Lucky Dragons
Biography
Lucky Dragons inhabit Los Angeles. Lucky Dragons came together in Spring of 2000 in an attempt to create a band that would never break up. The name is borrowed from a Japanese fishing vessel caught in the fallout of a US hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean that became a focal point for worldwide anti-nuclear sentiment in the 20th century. They would say they are "artists who use music" and if they make performance art it is to alter and append it, but they give respect to history and the people who live there. Today's influences include: Nikki de St Phalle, Joan Didion, COBRA, Hieronymous Bosch, Thomas Jefferson, Tina Turner, Allan Kaprow, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, Mayan Codices, Ivor Cutler.
Lucky Dragons shows are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures - creating equal-power situations in which audience members co-operate amongst themselves, to build a fragile network of digital signals connected by touching on the skin. There have been hundreds of these simple yet shifting and unpredictable instances - with audiences ranging from the intense intimacy of one person to the public spectacle of over one thousand people. At the heart of it all is playing together - building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technology and live performance. It sounds - and looks - like simple and ancient patterns coming together and falling apart in a sincere attempt to let wires and screens and words become clear and crystal. They keep a busy schedule of performances and visits and festivals and workshops and things, in the present, and in the past: NY's PS1, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Institute for Contemporary Art, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, Los Angeles' The Smell, NY's The Kitchen, and the 2008 Whitney Biennial. In the future: The Smithsonian Institute's Hirshorn Museum, etc. Lucky Dragons live in Los Angeles California and have recorded seven albums which are all available for downloading. Lucky Dragons' sister projects include "sumi ink club", a weekly collaborative drawing society, and "glaciers of nice", a small press and internet community.