Installation view of Final Projects: Group XXXIV - Material and Culture. Photography by Mark Escribano, 2012.
Architects Lukas Allner, Moritz Heimrath, and Mechthild Weber developed alternative strategies for screening films, moving towards a more spatial movie experience and away from the classic arrangement of a single screen with seated audience. During the opening on September 6, the architects presented a full-scale, fully operable installation, Cinema³, in the front yard of the Schindler House.
Artist Johannes Schweiger spent his time in Los Angeles focusing on denim as emblematic of modernity and Americanness. His installation EXCAVATION, examined how wearing denim was once a visual statement (be it one of freedom, labor, rejection of cultural traditions, etc.) that has since degenerated into a broad, ceaselessly branded consumer good and nearly empty signifier.
Artist Kamen Stoyanov started growing tomatoes in the courtyard at the Mackey Apartments during his first week in Los Angeles. The resulting project, Stoyanov’s Tomato Soup, reflected different layers of artistic production and the urge to make something real in an increasingly digital environment. Conceptually, the project began as a literalization of the popular Facebook game, Farmville, in which players grow virtual crops. Using the garden of an historically significant building, Stoyanov considers the space of the garden as an artist’s studio; Los Angeles and the city’s virtual (e.g. cinematic) self; and the contemporary and historic class issues around gardening and farming in Southern California. At the Schindler House, Stoyanov presented the work in an installation of video, sculpture, and the artist’s signature tomato soup.
Artist and architect Kostis Velonis produced a body of work in direct response to research into R.M. Schindler’s 1949 Janson House, the work of its owner, modernist poet Ellen Janson, and the romance between the architect and the poet. Beginning his project with a simple interest in the design of two chairs—Schindler’s Kings Road House sling chair and his similar Janson House chair—Velonis presented their symbiotic relationship through collected ephemera and newly produced sculptures.
