Villa Aurora Events Archive
2023
Subtlety, Taste, and Intelligence - Remembering Oskar Werner at 100
Villa Aurora, Los Angeles (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
In celebration of Oskar Werner's 100th birthday, Villa Aurora and the Austrian Consulate General Los Angeles present an exhibition of memorabilia highlighting Werner's stellar career curated by Felix Werner. In the context of the exhibition we will screen the 1951 masterpiece Decision Before Dawn, directed by Anatole Litvak. This event concludes a series of celebration of Oskar Werner's life and work. Last year, Werner was remembered in his native Vienna as well as in Liechtenstein, where a series of postage stamps was issued in his honor.
For more information on Oskar Werner, please refer to the official anniversary website.
Partner
In collaboration with the Austrian Consulate General Los Angeles
Against The Edge: 2023 Frieze Art Fair at Villa Aurora
Los Angeles, Villa Aurora
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Curated by Jay Ezra Nayssan as part of the Frieze Los Angeles, Frieze Projects: the exhibition Against the Edge brings the work of contemporary artists into dialogue with cultural sites across the Westside, unearthing narratives of liberation and creativity as well as exile and occlusion. Against this backdrop and our historic landmark works by Kelly Akashi will be exclusively displayed at Villa Aurora.
Like the philosopher, the author views his task as one of establishing a clear connection between life and history, and of making the past bear fruit for the present and future.
Lion Feuchtwanger, Vom Sinn des historischen Romans, 1935
Against the Edge brings together three recent sculptures by the Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist Kelly Akashi in the historic setting of Villa Aurora. Located in the garden, salon, and courtyard of the storied residence, the trio of works speaks to many of Akashi’s sculptural and conceptual concerns—how materials encode presence and absence, flowers as a marker of ephemerality, and cycles of life, death, and rebirth. The installation also evokes an historical parallelism between Akashi’s family story and the journey of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger, Villa Aurora’s earlier owners.
Akashi’s family story resonates in history with the story of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger, the former owners of Villa Aurora. Shortly after Akashi’s paternal family was forced into the American concentration camp at Poston in the early 1940s, Villa Aurora was purchased by German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta after they escaped the Camp des Milles concentration camp in southern France. Villa Aurora would become a refuge for artists and intellectuals fleeing the genocide in Europe. Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Arnold Schönberg, and others gathered at Villa Aurora as it became a site for intellectual reorganization in the wake of modernity’s greatest rupture.
In late 2022, Lion Feuchtwanger’s 1933 novel, The Oppermanns, was rereleased by Simon & Schuster. In the novel, Feuchtwanger foreshadows the Holocaust years before it begins, writing contemporaneously with the rise of Naziism and the demise of the Weimar Republic. The story follows a Jewish bourgeois family in Berlin as it confronts the rise of Hitler and antisemitism and their eventual internment in a concentration camp. Despite selling over a quarter of a million copies worldwide in 1933, the U.S. remained on the sidelines for almost a decade before intervening in Europe while simultaneously adopting the use of concentration camps for its Japanese-American citizens.
Exhibiting the work of Kelly Akashi, whose practice has engaged deeply with the site of the Poston Internment Camp, at Villa Aurora folds history in on itself. Histories that mirror from opposite sides of an ocean can inform each other and present the all-too-human weakness, horror, and resilience birthed out of hatred, insecurity, and prejudice.
To read the complete Against the Edge text and learn about other sites and artists included in Frieze Projects curated by Jay Ezra Nayssan and Del Vaz Projects, click here.
About The Artist
Material tactility, its possibilities, limitations, and transformation form the core of Kelly Akashi's practice. Originally trained in analog photography, traditional processes and the materiality of documents continue to inform and fuel her sculptural explorations. Working in a variety of media, such as wax, bronze, fire, glass, silicone, copper, and rope, Akashi investigates the capacity and boundaries of these elements and their ability to construct and challenge conventional concepts of form.
In her sculptural practice, Akashi utilizes indexical materials to emphasize the impressionability and physicality of objects. Often pairing delicate hand-blown glass or hand-made wax candles with bronze casts of her own hands, the artist captures momentary gestures, casting them into perpetual existence. Her interest in the mapping of time has led her to study fossils from extinct species in order to locate humankind amongst other consciousness that have thrived along the earth’s geological timeline. Drawing attention to the fluidity and interconnectedness of the media she uses, Akashi aims to capture the tension and physicality of objects in her practice.
Visits by appointment only. Booking is required as capacity is limited.
Partner
This project is a collaboration between Del Vaz Projects, Villa Aurora, FRIEZE and the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles.
