Spring Scene-ing
A YACHT scene report: Eve Babitz redux, more award nods, Clip Art. Whatever Next?!
It’s springtime in Los Angeles, which means a manically alternating cloudy-scorching weather pattern that has our moods oscillating between fully cooked and traditionally depressed. But we’re sensitive that way! That’s why we keep busy.
THIS WEDNESDAY: A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
We’re playing two songs we wrote about Eve Babitz at The Huntington this coming Wednesday, May 27th. To celebrate The Huntingon’s new exhibition on women writers, we’ve worked out stripped-down arrangements of “Eve Babitz” and “Overboogie.” We couldn’t be more excited to perform them! The night will also include readings of works by Octavia Butler and Charlotte Brontë by Eloise Klein Healy, Velina Hasu Houston, Monique Thomas, and Louise Hornby. You can get tickets here, but note that you can’t get tickets at the door.
BLIPPO+ IS UP FOR AN APPLE DESIGN AWARD
This week we learned that Blippo+ has been nominated for an Apple Design Award in the most perfect category imaginable: Delight and Fun. Jona has been an Apple head since he was a teenager, and this recognition is extremely gratifying—he really labored over every pixel of the design, UI, and UX of Blippo+. Shoutout to our publisher, Panic, our dev Mark Lacroix, Telefantasy Studios, and everyone who helped make Blippo+’s mad dream into a reality. Have you played it? You should.
JONA GOES SOLO WITH CLIP ART
Jona’s been working on some really exciting new music under the name Clip Art. An album is forthcoming, but for the time being he’s testing out performing solo for the first time since Claire joined YACHT in 2008. If you like Thomas Brinkmann, Algebra Suicide, maybe Ween—and yeah, sure, YACHT—you will absolutely love Clip Art.
CLAIRE & JONA APPEARING SEPARATELY AT A FESTIVAL!?
We imagine this might happen semi-often in the future, but for the first time ever, Claire and Jona will be appearing separately at the same festival. Jona will be performing solo as Clip Art and Claire will be giving a keynote talk about her latest research on non-neural intelligence at FWB Fest. It should be a pretty incredible weekend in Idyllwild, California. Get a load of this lineup:
WHATEVER NEXT?!
We’ve been spending a lot of time in Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile, where our friend Cole is stewarding an impressive series of art events and creative interventions in a series of long-abandoned buildings at the intersection of Wilshire and Fairfax. We have an office, for the first time in our lives, at Wilshire Online, where we run around shooting nerf guns after hours like we work at a toy company.
We’ve been busy dabbling in exhibition design, making logos and flyers, and helping put together events—like the all-day “Wilshire Online Expo ‘26” in March, which was a whirlwind of installations, talks, and readings, and the one-night-only performance “buffet” we threw last week at the neighboring Johnie’s Coffee Shop! Check out documentation of that magical evening—if that looks fun, and you happen to be in Portland or Las Vegas, you can get a taste by going to see our friend Kye Grant perform their show “Times Square Las Vegas!” It’s a piece of genius.
If you’re in Los Angeles, you really should come and check out what’s happening on the block. Our very own Rob Kieswetter has a lovely exhibition of his paintings up at Wilshire Online; the New York gallery bitforms has taken over five spaces at Wilshire Online through June; the abandoned Sizzler next door is currently hosting Sprüth-Magers’ 10 year anniversary video art exhibition; Gary Baseman’s exhibition of drawings, Off The Menu, is installed at Johnie’s through June 14th. And before that, there was the massive 99CENT show and an all-star group show at the Sizzler!
In these times of imminent collapse, we choose to hang out in semi-abandoned buildings and build stuff with our friends for all to enjoy. Won’t you join us?
Yours in business and pleasure,
Claire, Jona, and Rob
