Wheels of Steel @ Sushi Performance and Visual Art, August 17,18,19, 1999
Wheels of Steel, was an experimental exposition that integrated world cultures with urban subcultures, presented almost entirely by way of performance.
The event combined genres of dance, performance art, spoken word, street art, and music, which tirelessly advanced through nearly eight hours per day for three straight days.
Graffiti artists from all parts of California
and Great Britain painted two trucks
on the street in front of the building.
and Great Britain painted two trucks
on the street in front of the building.
Each performance was timed and lighted to occur in a different location within the Sushi Performance and Visual Art theater. This created a sensorial push and pull of emotion for the audience, as well as, a literal movement from one part of the theater to the next.
Punk bands, World Genres, Reggae, Hip-Hop, and solo acoustic variations of all kinds rocked Sushi, conjuring the spirits of the Re-incarnation building itself. With the music came the dance, from Aztec to B-boys and Girls.
This married nicely with the DJ competition that composed categories of mixing not commonly associated.
Wheels of Steel was centered around this experimental competition and launched a number of artists careers.
Gaslamp Killer (then DJ Willow) won the competition by a landslide at the age of 16! He skipped school to compete and blew everyone's mind!
Wheels of Steel at Sushi, examined multiplicity, collaboration, hybrid cultures, and new genres derived from urban street culture.