Meet The Artists
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Participants
Born in 1984, Florian Baron took his first steps as a filmmaker during high school. From 2004 until 2006 Florian Baron lived in Japan, where he worked on several film and video art projects. From 2007-2012 he was a student in the director's department at the University for Film and Television “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam. He directed the documentary “RADIO TAXI” for ARTE, and graduated with his film “THE FINAL CALL.” In the following years he worked in the USA on his documentaries "Joe Boots" and "STRESS." In 2020 Florian Baron co-founded the production company Cannery Row Films in Cologne.
Ebow, real name Ebru Düzgün, born 1990 in Munich, is a German rapper. Ebow first attracted attention through guerrilla performances in laundromats, supermarkets or the streetcar. Today, Ebow, who lives and works in Berlin, performs on more conventional stages, but her message remains provocative and political. Solo, but also member of the Gaddafi Gals, she raps against sexism, racism and homophobia, for an open, solidary and equal society.
Paul Hutchinson, born 1987 in Berlin, studied art at the Berlin University of the Arts and at the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, London. In his photographic work, he examines social phenomena of urban life such as contemporary youth culture, social architecture, architecture and social mobility. Oscillating between moments of intimacy and political statement, he understands his artistic work as an attempt to create a contemporary and individual vision of the times we live in.
Ines Johnson-Spain, born and raised in the GDR (*1962), studied religious studies at the Free University of Berlin and liberal arts and film history as a guest at the Berlin University of the Arts. She works as a director and screenwriter. She is particularly interested in self-concepts in the field of tension between the individual and society. In the current film BECOMING BLACK she autobiographically dealt with her German/Togolese origin.
Sandra Wollner, born 1983 in Leoben, Austria, studied documentary filmmaking at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. THE IMPOSSIBLE PICTURE, her first feature, won multiple awards across the globe, most notably the German Film Critics Association Award 2018 and the Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award. Her second feature THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN premiered at the 70. Berlinale in the Encounters Section where it took the Special Jury Price.
The Diaries of Franz Kafka
Los Angeles, Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
ABOUT FRANZ KAFKA
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.
ABOUT THE DIARIES OF FRANZ KAFKA
An essential new translation of the author’s complete, uncensored diaries—a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers. "This new and scrupulously faithful translation of the Diaries brings us...the true inner life of the twentieth century’s most complex and enigmatic literary prophet." —Cynthia Ozick, author of Antiquities.
Dating from 1909 to 1923, the handwritten diaries contain various kinds of writing: accounts of daily events, reflections, observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, accounts of dreams, as well as finished stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of the diary entries and provides substantial new content, including details, names, literary works, and passages of a sexual nature that were omitted from previous publications. By faithfully reproducing the diaries’ distinctive—and often surprisingly unpolished—writing in Kafka’s notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the author’s use of the diaries for literary experimentation and private self-expression, but also their value as a work of art in themselves.
Participants
Ross Benjamin’s translations include Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Joseph Roth’s Job, and Daniel Kehlmann’s You Should Have Left and Tyll. He was awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov, and he received a Guggenheim fellowship for his work on Franz Kafka’s diaries.
Partners
In cooperation with Schocken Books.
Becoming Black - Film Screening and Discussion
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
Information
About the Documentary BECOMING BLACK
A white couple in the GDR of the 1960s explains to their Black daughter that her skin color is pure coincidence and has no meaning. This is also what the girl likes to believe until, by chance, she discovers the truth at the age of 12.
The child is filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain.
Long after meeting her biological father's family in Togo, she now, in the role of protagonist and author, reconstructs her family history in the film BECOMING BLACK.
In emotional and open conversations with her stepfather, the atmosphere of silence and repression gets impressively palpable. Slowly it becomes clear how the social environment allowed such a serious denial of facts. The private is political. While exploring her own identity, Ines Johnson-Spain unveils the big taboo that overshadowed her whole childhood, revealing the structural racism in the GDR. In connection with the touching meeting with her late-found Togolese family, the film reflects on identity, family concepts, and social norms. From the 1960s in East Berlin to the present, previously unwritten German history unfolds in this intimate and touching self-portrait.
Germany, 2019, 91 Minutes, digital projection. In German/French with English subtitles. Writer-Director: Ines Johnson-Spain, Director of Photography: Sebastian Winkels, Anne Misselwitz, Editor: Yana Höhnerbach, Executive Producers: Katrin Sandmann, Stefan Matthieu, Producer: Anahita Nazemi.
Production Company: Kobalt Documentary in co-production with Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) (Das kleine Fernsehspiel).
