Masters by Research in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow, Instant Architecture is a performance by Josh Dodds that explores the socio-political climate of 1960s Los Angeles through the art practices of the era. Drawing on artworks and documentation from the archives of pivotal L.A. artists and gallerists, Instant Architecture extends and alters established processes of archivisation by using the archive as the basis for performance.

Instant Architecture takes a group of musicians through the process of creating original songs from archival material and sets these songs against projections, quasi-political speeches, movement sequences and audio essays that tap into the strange communality and freedom of life in L.A. With an open-ended approach to archiving the dissociated collectivities typical of L.A.’s diverse urban sprawl, Instant Architecture drives through the smog of the city’s past and into its hazy future.