L.D. Times Article 2019: Clare Steele and Lala Drona

The L.D. Times releases its yearly article in a new format, this time doubling its artist coverage. Clare Steele (Australia) and Lala Drona (France), talk about their digital friendship, and what it means to be an artist today.

Full Article

Lala Drona, painter / videaste, and Clare Steele, conceptual documentary photographer, first met in Seville, Spain in June 2018. They met in an all-female artist residency, and with Ezra Enzo (USA), abstract painter, became a solid international artist trio.

“They really bounce well off of one another,” said other artists-in-residence about the trio. “Since the residency, they’ve been able to keep in contact and support one another from 3 different continents through voice message.”

When approached about the topic, Lala Drona stated, “I’m so happy to have these women in my life. This is an artist friendship that represents our times: Three strong female artists, living in different countries, empowering one another by sharing our experiences through smartphone applications, in long-form voice notes. Sometimes I feel like these voice-notes are our contemporary letter-writing.”

When Clare Steele visited Paris, France in October this year, it was essential that they finally record one of these conversations. Click below to read the full article.

L.D. Times Article: Artist to ArtistFull Article

To read all L.D. Times articles, click here.

Spotted: Lala in Paris and on Crutches

Despite plans to return in August 2019, journalists have recently spotted Lala Drona on the streets of Paris sporting a new look. Ms. Drona has left her hair bleach bottles behind, and has returned to an auburn look this summer.  Accompanying her winter 2018 OAMC vest (menswear), she sported 2019 Nike-Ambush collaboration sneakers, topped off with her iconic round sunglasses by Gentle Monsters.  Previously, Lala Drona had never been caught wearing designer clothes on the streets of Paris…which begs the question: What’s with this new look?

Fashion specialists speculate that Lala’s new style reflects her growing financial success in the art world. Lala Drona can simply afford to wear the pieces that she admires, and therefore does. Another theory has Lala Drona and these brands in cahoots, suspecting a secret endorsement deal. Whatever the case, the accessories which intrigued and concerned journalists most were the crutches which support her. 

Lala Drona refused to comment when approached on the street, but journalists presume her injury was cause for her return.  Our team followed up on the story and traced back Lala Drona’s steps from her European voyage. Having stopped in Copenhagen on her way to Paris, we met up with passenger assistance.  Lala Drona, had checked out a wheelchair, and employee Emil Hansen was selected to help transport her to her terminal and airplane.  “She was friendly, and we made casual conversation.  She told me that she injured her knee painting.”

Emil Hansen failed to reveal details regarding the story, leaving journalists and fans in the dark regarding her hard core painting methods.  However, one thing is certain. The European Tour has come to an early end.  Lithuania was the last stop on Lala Drona’s year-long tour, and now she is expected to settle in Paris once again.  

Radio Interview with a Visual Artist

Lala Drona in her first ever public radio appearance on Beijing International Radio.  Listen to her interview on Touch Beijing 93.2FM, where she explains what it means to be a visual artist today, and how Beijing has inspired her art.  Stay tuned until the end where she reveals her plot for the future.

 

L.D. Times Article: The Blank Canvas, 2017

Lala Drona opens up for the first time about her experience since arriving in China in an exclusive interview with the L.D. Times.  She comments on her new video, due to release next week: “The Blank Canvas.”   A deep and inspiring article that delves into the artist’s psyche.

Click the image below to read the full 6-page spread.

 

 

Lala’s Latest Performance Art

Photos by Yegan Mazandarani (Agence Sauvage)

Lala has sent shockwaves through internet video platforms after the release of her video titled “Lala and Drone #1’s Latest Performance.” Despite media pressure, she continues to plea the fifth when asked to comment on the performance’s legitimacy.

The video begins with photographer Yegan Mazandarani shooting Lala Drona and Drone #1 in their classic black Drone attire and sunglasses. An instrumental version of “We found love” plays in the background as the camera follows the frantic scene into Paris’ Town Hall.  For the main event of the performance, Lala Drona and Drone #1, stand in front of the French authorities in order to merge their assets and forge an alliance in legal matrimony.  After a quick ceremony (and a very convincing kiss) the couple move on to the second act of the performance: signing the documents that legalize their union.  Next, the couple exit their performance to the song “Young, wild and free.”

But did they really get legally married?  As we recall, Drone #1 and Lala Drona have a rocky past.  His breach in Drone Code resulted in his exile from the Lala World,
followed by the gruesome Drone-Muse experiment which inspired Lala Drona’s tryptic Je suis la fin qui justifie les moyens (I am the end that justifies the means).  Since then, Drone #1 underwent a new Drone Reprogramming Procedure, and hasn’t left Lala’s side ever since.  Perhaps Lala has forgiven Drone #1, and this alliance is a reconciliation of all past indiscretions?  This could be the reason why the song “I want you back” by Micheal Jackson also plays in the video.