Participants
Ines Johnson-Spain, born and raised in the GDR (*1962), studied religious studies at the Free University of Berlin and liberal arts and film history as a guest at the Berlin University of the Arts. She works as a director and screenwriter. She is particularly interested in self-concepts in the field of tension between the individual and society. In the current film BECOMING BLACK she autobiographically dealt with her German/Togolese origin. She is currently a fellow at Villa Aurora.
Katarina Hedrén is a Swedish film programmer and film critic of Ethiopian origin, who has worked with film festivals worldwide, incl. The European Film Festival in South Africa, Film Africa (The UK), FESPACO (Burkina Faso), IDFA (The Netherlands) and Göteborg Film Festival (Sweden) among others. As a film critic she has contributed to various platforms, incl. Africa is a Country, BBC Culture, Sweden Radio, Radio 702 in South Africa and to the anthology Gaze Regimes – Films and Feminisms in Africa (Mistry & Schuhmann, Wits University Press, 2015). She regularly writes for the Swedish periodical, FLM.
Partners
An event in collaboration with our partner institution Thomas Mann House and the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.
Artist Talk: Antje Majewski
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
In her project A Journey Reversed Antje Majewski retraced the route that a member of her family, also an artist, took in 1847-49 from Bremen via New York up the Platte River, Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. He was one of many travelers on the Gold Rush and like so many, he arrived in LA in rags and sick, and most likely died soon after. With four letters that he had sent to the family, Majewski traces her ancestor's path and closely engages with the changes in the landscapes that this massive migration and taking of land, the industrialized agriculture and the extraction of fossil energies have caused.
In a separate project, The Osage Orange, Majewski looks at a tree native to Oklahoma, the Osage Orange Tree. She reflects on the different cultural practices the tree is used for and engages with issues of displacement and changes of lifestyle in her work.
About The Artist
Antje Majewski’s practice comprises paintings, video works, texts and performances that deploy an approach based on anthropological and philosophical questions. Her most recent works are centered around questioning objects, territories and plants, and focus on research surrounding alternate systems of knowledge, storytelling and the potential of transformative processes with a particular interest in cultural and geobotanical migration. An integral part of Majewski’s process is her recurring collaboration with other artists, ecological groups and urbanism-focused collectives.
Works by Antje Majewski have been shown in a number of international exhibitions including those at Kunsthaus Graz (2019), Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2018); CCA Tel Aviv (2016); Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2016); Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2015); Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz (2014); Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Berlin (2013); Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (2013); Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg (2013); Villa Romana, Florenz (2012); Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main (2012); Kunsthaus Graz, Graz (2011) and Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (2008).
Antje Majewski studied art history, history and philosophy in Cologne, Berlin and Florence, and has been a professor of painting at Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel since 2011. She lives and works in Berlin and Himmelpfort (DE).
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.
Partners
FUTUR DREI / No Hard Feelings: Screening & Discussion with Faraz Shariat and Paulina Lorenz
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles (Goethe-Institut LA Project Space, 1901 W. 7th St. Suite AB, Los Angeles, CA 90057)
Information
Join us on Thursday, June 1st, 2023 at 7 PM for a screening of the film NO HARD FEELINGS (FUTUR 3) at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, followed by a discussion with filmmakers and Villa Aurora Fellows Faraz Shariat and Paulina Lorenz and LA-based producer, writer, and filmmaker Byron Jose.
In this stunning debut from director Faraz Shariat, Parvis Zareh (Benjamin Radjaipour) is a young, proud, and openly gay son of Iranian immigrants, who immerses himself in pop culture, fashion, clubbing, and casual internet sex-dates as a means of escaping the suburban boredom of his home in central Germany. As punishment for shoplifting, he is sent to perform community service in a refugee shelter where he meets and falls in love with Amon (Eidin Seyed Jalali), a young migrant who has fled Iran with his sister Banafshe (Banafshe Hourmazdi). As the three become friends, and Parvis and Amon fall in love with each other, Parvis finds himself caught between the generation of migrants before him, the third generation of newcomers, and the rest of German society. Shariat's semi-autographical story challenges homophobia and xenophobia through a vibrant visual style full of pop culture references.
"NO HARD FEELINGS is a love story, an immigrant tale and the announcement of an exciting new talent in Shariat."
- Jessica Kiang, Variety.
FUTUR 3 (NO HARD FEELINGS)
Germany (2020) 92 min., German, Farsi with English Subtitles
Director: Faraz Shariat, Screenplay: Faraz Shariat & Paulina Lorenz,
Cinematography: Simon Vu, Cast: Benjamin Radjaipour, Eidin Jalali, Banafshe Hourmazdi, Jürgen Vogel, Maryam Zaree, Producers: Paulina Lorenz, Faraz Shariat, Jost Hering, Production Companies: Jünglinge Film in co-production with Jost Hering Filme, Iconoclast Germany, La Mosca Bianca Films.
