Villa Aurora X Lookout FM Radio - Episode 10 of "if the house could speak"
In January of 2025 the Palisades Fire came within feet of Villa Aurora. Miraculously, the house survived, and with it the radio transmitter that broadcasts from there throughout the Santa Monica Mountains and the beaches below.
This series explores the voices, past and present, that reverberate at Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger’s former home. For the past 30 years, Villa Aurora has been an artist residence, a place where exile and expression meet, where history and contemporary events converge.
During the process of rebuilding and awaiting our artists’ return, we will be broadcasting newly produced, archival and historical footage for you to listen to and maybe wonder: Is this really only a house or, like Carl Jung suggests, can the composition of a room induce the realization of new truths?
Each episode of if the house could speak will be broadcast on a loop for 24 hours with no interruption starting at 12 PM Pacific Daylight Time. For our listeners across the world, that corresponds to 7 PM Coordinated Universal Time and 9 PM Middle European Time.
Episode 10
Boccalero
"If you pray more than 15 minutes a day,” she would say, “there’s probably something wrong with you. If you have your deity in your heart, there’s no reason to beg.”
Written and recorded during her stay at the Villa Aurora, Laura Stellacci’s radio piece is an audio-notebook, of sorts, compiled while researching a part of East Los Angeles’ local history. It is an evocation of the figure of an unconventional Franciscan nun, Sister Karen Boccalero (1933-1997), and the mark she left on Self-Help Graphics and Art, the experimental printmaking center that she co-founded with the queer Mexican artists Carlos Bueno and Antonio Ibañez in Boyle Heights. Her fictional stream of consciousness revisits several moments in time, like the brief period when SHG hosted a punk club in its basement: the Vex would become an important musical incubator for Chicano and Latin/x punk bands in the 1980s. The organisation continues to be an important cultural center for Chicano Art today, encouraging and supporting aspiring artists.
About LOOKOUT FM
LOOKOUT FM is a West Coast terrestrial radio home for the broadcast of "transmission art:" experimental audio composition, modern serials, data sonification, radio plays, multi-day compositions, and radio-centric performances. Their licensed stations in Burbank, Hollywood, and Pacific Palisades function as FM exhibition spaces where radio art is presented without regard to constraints of time, structure, or commercial consideration.