No sources have come forward in order to debunk the supposed marriage. However, another possibility could be that Lala Drona and Drone #1 legitimately married for art’s sake.  Perhaps the duo is aligning in order to critique the traditional act of marriage as “performance.”

Journalists continue to look for answers, however the officials at Town Hall will not speak to whether or not the wedding was legitimate.  It is possible that Lala could have pulled a few strings in order to create some cheap internet buzz.  Sooner or later, the truth will reveal itself.

Based on a fact.

Tony Jericho, PerformArt Magazine

 

The Tarot Unfolds: Lala relocates to Beijing

At the end of 2012, Lala arrived in Paris in search of inspiration for her paintings and world creation.  Along with inspiration, she also stumbled upon success, as gallery owners and collectors found her work groundbreaking.  She felt like a star, but all things have an expiration date…

One cold day in February 2013, while on her way to an event, Lala took a violent fall on the subway station stairs in Paris.  This painful welcome to Paris left her with a broken tooth and knocked unconscious.  Her friends rushed her to an emergency hospital where dentists repaired her teeth by sealing the cracks and capping the lateral incisor.  However, the trauma she suffered would have lasting effects far beyond this.

In the summer of 2016, Lala travelled from Paris to Sedona, Arizona and visited a medium.
The medium read the Death card, a card denoting change…the death of one thing and the beginning of another.  Lala took the card quite literally, and rushed funeral arrangements, creating plans for her last tableaux, a funeral installation displaying her body in her coffin, breasts exposed, surrounded by flowers.  Needless to say, Lala’s reaction was an overreaction, as she probably wasn’t really going to die, but still, Death wasn’t going to let her get off that easy.

In November 2016, while rehearsing her next performance piece “Phalanges revitalisation,” she felt a sharp pain around her nose and front teeth.
The pain was unbearable and her Drones took her to an emergency dentist.  The dentist found that both of her incisors were “necrosées” (necrotized, dying).  Lala underwent a “devitalisation,” a procedure where the dentist drilled holes into her teeth in order to kill the nerve and disinfect each tooth.  The dentist then filled in her two teeth like mummified bodies.  A literal Death, foreseen in the cards.  After the three-week long procedure, Lala’s teeth felt back to normal again, but, Death’s influence had just begun.  (text continued below).

Towards the end of 2016, due to too many failed art experiments, and Lala’s plunging media presence, investors in Paris pulled out from financially supporting Lala, leaving her with a large debt from which to recover.  With the Lala Laboratory destroyed, and Drones scattered around the world, Lala’s artistic success seemed ill-fated.  All her efforts were futile, and Lala at her lowest, went out to the bars in Paris, and danced another deadly dance with red wine and the Paris underground.  In the tunnels of the Paris subway, she tripped on the stairs and fell again, hitting her head on the wall.  The next morning, Lala woke up in the Paris subway with a jarring headache, and a beeping coming from her phone.   Lala looked at her phone to find an email from a group of investors in Beijing, China.  They were fascinated by her work and were inviting her to relocate her projects to their home country.  A drastic change, presented itself.  As foreseen in the cards, the beginning of one thing,  and the death of another.  Lala hastily accepted the project.

She is calling out to all Drones in Beijing, as her estimated time of arrival is mid-March, 2017.  She will spread her Drone empire, rebuild the Lala Laboratory, and resume her art/Muse experiments.

It seems the Death card has closed its chapter on Paris.  Lala’s accident on arrival in Paris caused her teeth to slowly die over the 4 years she has spent there.  Now that her teeth have finally perished, so has her time in Paris.  A promising future awaits, as Lala will soon begin her next chapter in Beijing, China.

Based on a fact.
Alisa McQueen, Art Tomorrow Weekly Magazine

Exhibition: Narcisse Obligé

Lala Drona to appear in collective exhibition “Narcisse Obligé” at La Savonnette Electrique next weekend October 15th-16th, and during the rest of the month by appointment only.

Ken Phak interviews Lala about her work and upcoming exhibition in The L.D. Times magazine.  Mirror, Mirror- L.D. Times article 2016.

Tarot Reads DEATH: Lala plans funeral arrangement.

Lala Drona has reported trouble sleeping and vivid nightmares during her spiritual walkabout through the Western United States.  Many dreams end in her death, or the death of another at her own hand.

