Villa Aurora X Lookout FM Radio - Episode 7 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 7
Felix Kubin’s Mother in the Fridge (2012) radio play turns a kitchen into a stage where a mother’s voice emerges from cupboard, pot, bin, and box—offering brisk English-lesson asides and comic, uncanny counsel. An Oedipal burlesque assembled from everyday sound and crisp montage.
Following Mother in the Fridge is an excerpt from Kubin’s kinetic sound collage Flow. Created during Kubin’s 2022 Villa Aurora residency, the sonic landscape of this piece is built from recordings of Los Angeles poets and writers juxtaposed with city atmospheres like hummingbirds, traffic, and helicopter rotor wash.
In part 3 of this week’s episode of “if the house could speak”, poet Yesika Salgado reads Diaspora and Reservoir. Her voice is tracing migration, care, and the hydrology of Los Angeles, mapping time in place, gathering a narrative of what the city holds and what it lets go.
Felix Kubin is a Hamburg-born composer, radio dramatist, and media artist whose work spans futurist pop, electroacoustic composition, and experimental broadcasting. Kubin also runs the label Gagarin Records.
More info about Felix Kubin's current and ongoing projects:
Yesika Salgado is a Los Angeles–born Salvadoran poet and activist. Salgado is the author of the collections Corazón, Tesoro, and Hermosa and has had work featured by The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
More infos about Yesika Salgado's current and ongoing projects:
https://www.yesikasalgado.com/
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.