AWARDS (SELECTION):
Berlinale 2020: Teddy Award Best Queer Feature Film; Teddy Readers Award, Panorama Audience Award, Molodist Kyiv IFF 2020: Special Jury Diploma, Outfest 2020: Grand Jury Prize Best Screenplay, Inside Out LGBT 2020: Best First Feature.
Participants
Paulina Lorenz, born 1994 in Hamburg, 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."
Faraz Shariat: 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.
Byron is a producer, writer, filmmaker, and performance artist. As an immigrant in Los Angeles, Byron engages in community-led, artistic, and liberatory projects rooted in immigrant and queer lived experiences. Byron is the Director of vuch. Language and Consulting Services, and Artistic Director and Producer of Tranza, Festival de Barrieletes en Los Ángeles, and A #NonDocumented Project. Festival de Barriletes and Tranza were presented as part of the Goethe-Intitute LA’s inaugural Neighborhood Interpretive Center in 2022, as a hyperlocal site based exhibition in MacArthur Park. Byron has previously performed at the National Queer Arts Festival, Rethinking Power & Resistance Conference at the University of Texas at Austin, and has been a guest speaker and presenter at various colleges and universities around the US.
Partners
Veronika Kellndorfer: Dialogue with Silver Lake. Metabolism of Architecture at Neutra VDL House
Neutra VDL House (2300 Silver Lake Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90039)
Information
2003 Villa Aurora fellow Veronika Kellndorfer's site-specific exhibition Dialogue with Silver Lake. Metabolism of Architecture at the Neutra VDL House explores the idea that architecture serves as a preservation of history. After the opening on June 3, 2023, tours of the exhibition can be booked on Saturdays.
Based on the idea that history is stored in buildings, Veronika Kellndorfer captures traces of time in architecture and transfers them into an expanded concept of the pictorial idea. She investigates how the past manifests itself in buildings and how these traces can be transformed into images of architectural spaces. Her work raises essential questions concerning representation and the capacity of art to create accurate and evocative images of architecture. After a research stay in the Neutra VDL House in March 2022, Kellndorfer has produced a collection of new works that respond to the site's context, history, and design.
About The Artist
Partners
Annika Kahrs, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani at 2220 Arts + Archives
2220 Arts + Archives (2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057)
Information
Join us at 2220 Arts + Archives on Tuesday, June 27nd for a screening of works by visual artists and Villa Aurora 2023 fellows Annika Kahrs, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, moderated by Hamza Walker.
Annika Kahrs will show excerpts from three different projects: installation-stills from Le Chant des Maisons (2022), a video installation that shows a sonic and visual process of construction and deconstruction, performed by different musicians and multiple carpenters at the church of St. Bernard in Lyon, excerpts from her current work in progress, Gravity’s tune, which deals with the acoustic recording of the gravitational waves, and the lord loves changes, it’s one of his greatest delusions (2018) which is based on two iconic Julius Eastman pieces - "The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc" and "Gay Guerrilla" - and the observation that the latter is based on Martin Luther's chorale "Ein Fester Burg Ist Unser Gott," the ultimate protest song of the Reformation movement. As in almost all of Annika Kahrs' works, the aim here is to exploit as far as possible the extensibility of music and science - both factually and figuratively. The individual voice asserts itself within a staging in which all nuances between harmonic interplay and provoked dissonance must be tested and endured. It is always a matter of unlearning rehearsed habits and apparent certainties in order to renegotiate everyday situations.
Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani will present their 2020 film Appropriation Takes You on a Weird Ride which investigates the strange German enthusiasm for Native Americans in relation to contemporary racism and its deep colonial roots. This fascination, especially with regard to the construction of a german identity, has a rather frightening than impressive chronology: It begins with the first-century Germanic Cherusci chieftan Arminius and stretches to the adventure novels of Karl May and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows in the 1800s, through the ethnographic exhibitions (Völkerschauen) in zoos and circuses and the founding of “Indian clubs” at the turn of the twentieth century, onward to the appropriation of Indigenous identities by Nazi ideologists, up until the present day, when new right-wing groups have developed an unsettling identification with the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.
Participants
The Berlin-based artists and filmmakers Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani have been collaborating on their interventional and situationist art practice since 1995. They reflect the rise and fall of modernity, and the intense relationship between our contemporary society and utopian projects that have driven the evolution of our history from the past to the future. Their work is a permanent pursuit of and negotiation with the transition of time. They have been awarded e.g. as Rome Prize Fellows at German Academy Villa Massimo, Stedelijk Museums in Amsterdam, Villa Kamogawa – Goethe Institute Kyoto, Tiger Short Award Winner, International Film Festival Rotterdam and Candidate for the European Film Award. International exhibitions they have participated in include 1st, 4th and 7th Gwangju Biennale, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Manifesta 4, Frankfurt, 13th Sydney Biennale, 10th Istanbul Biennial, 7th and 8th Media City Seoul Biennale, 2nd Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Manifesta 13, Marseille, Sharjah Biennial 15 and Solo exhibitions at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Berlinische Galerie – Museum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin, K21 – Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Maxxi Museum of the XXI Century Arts, Rome.
