May 2023

About the Artist:

Dana Kavelina (b.1995 in Melitopol) is a filmmaker, animator, and artist based in Kyiv/ Lviv, Ukraine (currently fled to Germany). Working primarily with animation and video, her practice includes installations, painting, and graphics that thematize military violence and war from a gender perspective. Positioning the victim as a political subject, her works investigate the distance between historical and individual trauma, memory and misrepresentation. Dana Kavelina's residency is part of a unique collaboration with "Kyiv to LA", a cross-cultural initiative inviting six Ukrainian artists and art historians to Los Angeles from January - June 2023. Organized by Marathon Screenings / Independent Curator Asha Bukojemsky, the program invites participants for a two- month residency, culminating in a public program with a variety of LA-based organizations, including Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House, 18th Street Arts Center, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles (ICA LA), Getty Research Institute Scholars Program, and Art at the Rendon. Additional programming will be hosted by e-flux in New York. "Kyiv to LA" is made possible by a generous grant from Nora Mcneely Hurley and Manitou Fund.

About the Works:

Letter to Turtledove

(2020) 21 minutes

One of the crucial sources for this work is the anonymous five-hour documentary To Watch the War (2018), a piece of found-footage filmmaking in its own right. Letter to a Turtledove is thus a second-degree artistic appropriation of amateur footage shot during the war in the Donbass region of Ukraine, recombined into a surreal anti-war film-poem. The war videos are interspersed with Kavelina’s own animated segments, staged mise-en-scènes, and archival footage of the Donbass from the 1930s (when the region became a hotspot for Stalinist industrialization of the Soviet Union, and of heated class warfare) onwards.

There’s an actual poem at the film’s center: a monologue spoken off-screen, authored by Kavelina herself. This piece of writing encapsulates the multitude of traumas, grievances, horrors, dreams, and hallucinations that have descended upon the Donbass region since its invasion by Russia in 2014. Still, numerous elements of this multitude originate from long before the war had actually broken out.

It can't be that nothing can be returned

(2022) 55 minutes

It cannot be that nothing can be returned is a science fiction video about a utopian future world of Ukraine after the war. The citizens of the future try to understand why the violence took place and create a comprehensive computer model of history. To restore the lost equality of the past and the future, they decide to resurrect all of those who had died in Russia's war against Ukraine. The only way to heal the wounds of those they have brought back to life is through prolonged collective grief. Thus, they start collecting traumatic memories and sharing these experiences throughout society. The video was a part of an installation in Pinchuk Art Center Kiev, and was shown in a place that looks like the headquarters of future activists: the room was full of banners and placards, one of which reads, “Resurrection for everyone.”

The conversation will be moderated by artist and curator Asha Bukojemsky.

During her time the Thomas Mann House, Maria Exner will deal with the question of what contribution journalism and media can make to maintaining social cohesion in times of technology-driven polarization of opinion – and what journalistic self-image must underlie this contribution. Taking into account the perspectives of experts in California, the USA, and Germany, generalizable lessons will be drawn and made available to the public and the next generation of journalists. This evening is an opportunity for experts from both sides of the Atlantic and from different professional backgrounds to discuss issues related to journalism, technology and democracy.

Maria Exner studied journalism in Munich. She then trained as a journalist in Berlin and worked as a reporter for the WELT Group. After studying cultural sociology at the London School of Economics, she became the cultural editor at ZEIT ONLINE in 2011. Since 2015, as deputy editor-in-chief she has developed future-oriented magazine journalism and innovative digital projects for ZEIT ONLINE and ZEIT. Since July 2020, Exner has been Deputy Editor in Chief of ZEIT-Magazin. She is founding director of Publix, a new Berlin-based organization with the goal to strengthen independent media and free, critical discourse.

Eryn Brown is a Los Angeles-based editor and writer who joined Zócalo Public Square as an editor-at-large in 2017. A former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and at Fortune Magazine, she has covered science, health, business, and a variety of other subjects, and has written stories for the New York Times, Wired, Nature, and other outlets. She graduated from Harvard College in 1993. Founded in Los Angeles in 2003, Zócalo Public Square is an ASU Media Enterprise, syndicating journalism to 290 media outlets worldwide.

Colin Maclay is a Research Professor of Communication and the Executive Director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Situated at the intersections of disciplines, sectors and communities, AnnLab takes a think-and-do approach to exploring the interaction of society’s wicked problems — and opportunities — with media, technology and culture. Colin has long been motivated to understand how radical changes in communications capacity, information generation and processing affect otherwise immutable organizations and institutions, recognizing that humans and organizations are more complex than technology. Ultimately, his work asks what mix of forces will help these emerging technologies and practices to work for – not against – people and society broadly. Previously, he was founding director of the Digital Initiative at the Harvard Business School. He remains a senior researcher and member of the center’s Fellows Advisory Board.  He also spent a decade helping to build, scale and make sustainable Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Maclay holds a PhD from Northeastern University.

The freedom of art is one of the imperatives of every democracy. But does this freedom make art inconsequential? Does art have a role in addressing social issues, promoting social justice, or in defending democracy when it comes under pressure? In short: does art have a political mandate and what is the role of art in weakened democracies?

The Student Council consists of a team of highly engaged, talented, and diverse high school, undergraduate and graduate students who invite prominent guest speakers to discuss topics relating to art, culture, politics and society.

In conversation with visual artists, musicians, dancers, writers, theater and filmmakers, cultural critics, curators and others, the students will explore how the arts can make a difference in times of social and political crisis; on what social issues they can give new impulses; how they can help shape local communities; and how the alleged freedom and autonomy of the arts might impede or help the arts in terms of social and political significance.

In the Spring of 2017, Steven Lavine stepped down after serving for 29 years as President of the California Institute of the Arts, becoming President Emeritus and an Honorary Doctor of the Arts degree. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed as Founding Director of the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles.

At CalArts, Lavine oversaw a sustained period of growth in programs, enrollments, reputation, and financial stability. Among his proudest accomplishments at CalArts are the rebuilding of the campus after the devastation of the Northridge Earthquake in 1994; the national and international diversification of the CalArts student body; the building of the Community Arts Partnership; the establishment of REDCAT; and, above all, the maintenance at the center of all CalArts activity of creative and interdisciplinary exploration in the arts. He published two influential co-edited volumes: Exhibiting Cultures: the Poetics and Politics Of Museum Display (1991), and Museums and Communities: the Politics of Public Culture (1993), both published by the Smithsonian Institution.  

Lavine is currently a Board member of the Los Angeles Review of Books, the American University in Rome, and the Cotsen Foundation for the Art of Teaching. He has been honored with the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Mexico’s Othli Award.