What a Wonderful World: Hard to Read takeover
Photography Anya GTA
Text Hard to Read
A six-floor playhouse. An exhibition that is not an exhibition but a poem. An “Audiovisual Poem” titled What a Wonderful World. A poem about violence, empires, visual overload, and the grace of art.
Inside of this six-floor playhouse, formerly a clubhouse for women, inside of this “poem”, Fiona Alison Duncan’s “literary social practice” Hard to Read took to the stage last week in Downtown LA.
There were twelve stages, in fact: nine performances, two activities, and a local taquito vendor. Bunny Rogers read from her books of poetry, including her latest, Sadly Glass. Matt Hilvers and Al the accordion player delivered a musical in the ballroom. MacArthur Genius anthropologist Jason De León, whose birthday it was, punk-rocked the playhouse with his kids and their band The War Pigs. 94-year-old SoCal performance art legend Barbara T. Smith made it snow in a throwback to her 1975 performance Outside Chance. Alicia Novella Vasquez became a video, re-enacting the same scene from Maya Martinez’s Theatrics over and over and over.
Patty Chang listed out the things she’s scared of right now. Harmony Holiday discussed Michael Jackson’s dream to build a museum of child stars. Lexee Smith and her coterie of angels got dressed and undressed in the dressing room, a limited audience engagement with a line to rival a Disney ride.
And finally, we brought New York to LA, but not before Leilani and Mia, the future of America, oversaw a Coumba Samba (of New York) coloring table, while upstairs, Stories Books sold out of signed books. And outside, Norma’s Tasty Food kept us grounded and sane. Music, art, story, food, dance. Hard to Read loves Los Angeles. We were a building of angels, ready to fight fire and ICE.
“God I need some money” — Alicia Novella Vasquez (performing a text by Maya Martinez)
“Things I’m afraid of: fish with many genitals, caterpillar and animals without structure, being a racist… not caring, tallying loss, garbage… suffocation… not being able to speak” — Patty Chang
“I don’t think child stars should exist” — Harmony Holiday
“At the end of the book of your life, you will flip back to the first page.” —Bunny Rogers
No words! [Barbara T. Smith’s computer snow storm, a recreation of her 1975 Las Vegas performance Outside Chance had no words]
“Now I laugh and make a fortune off the same ones that I tortured / And the world screams, ‘Kiss me, son of god!’” — Matt Hilvers (performing a song by They Might Be Giants)
“War Pigs Read Banned Books” — The War Pigs
“You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you” — New York
Speechless! [Lexee Smith’s performance left us speechless; it was also, speechless—body language]
Born in 2016, Hard to Read celebrates ten years this year. This Hard to Read event took place on Sunday, February 15, 2026 inside of “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem” edited by Udo Kittelmann for the Julia Stoschek Foundation at the Variety Arts Theater in Downtown LA.
