Cosmococa/CC2 Onobject at The Mistake Room

Cosmococa/CC2 Onobject (installation view) (2023). The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, 2023–24. Image courtesy of the artists and The Mistake Room.

In 1973, Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica collaborated with filmmaker Neville D’Almeida to create the nine-part installation series Cosmococas. The series explores the concept of quasi-cinemas, a filmmaking style that Oiticica devised to subvert the visual language of mainstream film. Numbered CC1 to CC9, each work incorporates soundtracks; tactile props like balloons, hammocks, and mattresses; and slide projections featuring images of countercultural rock icons like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa alongside album covers, books, and news clips. Making its Los Angeles debut at The Mistake Room, CC2 Onobject immerses the audience within the artists’ freewheeling visions of art and life. By disrupting the temporal and spatial paradigms of film, Cosmococa/CC2 Onobject creates an unlikely sanctuary, transforming the traditional art viewing experience into a multisensory journey.

Located in a 30 by 30 room at the far end of the gallery, CC2/Onobject features a foam floor and large sculptural pillow structures in the shapes of cubes, columns, and triangles. From the onset, the environment imparts a sense of liveliness. Visitors are encouraged to lounge as Yoko Ono’s psychedelic song “Mindtrain” (1971) plays in the background. Blown-out photographs of a quarter, a penknife, and handwritten notes arranged on a table project onto towering drapes surrounding the room. The photographs do not follow a linear narrative but rather repeat continuously, like the bright red cover of Your Children, Charles Manson’s 1970 trial transcript, which appears simultaneously on opposing screens. CC2/Onobject entices viewers to contort their bodies in order to fully absorb the amalgamation of images and sounds.

Another sequence involves the 1971 edition of Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings, an illustrated artist book by Ono. The cover boasts a black-and-white portrait of Ono to which the artists added lines of powdered cocaine, creating drawings verging on the absurd. Lines trace Ono’s oversized black aviator sunglasses, while two bumps peek out of her nostrils. Until 1992, public art institutions in the United States refrained from exhibiting Cosmococas due to its depiction of the illicit drug. For the first 19 years, it was shown only to a handful of people. Thankfully, the artists provided detailed instructions for both private and public presentations of the work as a way of encouraging participants to organize future restagings in various settings.

Immersed in the enclosed structure of CC2/Onobject, visitors can interact with pillows or jump on the mattress-like floor, becoming indispensable contributors to the installation. The artists subtly reference this idea by including photographs of Martin Heidegger’s 1967 book, What is a Thing? In this book, Heidegger discusses the transition of objects into things, which occurs when they no longer serve their intended purpose. In CC2/Onobject, visitors undergo a similar transformation. They are no longer passive spectators; instead, they actively disrupt the traditional film experience by engaging with the installation’s props, mirroring the deliberate choices made by Oiticica and D’Almeida in curating the objects on the screen.

Cosmococa/CC2 Onobject runs from October 2, 2023–March 3, 2024 at The Mistake Room (1811 E. 20th St., Los Angeles, CA 90058).

Cosmococa/CC2 Onobject (installation view) (2023). The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, 2023–24. Image courtesy of the artists and The Mistake Room.

Nahui Garcia is an art historian and curator currently living in Los Angeles. She is an MA candidate in the Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere Program at USC Roski School of Art and Design. 

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