In October 2016, Hamza Walker became LAXART’s second director after twenty-two years as Curator and Director of Education at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Under Walker’s leadership, LAXART has deepened its mission and exhibition program to include thematic group exhibitions, new work with historical figures, and institutional-scale projects with emerging and established artists.
Partners
"Martha Liebermann: A Stolen Life" (Online Screening & Conversation)
Online
Information
Join the Holocaust Museum LA for a special screening of Martha Liebermann: A Stolen Life, a film about a woman's courageous escape from Nazi Germany. The screening is part of the Teicholz Film Series.
Berlin, 1943. Martha Liebermann could have never imagined being forced to leave her beloved homeland at the age of 85. As a Jewish woman, however, she is faced with the decision of her life: should the bourgeois widow of the world-famous and highly revered painter Max Liebermann continue to hope for an exit permit from the Nazis, or flee to Switzerland with the help of Hanna Solf and her resistance group? Martha knows that her previous fame and fortune will not protect her from deportation to the concentration camp for much longer. With a heavy heart, she decides to leave her beloved homeland illegally and thus leave her deceased husband’s works to the Nazis.
While Hanna and her friends are preparing to flee, Gestapo commissioner Rudolf Teubner sets a deceitful trap for the Solf group, which also puts Martha’s housekeeper Luise Wagner in serious danger. In order to save Luise and her other helpers, Martha makes an extremely courageous decision…
Journalist Tom Teicholz is joined by Jordanna Gessler, Vice President of Education and Exhibits at Holocaust Museum LA, Professor Helga Schrekenberger, Holocaust scholar and Chair of the German and Russian Department at the University of Vermont, and Dr. Holli Levitsky, Director of Jewish Studies at Loyola Marymount University, in a conversation about the film.
This film is provided by Menemsha Films and directed by Stefan Bühling, with a screenplay from Marco Rossi, and produced by Regina Ziegler and Tillman Geithe. The film will be released in theaters in the US and Canada in early 2024.
Partners
An event by the Holocaust Museum LA, co-presented by Villa Aurora and Thomas Mann House.
The Origin of Values - Presentation and Discussion
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
The Origin of Values is the result of explorative journeys which Sabine Scho, a poet-turned-photographer and Villa Aurora alumna, and photographer and biologist Matthias Holtmann have undertaken over the past six years: To the island of Vilm near Rügen, to Iceland, to the Pantanal in Brazil and the national parks of South Africa. In places of undisturbed nature they investigate how it is economized by what mankind considers to be of value: the soil becomes a resource, the wilderness a cultivation area, the animal body an article of exchange.
The prologue of this new work begins in the Pantanal in Brazil, one of the largest contiguous inland wetlands and most species-rich hotspots on earth, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There, the greediness of the human species is leading to unbridled land consumption for the cultivation of sugar cane and soy. Thus, the wetland now faces its disappearance - far from the benefited places of meat and ethanol consumption.
After the reading of Sabine's poem "The Origin of Values" and short presentations. We will hear about local projects and continue the discussion with our guests Bob Ramirez (Kuruvugna Springs) and Lauren Bon (Metabolic Studio).
The Great Vibration
Join Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio at Villa Aurora for an immersive construction noise listening event--"The Great Vibration," a premiere by Metabolic Sonics. This experience features field recordings captured during construction of the ambitious project, "Bending the River":
At our studio site, beside the iconic LA River in downtown Los Angeles, we are currently driving sixty-foot shoring panels deep into the ground. These panels play a vital role in holding the earth, allowing us to create a "mother well" at Metabolic Studio. Within this well, we will receive the water diverted from the flow of the LA River, before it is lifted into our native wetlands for treatment.
"The Great Vibration” will be a ten-minute listening session, we will share the vibrating of the shoring panels and some visual material, enhancing the overall sensory experience. Please be aware that this event may challenge some listeners, but we believe that pushing boundaries and exploring the realm of sound is an essential part of artistic expression.
Participants
Sabine Scho is a photographing author based in Rome and Berlin. Her texts oscillate between photography, drawing and image. Her projects live strongly from cooperation. Among them:
"The Origin of Senses" together with Andreas Töpfer (Museum for Natural History Berlin 2015), "House for a Boxer" together with Sebastian Felix Ernst and Golden Diskó Ship"(Hatje Cantz 2021), "Color Sequence" together with Matthias Holtmann (Spreepark Berlin 2022) and the ongoing project "The Origin of Values" (Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V., Berlin 2021).
