Villa Aurora Events Archive
May 2023
Meet The Artists
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Participants
Born 1966 in Duisburg, studied Film and Communication Studies at the FU - Free University Berlin. Nina Fischer, born 1965 in Emden, studied visual communication at the Berlin University of the Arts and directing at the DFFB - German Film and Television Academy Berlin. The Berlin-based artist duo has been working together since 1995.
Born 1965 in Emden, studied visual communication at the Berlin University of the Arts and directing at the DFFB - German Film and Television Academy Berlin. Maroan el Sani, born 1966 in Duisburg, studied Film and Communication Studies at the FU - Free University Berlin. The Berlin-based artist duo has been working together since 1995.
Born in 1994 in Räckelwitz, studied Political Science, German Literature and Cultural Management. He now lives as a freelance author in Görlitz. His texts focus on the reunification of Germany and the transformation processes during the post-reunification period especially in the region of Lusatia.
Born in 1984 in Achim, Annika Kahrs studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. She currently lives and works in Hamburg and Berlin. In her videos, installations and performances, Annika Kahrs explores the margins of music and questions its cultural and social function, its communicative aspects and its formal composition. The relationship between man and nature, the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of natural science, and the representation of natural phenomena all play a part in this artistic process.
Born 1994 in Hamburg, Paulina Lorenz studied film, music and visual culture at the University of Hildesheim and Brown University, and holds a M.A. in migration studies from the University of Copenhagen. In 2015 she co-founded the German film collective JÜNGLINGE, which explores queer-feminist and postmigrant perspectives in film, television and popular culture. Today she develops, writes and produces feature and episodic work, such as the 2020 Teddy Award winner "No Hard Feelings."
Raised in the hybrid cultures of Germany, Faraz Shariat, born in 1994, sees migration and the post-migrant state of mind as a potential for queer, diverse, and most of all political stories about living together in our society. Indulging in bold pop imagery, his films aim to build a space we can all connect to. They empower unapologetically: Seen through a tender and radically honest gaze, his characters always preserve their agency, no matter how catastrophic the world they live in.
Screening & Conversation with Dana Kavelina
Thomas Mann House (1550 N San Remo Dr, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
Join us for a screening and conversation with Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House Distinguished Visitor, Ukrainian filmmaker Dana Kavelina! Kavelina will share two films, the surreal anti-war film Letter to Turtledove (2020) and her most recent work, It can't be that nothing can be returned (2022), a science fiction video set in post-war Ukraine. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist and curator Asha Bukojemsky.
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.
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.
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