Lucky Dragons

Additional members: Sara Diaz, Jasmine Albuquerque

"Lucky Dragons" means any recorded or performed or installed or packaged or shared or suggested or imagined pieces made by Luke Fischbeck, Sarah Rara, and/or any sometimes collaborators who claim the name.

Fischbeck and Rara have presented interactive performances and installations at MOCA Los Angeles, The Smell, Smithsonian's Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Whitney Museum of American Art (as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial), The Kitchen and PS1 in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, REDCAT and LACMA in Los Angeles, Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, ICA London, ICA Philadelphia, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

The name "Lucky Dragons" is borrowed from a Japanese fishing boat caught in the fallout of hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the 1950s. The crew stricken ill, and the boat itself contaminated, the "Lucky Dragon" became a crystalizing symbol for the previously diffuse worldwide anti-nuclear sentiment. Eventually the boat was painted black, renamed the "Dark Falcon", and put into reuse as a fishing vessel, until it was retired and disposed of on the man-made trash island "Dream Island", where it remains today.

Lucky Dragons are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures--equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, building up fragile networks held together by such light things as skin contact, unfamiliar language, temporary logic, the spirit of celebration, and things that work but you don't know why. 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 thousands of people. At the heart of it all is playing together--building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technological presence. 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.

Lucky Dragons' sister projects include Sumi Ink Club--a weekly collaborative drawing society, and Glaciers Of Nice--a small press and internet community.

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