She taught "Uncertain Formats" at the German Literature Institute Leipzig 2018/19. Scho has been awarded the German Prize for Nature Writing 2018 and Rome Prize winner of the German Academy Villa Massimo of the academic year 2019/2020.
Matthias Holtmann is a German Biologist, Photographer and School Director. He collaborated with Sabine Scho in several publications, projects and exhibitions such as "Animals in Architecture" (2013), the ongoing "The Origin of Values" as well as "All Birds Vanish" (Villa Massimo Rome 2021) and "Art and About" (Spreepark Berlin 2022).
His photographic work can be found in publications for literary festivals and newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. After working in Hamburg, São Paulo and Berlin, he currently serves as the principal of the German International School in Rome.
Meet The Artists
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
Throughout the day
Sergey Khismatov
ROTONDA (2022, ca. 25’ / Loop)
The piece is based on hundreds of videos of squeaky doors, recorded by different people around the world. All the videos have been edited together without altering the original audio.
Projection in our garage studio
Anna Korsun
SIGNALS FOR 14 PERFORMERS WITH MEGAPHONES (2019, 20’ Loop)
Performed at Bergbau Technik Park in 2020
Audio piece in our garage studio
Nieves de la Fuente
ALVIRAH AND WILLY (2022)
Interactive browser experience for Chrome and Firefox, duration variable, color, sound, English and Spanish
The experience will be displayed on a computer in the second floor
Nieves de la Fuente
ODD//FOES (2023)
Augmented Reality experience for IOS and Android. Duration variable, color, sound.
The different “crashed” objects can be discovered inside and outside the Villa. Please bring you own cell phone, you will need mobile internet and a QR scanner
Monika Orpik
STEPPING OUT INTO THIS ALMOST EMPTY ROAD (2022)
Photobook; slideshow; choir recording (composed by Szymon Wójcik)
Display on a computer in the second floor
5:30 pm
ROUNDTABLE
with Sergey Khismatov, Anna Korsun, Nieves de la Fuente, Monika Orpik and Emre Dündar in our salon
6 pm
Emre Dündar
PRESENTATION
in our salon
Participants
Nieves de la Fuente was born in Madrid, Spain and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. From 2013 to 2016, she studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne where she completed her postgraduate studies. In 2018, she began working as an art research assistant at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and later at the Academy of Fine Arts Burg Giebichenstein Halle (Saale).
Monika Orpik was born in 1997 in Poland. She’s currently pursuing her MA degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Orpik’s methodology involves working with specialists across various disciplines e.g. composers, anthropologists and linguists to allow for a space of interaction and exchange of knowledge. Her research focuses on unnamed things, moments undepicted in images, and the collapse of meaning caused by the use of inadequate language. Further she is interested in stories often omitted from mainstream historical records and the misuse of classification processes that impacts the narrative gaps. In her work she investigates methods used to describe experiences often named as those unspeakable or unspoken within the subject of war, violence and trauma. She incorporates photography, book making, text and sound in her work.
Emre Dündar is a composer, pianist, improviser, and academic scholar based in Berlin who is originally from Istanbul. Dündar composes his work in line with his ever-changing interests and curiosities which are all related to the concept of narrativity in its broadest sense. As a composer he decides on how to apply composition related techniques within an aesthetical-rhetorical context that he identifies with each individual creation. Depending on the context, he uses various compositional techniques, ranging from polystylism to serialism, extended modal material, spectralism, and even traditional tonality.
Sergey Khismatov was born in St. Petersburg. Khismatov did his post graduate education at the European University in St. Petersburg and in 2010 - 2012 he attended the composition seminars of Moritz Eggert in Munich. Today he works as a composer and a multimedia artist.
Anna Korsun was born in Ukraine and completed her compositional education at the Kyiv National Academy of Music, the University of Music, and the Theatre Munich. Today she works as composer, performer and teacher in Germany as well as around the globe. Korsun’s work focuses on a variety of different formations that vary from solo to orchestra and include acoustic instruments, voice, electronics, and sounding objects. Her work incorporates visual art, theater, dance and literature.
Multiverse and Multilingualism
Los Angeles, Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
Tzveta Sofronieva in conversation with Gail Wronsky about the concept of literary multiligualism and otherverses in poetry.
