Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions: Katie Grinnan- PolarisSeptember 05, 2008 - October 26, 2008Opening Reception Thursday, September 4
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Katie Grinnan opens the three-part exhibition series Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions with Polaris. Katie Grinnan takes as her main subject Kukulkan's Pyramid in the sacred Mayan city of Chichén-Itzá in the Yucatan Pennisula in Mexico. Focusing on a potent relic of a non-western, vanished culture, Grinnan re-creates a contemporary interpretation of that historical site. The sacred urban architecture of the Mayans is spun into objects that reflect contemporary popular space and culture. The work reveals our own perceptions about “others” through the media of sculpture, video, drawing and sound.
Utilizing both the indoor spaces of the Schindler House and its gardens, Grinnan presents brand new work that grows out of themes she has long been exploring. This work will incorporate multi-media elements, including sound, to contribute to narratives of creation and demolition. Grinnan often utilizes two-dimensional imagery derived from photography and videos in her sculptures. Here, too, she will confound two- and three-dimensional representation, using photographs of the sun, the moon, and the Mayan ruins in her re-interpretation of a structure central to Mayan cosmology. Setting a Mayan monument inside a “monument” of Modernism, the Schindler House, Grinnan will exploit the opportunity to explore issues of recontextualization, scale and the relationship of built architecture to landscape.
Polaris is the first segment in the three part exhibition series Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions. In a rapidly changing world where complexity, uncertainty and instability are givens, it is increasingly important to combine precise focus with diverse points of view. Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions features Katie Grinnan, Ismail Farouk and Dorit Margreiter; three artists who work with place, meaning, and representation. In each case, the artist is drawing from cultural iconography, the poetics and the politics of space, and the sacred and profane in architecture. In three distinct ways, the act of cultural interpretation is questioned and problemitized. For more information on Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions, please read the press release.
sound. at the Schindler House 2008September 20, 2008Experimental Music Concerts
Organized by the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound, SASSAS. Please visit soundnet.org to purchase tickets.
Exquisite Corpse II
Saturday, September 20
Doors at 7:00 pm, Performance at 7:30 pm
With Dwight Trible, Kira Vollman, Rich West, Dan Clucas and others to be announced. A reprise of the acclaimed sound. 2004 concert based on a musical interpretation of the surrealist technique of Exquisite Corpse.
"The Garden" Film ScreeningOctober 15, 2008Reception at 6:30 pm
Screening at 7:00 pm
Followed by Q & A with director Scott Hamilton Kennedy and South Central Farmers representative Tezozomoc, “The Garden” is an award-winning documentary about the impassioned public battle over Los Angeles’ South Central Farm. Created from the ashes of the L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farm was the largest urban farm in the United States until its destruction in 2006. “The Garden” follows the farmers’ struggle to save the farm, exploring the fault lines in American society and raising crucial questions about liberty, equality, and justice for the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions: Ismail FaroukNovember 06, 2008 - January 04, 2008Opening Reception
Wednesday, November 5
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
For the second part in the exhibition series Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions, Ismail Farouk, a MAK Urban Future Initiative Research Fellow, will present a survey of his activities and strategies for activating change, including video, photography and performance. Farouk’s focus on the urban spaces of Johannesburg, South Africa point the Western viewer to spaces, vocabulary and politics that initially seem foreign but which are deeply tied to Western power structure. Utilizing contemporary media and mining his own position, he produces artwork that questions the occupation of space and what that means in a post-apartheid era.
About the MAK Urban Future Initiative
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture Los Angeles, at the Schindler House, is pleased to announce the launching of a fellowship program, the MAK Urban Future Initiative, focused on contemporary urban issues.
About UFI
Funded by a major grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the MAK Urban Future Initiative (UFI) is a fellowship program in which cultural researchers from diverse nations will come to Los Angeles for two months, live
in the exemplary L.A. modern Fitzpatrick-Leland House (R. M. Schindler, 1936) and pursue a research topic related to urban phenomena. Fellows will come from nations that are under-represented in the Los Angeles discourse; the MAK Center will work closely with them to create a meaningful cross-cultural exchange. The goal is to generate concepts for the urban future by stimulating dialogue and mining both Los Angeles and international resources.
The objectives of the program are to:
• Welcome international urban-focused researchers to Los Angeles, and connect them to the city through its architecture and its creative/intellectual community.
• Record, log, and publish their cross-cultural exchange online and in print.
• Enliven a work of architecture by R.M. Schindler by inviting guests from far and near to share the space while pursuing creative and intellectual interests.
Fellows
The MAK Center is pleased to welcome its first fellow, Marco Kusumawijaya. Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, he is an architect by training who has been active in the fields of architecture, the environment, cultural heritage, urban planning and development for 20 years. He has worked with the private sector, international agencies, governments and NGOs, and also writes and lectures, with a special interest in sustainable urbanization and social changes that promote sustainability. In 2001, he started Green Map in Indonesia, as part of an international effort to map the natural, cultural and green resources of communities throughout the world. Kusumawijaya plans to study the relationship between the last 100 years of urban history in Los Angeles and the levels of material and energy used in the production and operation of its built spaces. This will contribute to his long-term study of means to promote sustainability in Jakarta and other Indonesian cities.
The other UFI fellows hail from across the globe, including Venezuela, South Africa, Peru, Iran, and Egypt. Among the professions represented by this group are art, architecture, poetry, urban planning and more. Topics to be addressed include Latino urbanisms, “spatial justice,” the phenomenon of the urban desert, and the impact of satellite TV on translating cultural experience.
Location
The MAK UFI will be housed in the Fitzpatrick-Leland House (R.M. Schindler, 1936), an exemplary modern residence located at the crest of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. The L-shaped building is located at
cliff’s edge, with its main living spaces facing the view of the canyon below and the garage and sleeping area in a two-story side wing. The large lot allows the building to spread out and engage the landscape with a dramatic
catwalk. Schindler’s only “spec” house, it was commissioned by the developer of the subdivision to attract buyers to the area.
UFI Jury
The MAK UFI fellows submitted proposals and were selected by an international panel of leaders in the arts, architecture and planning. The panel included: Sam Assefa, Architect, Director of Policy for the Department of Planning, City of Chicago; Victoria Beard, Associate Professor of Urban Planning, UC Irvine; Sylvia Lavin, Author, Professor of Architecture, UCLA; Qingyun Ma, Architect, Dean of USC School of Architecture; Kimberli Meyer, MAK Center Director; Peter Noever, CEO and Artistic Director, MAK - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art; and Aradhana Seth, Filmmaker, Designer, Bombay/New Delhi.
Organization:
Alaine Azcona, UFI programs manager
aazcona@makcenter.org
Kimberli Meyer, Director MAK Center, Los Angeles
Peter Noever, CEO and Artistic Director, MAK - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art
Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions: Dorit MargreiterJanuary 15, 2009 - March 08, 2009Opening Reception Wednesday, January 14
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
For the final part in the three-part exhibition series Locus Remix. Three Contemporary Positions Dorit Margreiter explores Habitat for Humanity’s “Global Village Discovery Center,” a theme park in Americus, Georgia that features a South African slum reconstructed to scale. Margreiter explores the representation of urban poverty through an American educational mock-up. Architecture and interpretation collide in her work to reveal fissures in language.
