Performance at Le Castel to promote NEW Laboratory

Title: Speak or Listen, Acrylic on canvas 50cm x 60cm

Last week, Lala Drona brought down the house with her debut performance in French at Le Castel, a private club  located in the 6^th arrondissement of Paris. 

Le Castel was founded by the French event coordinator, Jean Castel in 1962.  Many knew Jean Castel as “le roi des nuits parisiennes” (the king of Parisian nights), Private performances, artist-types and parties continue to roll through this institution today.   In the basement of the building, there are sofas and chairs surrounding a stage. On the stage last week, the painting titled “Speak of Listen” by Lala Drona was displayed.  Performance artist Wenjue Zhang, placed black boxes containing peep-holes around the room.  Inside said boxes, lied an image, erotic and explicit…saturated in colour.  Hypnotic music began to play in the background, and Lala Drona stepped onto the stage… (video below).

Lala Drona’s performance titled “Experiment 88: Speak or Listen” recounts an artist’s (Jade Edwards’) experience in Lala Laboratories.  The artist is the subject in an experiment that will result in artistic revelation (article continues below):

still from performance at Le Castel

Sources say that this performance serves as an advertisement for the new Lala Laboratory.  Since 2014, Lala has had quite a bit of trouble due to her unconventional inspiration extraction methods from muses.  She has gone to Art Prison, inspired muse protests and strikes, and inadvertently caused changes in muse rights legislature. After the Lala Laboratory explosion in 2016, Lala Drona has simultaneously been looking for a place to put down roots, whilst also dodging investigations into inhumane Lala Laboratory experiments.

still from performance at Le Castel

Since 2017, Lala Drona has been traveling the world in the form of an exhibition tour.  She stated last week, “I’ve been traveling in order to look for a new place for Lala Laboratories. And finally, I’ve found it.”  Lala Laboratories, formerly “The Lala Laboratory” had to change its name due to copyright issues, but according to Lala, that wasn’t the only change that took place. “Lala Laboratories no longer includes muses in their research and experiments.  After the protests, the project got a bad rap.  It was almost impossible to get anything done due to new bureaucracy and protections.  Now, thanks to the former muse experiments, we’ve collected all the data that we need, and it’s time to open our experiments to their proper demographic.  Now, Lala Laboratories serves to enhance artist inspiration and methods, through experiences catered to each individual artist.  The performance at Le Castel was a simulation of that…sort of an advertisement for the new laboratory, if you will.”

When questioned about the location of Lala Laboratories, Lala explained: “It took going all over the world, and encountering every problem imaginable to get to the solution.  Lala Laboratories has installed itself in the intangible: in the virtual spaces online, in every conversation, and in every collaboration and project connecting to us.  If you have interacted with myself, my Drones, muses, and my community in any way, you ARE part of Lala Laboratories.”

Drone Kesabe breaks routine with “Creatures of Habit”

Lala Drona was expected to perform at Paris Lit Up’s magazine release party last week. Instead, Drone Kesabe, an assistant to Lala Drona, was sent to stand in for Lala in her absence.

Once called to the stage, Drone Kesabe explained to the audience that Lala Drona had been held up during her art research. She stated that Lala Drona had been conducting art experiments to find the perfect colour, a color too strong for the human eye, a deadly color: “…Essentially a colour that kills” she said. Lala Drona and her team had some sort of breakthrough, and so she was unable to come to the event.

Drone Kesabe then began to read Lala’s poem to the audience in a low and airy voice:

(Creature of Habit)

These creatures look for the familiar in the unfamiliar. Tell me, why do you put on shoes?  Only to walk with blind feet.  You process a new place based on past processes.  The past with its conquering mentality—in your mind—time cannibalizes itself, past taking present.  Is there a reason you can only see back in time, but not forward?  Creatures of habit, only see what they know, and this is how I come to you “th-th-th-th-th-th.”

Repetition, monotony, boredom, commitment, dedication, loyalty, rigor: you play me over and over, conjuring my face in every note of that song—the song that was playing when the Thing happened.

 I’ll stay with you and tell you what to do, so the Thing doesn’t happen again, you think—

–And I let you know that your instincts are shit, listen to me, I was there, and I’ll keep you safe. 

Creatures of habit, based on a fact, based on a television, based on a story…this only serves to take me with you—in your mind—. 

Perched on your back making nests of knots in your shoulders, making my way to your belly—Let me stay here a bit while you recognize the pattern of that familiar ceiling in the walls of this unfamiliar venue.  The same pattern of where the Thing happened, when you had no control, I came, that’s where we met the first time.

Watch the new patterns, registered by old ones, process, tilt you head back further, further, thaaat’s it. “th-th-th-th-th” stop breathing now because the past doesn’t breathe, and we never left that moment—in your mind—I’m here with you, when no one else will be.  And I’ll never leave you, not if you keep looking…looking for our familiar in the unfamiliar.  Creature of habit. 

Poem “Creatures of Habit” by Lala Drona © 2019

The launch party went off without a hitch while artists, poets and creative-types mixed and popped off celebratory champagne. As for the work Lala Drona is developing behind the scenes, our investigative journalists haven’t seemed to be able to get beyond Drone Kesabe’s statement at the PLU launch party.

Based on a Fact caught up with art trend expert Valerie Cogie who weighed in on the situation. “If we take a look at Lala Drona’s paintings, it’s quite obvious that she’s chosen to express through the grayscale. As stated in previous interviews, this was due to her reaction to traveling the world. She stopped seeing the world in binary oppositions: black/white, right/wrong… and started paying more attention to the in-betweens…the grays. Perhaps, she has reached a point where she wants to start incorporating colour into her painting universe. I’d rather not speculate further on the psychological implications of this.”

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