Villa Aurora Events Archive
September 2019
SILENT SALON Screening: The Nut
Los Angeles (Villa Aurora, 520 Paseo Miramar)
Information
1921, 75 min.
Charlie (Fairbanks) has a girlfriend Estrell (De La Motte) who has a theory that if rich people would take a number of poor children into their homes each day, the environment would cause the children to grow up properly. Since Estrell does not know any of these rich people, Charlie offers to arrange a meeting. However, Charlie thinks impostors will do as well as real rich people, so first he hires some burglars and gamblers. Then he tries using dummies, but Estell is not fooled and becomes indignant. A wealthy man working as a reporter goes to investigate a report of a man dragging a body which turns out to be Charlie moving a dummy, allowing Charlie to finally meet someone rich.
Participant
Michael Mortilla started his full time career as a serious composer in 1976. He was company pianist for legendary choreographer, Martha Graham and was the last composer to work directly with her in the studio on a produced dance work. Mr. Mortilla served as Resident Composer for Theater & Dance at the University of California, on the faculty, and as Principal Musician from 1986 to 2000. His work is performed worldwide with commissions from the Library of Congress, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Turner Classic Movies, National Film Preservation Foundation, PBS, NPR, and The Catalina Island Museum, among others.
Exhibition: Max Göran "Assholes Live Forever"
Jenny's (4220 Sunset Boulecard, Los Angeles, CA 90029)
Information
A scaffold supports a projector, a projector-screen, and a flat-screen TV, a bench is provided for you to sit on as you watch the two videos and listen to their soundtracks. One is about twenty minutes long, and the other is ten minutes; they play contiguously, creating novel overlaps each time round. The footage was all filmed over the course of three months in 2019, in and around Los Angeles.
Initially invited to stay at Villa Aurora, under the auspices of Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, the artist then moved in with a friend and Tiffany the Scabies Cat in Lincoln Heights. He put ads on Craigslist, and met more LA residents who were willing to participate in his filming, either as protagonists or interviewees, or sometimes both.
Different textures of freedom might be found on the periphery of the city. This could be the physical periphery, as with dirt bikers who appear in the film, or the social periphery, where the furry subculture exists. Other kinds of animals also inhabit these spaces - hares, racoons, cats, foxes- and their animal freedoms are sometimes cut short by humans, sometimes protected by them. The object of pity becomes a possible vessel for feelings by proxy.
Art Production in La La Land. From the Beginnings at CalArts to the Present Digital Visual Worlds in Los Angeles.
Berlin (Flughafen Tempelhof Hangar 5 and 6 Tempelhofer Damm 45 12101 Berlin U6 Paradestrasse)
Participants
Louisa Clement, born in 1987 in Bonn, lives and works in Bonn.
At the beginning of this year, Louisa Clement was a guest at Villa Aurora, the former US exile residence of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger. Her work ties in with one of the most pressing themes of our time: the confrontation with being human in digital times. Her photographs, videos and VR projects show bodies without eyes, mouth and nose, faceless and genderless; aesthetic avatars and digital pictorial spaces in which the audience can communicate with bots. Louisa Clement talks about her experiences in Los Angeles and the influence of media technologies on her art production.
Julika Bosch arbeitet als Kuratorin in der Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover. Sie realisierte dort u.a. Ausstellungen zum Werk von Roman Siegner, Nevin Aladag u. Walter Dahn. 2019 hat sie an einer umfassenden Ausstellung zu den frühen Jahren des California Institute of the Arts mitgearbeitet. "Wo Kunst geschehen kann – Die frühen Jahre des CalArts" widmet sich den ersten zehn Jahren der Kunsthochschule und führt erstmalig die dort vertretenen Lehrkonzepte mit den daraus entwickelten künstlerischen Praktiken in einer Gruppenschau zusammen. Die Ausstellung ist noch bis bis 10. November in der Kestner Gesellshaft, Hannover zu sehen und 2020 im Kunsthaus Graz.
Partner
A Cooperation with Berlin Art Week