ABOUT MULTILINGUALISM
"For me multilingualism is an immanent feature of the Anthropocene aesthetics. The density in poetry increases in the current epoch corresponding to developments in other fields of knowledge and the arts. It is the polylogue that enables emotion knowledge about the chasms for which we need common decisions, and in the search for “more language” enriches our visions of possible paths towards an acceptable future together.” - Tzveta Sofronieva
ABOUT THE EVENT
Tzveta Sofronieva will read from her new collection of poems “Multiverse”, predominantly written in German but also in Bulgarian and English. Together with Gail Wronsky, she will talk about the concept of literary multilingualism and otherverses in poetry and an honest approach in creative writing related to science and technology as well as to cultural representation.
Participants
Tzveta Sofronieva is the multilingual author of more than 20 books including two published by White Pine Press: the collection of new and selected poems Multiverse (2020) and A Hand Full of Water (2012), which in the German original was awarded an Adelbert-von-Chamisso Prize (2009) and, in translation by Chantal Wright, a 2009 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant and the 2012 Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation. Tzveta’s poetry has been translated into 19 languages. An alumina of the Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades (2005) she is currently Writer in Residence in the IWP in Iowa. A physicist and historian of science by training, she is also a playwright, essayist, anthologist, and poetry translator. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, she is home in Berlin, Germany.
Gail Wronsky is the author, coauthor, or translator of sixteen books of poetry and prose. Her latest collection of poems, The Stranger You Are, with artwork by the renowned artist Gronk, is recently out from Tía Chucha Press. Other titles include the poetry collections Under the Capsized Boat We Fly: New & Selected Poems (White Pine Press); Dying for Beauty (Copper Canyon Press); Poems for Infidels (Red Hen Press); and Fuegos Florales/Flowering Fires, a translation of Argentinean poet Alicia Partnoy’s poems, winner of the American Poetry Prize from Settlement House Press.
Partners
In cooperation with White Pine Press and Beyond Baroque.
Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra performs works by Cathy Milliken | California Festival
Los Angeles, Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
We have the pleasure to host a concert of compositions for voice and strings by our composer-in-residence Cathy Milliken as part of the California Festival. On Saturday, November 4th, at 4pm, the
About the Program
OCTOPUS CUTS 1-5, 2023
Cathy Milliken
CRIE, 2018
Cathy Milliken
OBJECTS, 2001/2023
Cathy Milliken
STRING QUARTET NO. 2
Arnold Schoenberg
Partners
In cooperation with the California Festival and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra
Meet The Artists
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Participants
Anke Völk studied painting at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien and the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe. Today she lives and works in Berlin. In her conceptual idea of an expanded painting Anke Völk explores the boundaries of the painting and expands them within the image, the image carrier, and the location where the painting takes place.
While in LA, Anke Völk is exploring image conditions in the sense of an expanded understanding of the image in her paintings. Her works aim at expanding genre boundaries in painting, a connection between painting and other media, which, in turn, always implies a questioning of the image. At Meet the Artists, she will give insights into her work on site.
Cathy Milliken is an award-winning composer performer and creative director. She is at home in many genres: chamber and orchestral music- film music, music theatre, installations and opera. She is also passionate about social music practice and has led and co- created many participatory musical interventions and works.
During her time at the Villa Aurora as fellow, Cathy Milliken is composing a string quartet for the renowned Arditti Quartett in order to celebrate their 40th Jubilee as well as to compose something that is unusual and perhaps even new for them. At Meet the Artists, she will share results of her search for new sounds and for the different possibilities of using voice alongside her instrumental writing for the quartet. She will also be showing other works of hers that are precursor works, experiments or experiences which in different ways essentially seek to embody instrument and voice.
Janine Eggert studied Visual Arts at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg and at Ar.Co, Çentro de Arte & Comunicaçao Visual, Lisbon. As an artist, she navigates between different media forms such as sculpture, installation, printmaking and video. Since 2005 she has worked both as a solo artist and as a duo together with Philipp Ricklefs. Eggert’s work has been exhibited internationally including in Zurich, New York, Miami, London and Valencia.
At Meet the Artists, Janine Eggert will present examples of her work and artistic approach and share insights into her ongoing image search for Googie architecture. Visitors can also view a recent video project of hers which cinematically and sonically transforms the Alpine landscape it seeks to explore.
Paula Fürstenberg grew up in Potsdam. After residing in France for two years, she studied at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel from 2008 to 2011. Today, she lives and writes in Berlin.
At the reception, Paula Fürstenberg will read passages from her upcoming novel Weltalltage (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, February 2024) in English translation and engage in conversation about the presented text as well as her current projects.
Politics and Fiction: Lion Feuchtwanger’s Oppermanns
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
Reading from the revised English translation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s The Oppermanns by Joshua Cohen, followed by a discussion with Joshua Cohen and Andrea Grossman.