While perusing along the rusted streets of Sedona, Arizona, Lala Drona stumbled upon a very familiar looking building.  A sudden rush of déjà vu came over her.  The font of the letters on the glass, and the rusted color on the exterior of the shop called to her.  Lala’s dream the night before involved a psychic warning her of imminent death, and the shop in front of her was the spitting image of the shop in her dream.
Lala entered and smelled the same nagchampa lavender candle that burned in the dream the night before. She sat on the paisley printed cushions in the room and waited as Madame Bonnie, the same psychic from her dream entered into the room.  Reliving the scene, Lala followed her into a hidden room in the back.

Lala answered Madame Bonnie’s question before she had time to answer it.  “Yes, this is my first tarot reading,” she said.
Madame Bonnie looked into Lala’s eyes and squinted. “You are a very sensitive person, aren’t you?  Perhaps some psychic abilities of your own?”  Madame Bonnie took Lala’s hand and read her past life.  “You were a creative…a very sensitive and spiritual woman in your past life.  Your ideas were unusual but intelligent.  There were many people around you that were jealous, and you died early on because of this…somewhere in your twenties.  You are still this woman today, but today people are much more accepting of your ideas.  This is the time you were meant to live in, so now you are living out the life she didn’t get the chance to.”

Madame Bonnie asked Lala to shuffle the cards, and laid them down on the table in a celtic cross fashion.  Lala anticipated the death card.  As soon as Madame Bonnie laid it down, she said, “Are you dealing with death at the moment, or anything resembling death?”

Lala wanted to tell Madame Bonnie of how she lived her life…of how she intentionally confronted death daily, how she called upon death  everyday in order to live life well.  To appreciate the things she had and to extract drive from it.  However, Lala responded, “No.”
“Many people fear the death card, but it can be a very positive card.  It signifies change, and in your case an extreme change in your career…the death of one thing and the birth of another.  I read that you will soon receive the type of recognition that you have been searching for in your career.”  Lala thought of her projects, the book she’d been writing and her new art piece to be released in an exhibition in October.

Immediately after, Lala called a video
meeting with several Drones and Muses to plan her funeral arrangements.  An open casket funeral displaying the body of the artist covered in flowers, only the breasts and face exposed.  As the artist has vowed to only show her breasts in her paintings, she has denied several prominent photographers her image.  The funeral will be the sole moment in the artist’s life that the public will see her breasts “dans la vie réelle.”  The installation is what Lala Drona likes to call her “final piece.”
Lala explained the piece to Based On a Fact:
“I’m not planning on going anywhere now, but I would like my life’s work to finish with something beautiful and intentional.  As Marina Abramovic said You cannot choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.”

Based on a fact

Harry Gilbert, Sedena Art Tribune

B

NO MORE DRONES!

Prospective Drones everywhere lined up on the warm-lit cobble-stone streets of Paris, for the premier of The Drones Video Project 2016.  Sporting their sunglasses, the crowd chanted Drone Code, in hopes of meeting the artist and enlisting in her Army of Drones.  Frequently at these events, one can find recruitment booths manned by the official Drones buzzing words like “transcendence,” “higher purpose,” and “transformation” into prospective recruits’ ears.   However, this time, there were no booths, no official Drones gathering the masses.  

A Lala-shaped roar formed from the people’s mouths when Lala Drona and her 35 official Drones came out from the doors of the Opera Garnier, where the Drone Video Project had just premiered.  Cameras flashed onto the black mass that consisted of the Drones and Lala.  They made their way down the red carpeted stairs, each step followed the crowd’s chanting: “Drones will be loyal to Drones, Drones will be loyal to Lala.”

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Lala Drona lifted her hand to silence the public.  She looked to Drone Ember, standing on her right.  Drone Ember stepped forward and looked at the hundreds of warm bodies standing in front of her, her head still slightly tilted towards the floor.  She stared the public down through her black industrial glasses.

“On behalf of Lala Drona and the Drones, I would like to thank all of you for coming out, and supporting our mission to reach creative potential.”  The Drones behind Ember were a black stone wall, a fortress sandwiching their art queen, Lala.  Cameras continued to flash and click.  “However, it is to my greatest regret to inform you that Drone Recruitment has been closed.”  Drone Ember raised her voice, speaking over the mob’s gasps and whispers.  “We currently do not know when Drone Recruitment will reopen, and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

The disgruntled crowd shouted and booed as Drone Ember returned to Lala’s side.  The art authorities forged a path through the crowd, and Drone #1 took Lala’s arm, leading her and the other Drones down the human-made aisle.  The 35 official Drones surged through like blackened blood through a vein, and in an instant, Lala and her Drones vanished somewhere on the other side of the crowd.

See the Drones Video Project 2016 below:

Happy Women’s Day 2016