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.
They keep a busy schedule of performances and visits and festivals and workshops and things, in the present, and in the past : the 2008 Whitney Biennial, NY’s PS1, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Institute for Contemporary Art, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle, Los Angeles’ The Smell, NY’s The Kitchen, The Smithsonian Institute’s Hirshorn Museum, Cooper Union, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, etc. “No one knows exactly what to expect from any given performance of MAHJONGG, and they’ve kept up the struggle of cultivating that spontaneity on record (…) On their first EP Machinegong they were plastic pop purveyors, afro-poppers, dance-punkers, and whatever else the hell they felt like ; scattered as the styles might have been, they struck an incredible balance on that first EP that they’ve less successfully charted on the records that have followed.” (Pitchfork)
They keep a busy schedule of performances and visits and festivals and workshops and things, in the present, and in the past : the 2008 Whitney Biennial, NY’s PS1, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Institute for Contemporary Art, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle, Los Angeles’ The Smell, NY’s The Kitchen, The Smithsonian Institute’s Hirshorn Museum, Cooper Union, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, etc. “No one knows exactly what to expect from any given performance of MAHJONGG, and they’ve kept up the struggle of cultivating that spontaneity on record (…) On their first EP Machinegong they were plastic pop purveyors, afro-poppers, dance-punkers, and whatever else the hell they felt like ; scattered as the styles might have been, they struck an incredible balance on that first EP that they’ve less successfully charted on the records that have followed.” (Pitchfork)