Lion Feuchtwanger’s 1933 novel The Oppermanns narrates the fall of a prominent German Jewish family caused by the Nazis rise to power, chronicling historical events almost contemporaneously. It is also Feuchtwanger’s last work set in his own century. The Oppermanns will become a point of departure for a discussion about political arts which is often dismissed as propaganda, "but is in fact the only available corrective to the real and actual propaganda of entrenched power” (Joshua Cohen). Poignantly, the event will take place at Feuchtwanger’s exile residence in Pacific Palisades where he found refuge from Nazi prosecution and, again, became a target of government surveillance.
In cooperation with USC Libraries.
Read more about The Oppermanns
"A Classic Novel of the Nazis’ Rise That Holds Lessons for Today" by Joshua Cohen
"Ninety Years Ago, This Book Tried to Warn Us" by Pamela Paul
In connection with the Thomas Mann House Annual Conference “Arts in Times of Crisis. The Role of Artists in Weakened Democracies” November 18-19, 2023.
Participants
Joshua Cohen's books include the novels Moving Kings, Book of Numbers, Witz, A Heaven of Others, and Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto; the short-fiction collection Four New Messages, and the nonfiction collection Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction. Cohen was awarded Israel’s 2013 Matanel Prize for Jewish Writers, and in 2017 was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. His most recent novel, The Netanyahus, won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He lives in New York City.
Andrea Grossman is the founder and president of Writers Bloc, a nonprofit literary series now in its 28th season. Writers Bloc hosts thought leaders who have made a significant impact on our cultural landscape. The series has hosted artists, novelists, journalists, historians, social critics, and Members of Congress who engage with the reading public of Los Angeles. Andrea has a B.A. in English from UCLA and a Masters from the Annenberg School at USC.
Partners
In cooperation with USC Libraries.
Approaching Marta Feuchtwanger: Sonya Schönberger in Conversation with Marianne Heuwagen
Berlin
The installation “Marta” at the Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in the Villa Oppenheim is a fascinating tribute to the life of Marta Feuchtwanger. During a three-month stay in Marta Feuchtwanger's room at Villa Aurora, Schönberger deeply immersed herself in Marta's world: she slept and worked in the same rooms, looked out of the same window, and saw herself in the same mirror.
In the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, she came across personal items of Marta's, which were stored in small, seemingly arbitrarily assembled boxes. Schönberger staged and documented these objects to gain a deeper insight into Marta's life and tell her story in a new, intimate way.
Accompanying her installation “Marta,” Villa Aurora alumna Sonya Schönberger holds a conversation with Marianne Heuwagen:
Marianne Heuwagen shares her personal memories of Marta Feuchtwanger, with whom her friendship began in the late 1970s. Heuwagen lived on the American West Coast since her university days, where she established herself as a journalist, reporting for the ARD broadcasting stations, DIE ZEIT, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. For NDR, Heuwagen conducted extensive interviews with Marta, which she compiled in the feature “Ein halbes Jahrhundert im Exil.” (“Half a century in exile”)
After returning to Germany in 1986 and Marta's death in 1987, Heuwagen dedicated herself to the preservation of Villa Aurora as a cultural monument of exile. As a founding member of the Friends of Villa Aurora and long-time board member of the association, she brings a deep understanding of Marta Feuchtwanger's legacy and her influence on the cultural landscape of Pacific Palisades.
We warmly invite you to discover the world of Marta Feuchtwanger through the eyes of two women who know her in different ways.
An exhibition of the Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in the Villa Oppenheim
Lion Feuchtwanger. Reflections of a Cosmopolitan - Panel Discussion and Performance
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
On the occasion of the publication of Bin ich deutscher oder jüdischer Schriftsteller? Betrachtungen eines Kosmopoliten, Aufbau 2023 ("Am I a German or a Jewish Writer? Reflections of a Cosmopolitan"), editors Marje Schuetze-Coburn and Michaela Ullmann discuss Lion Feuchtwanger as a close observer and decisive opponent of national socialism. The volume comprises speeches and essays written between 1931 and 1949, some of which have never been published.
Asked whether he identified as German, Jewish, or as a citizen of the world, Feuchtwanger answered:
"I am a German writer,
My heart beats Jewish,
My thinking belongs to the world."
With
Josh Kun, USC Vice Provost for the Arts and USC Annenberg Professor and Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication
Oliver Jai’Sen Mayer, writer, professor, Associate Dean of Faculty, and Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives at USC's School of Dramatic Arts
Greg Hosharian, composer, conductor, and musician, on the Villa Aurora organ.
In cooperation with USC Libraries.
Please find a recording of the event on our YouTube channel.
Partners
In cooperation with USC Libraries.