Villa Aurora Events Archive
2026
Villa Aurora X Lookout FM Radio - Episode 13 of "if the house could speak"
Radio LOOKOUT FM
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 13
Intersection with Rebecca Racine Ramershoven at 18th Street Arts Center
Due to the Palisades Fire, our friends at 18th Street Arts Center hosted our first Off-Campus Fellow, Rebecca Racine Ramershoven, from October to December 2025.
At their Intersection series, Rebecca Racine Ramershoven presented her work and project for her stay Los Angeles.
As a Black German visual artist, she uses photography, video, and objects in her work to explore issues of race-related representation, the meaning and power of community, and sociocultural questions and possibilities. The examination and integration of political and historical contexts play an immense role in her conceptual approaches.
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.
Villa Aurora X Lookout FM Radio - Episode 14 of "if the house could speak"
Radio LOOKOUT FM
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 14
Our Time Is Now
A Guest in Native America - Genoël von Lilienstern
A compilation of original recordings, collected and archival sound materials, and excerpts from Places of Yaanga by Genoël von Lilienstern — compositions for video, audio, flute, saxophone, and synthesizer. Texts by Genoël von Lilienstern.
Composer Genoël von Lilienstern traces a spiral around Villa Aurora, situated on the land of the Tongva First Nation. At various stations along the way, he recalls impressions and encounters with present-day Native American life in the region of Yaanga, now known as Los Angeles.
In the immediate surroundings of the Villa stand oak trees whose acorns once formed the staple food of most Native Americans in temperate North America. Above the Villa, along the Paseo Miramar Trail, rock formations bear Native American names such as Eagle Rock. In these rocks, one can find historical mortar holes used for grinding acorn flour, as well as petroglyphs.
In Santa Monica, Kuruvungna, one of the last sacred springs of the Tongva is said to be threatened by the expansion of a parking lot. Tongva elder Jula gives him a clapper stick and tells him his totem animal is probably a coyote.
During a concert at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, he speaks with the son of Tongva Chief Morales about Mozart. At Topanga Beach, he searches for traces of a former cemetery once adorned with whale bones. Here, he attempts to reverse the movement of the waves and to recognize the voices of the dead in the sound of the Pacific.
In Malibu Creek State Park, fictional layers overlap with the presence of a former village of the Chumash First Nation at the filming location of Planet of the Apes.
He travels into the desert to hear the Bird Songs of the Cahuilla in Morongo, and to the reservation of the Navajo Diné Nation to learn what it means for a Native American language to have survived and to still be spoken in everyday life.
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.
Villa Aurora X Lookout FM Radio - Episode 15 of "if the house could speak"
Radio LOOKOUT FM
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 15
You Ought To Be in Pictures
by Sarah Szczesny
A musical radio play, a sonic love letter to Los Angeles, to Villa Aurora, and to O-Town House Gallery—where Szczesny presented her exhibition „Sarah Loses Out (You Ought to Be in Pictures)“ following her 2021 residency. This sound collage weaves together sing-along tracks, car rides through the city, dinner readings in Marta Feuchtwanger’s library and piano plays at the Villa, candid recordings, chance encounters and fragments of film scenes and cartoons. Moving between intimacy, documentation and fiction, it creates a layered acoustic portrait of place and artistic afterlife. Part homage, part reenactment, part echo, the piece invites into a house that remembers—and sings along.
Sarah Szczeny’s method of dissecting, distorting and separating images, such as cartoon film elements, characterizes her collage, painting and video work.
She examines the conditions of painting by stretching the medium’s boundaries through experimental interventions – for example by using gif and loop techniques as well as sound effects -, a multidimensionality is created that gives the painting character of movement and thus locates it in the tradition of cartoons. In this process of animation of collages, which is so essential for her work, Szczesny combines formal studies and citations of pop culture and art history.
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.
Villa Aurora X Lookout FM Radio - Episode 16 of "if the house could speak"
Radio LOOKOUT FM
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 16
MARTA REMEMBERS
Episode 16 returns to Marta Feuchtwanger’s interview with Lawrence Weschler published in 1976.
This compilation of excerpts traces her arrival in Los Angeles and the émigré community that formed around it.
Marta begins with her departure from Marseille, recalling the improbable flight that brought her to the United States—at one point invited by the pilot to take control of the plane. From there, the scene shifts to Los Angeles, where displacement gave way to a provisional but active cultural life.
Writers, directors, and actors recently arrived from Europe moved between temporary homes and borrowed spaces, forming a loose, shifting community. Housing was scarce, resources were limited, and living conditions were nomadic and inconsistent.
Throughout, Marta’s account remains grounded in logistics and memory: securing housing, arranging transport, managing finances, and maintaining working relationships under unstable conditions. The result is a portrait of exile not as abstraction, but as a series of decisions, negotiations, and daily adjustments that made continued work possible.
The excerpts heard in this episode come from a 50-hour interview conducted by Lawrence Weschler beginning on September 15, 1975, under the auspices of the UCLA Oral History Program. Excerpts were compiled from tapes 17, 22 and 23.
Recordings courtesy of the UCLA Department of Special Collections.
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.
Saskia Warzecha at the Galka Scheyer House
YouTube
Info
In January of 2025, the Palisades Fire came within feet of Villa Aurora. Miraculously, the house survived, allowing us to continue our work promoting intercultural exchange and fostering dialogue in arts and culture.
During the process of rebuilding, we are working with local partners to present our artists’ work within the city.
Saskia Warzecha's off-campus fellowship at the Galka Scheyer House was made possible by the Grimminger Family and Blue Heights Arts & Culture.
About the Artist
Saskia Warzecha, born in Peine, studied computational linguistics at the University of Potsdam, followed by language arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and literary writing at the German Institute for Literature at the University of Leipzig. After four years as a software developer, she devoted herself professionally to literature and now lives in Potsdam. She is co-editor of Transistor – Zeitschrift für zeitgenössische Lyrik.
During her residency, Saskia Warzecha lived and worked at the Galka Scheyer House.
Villa Aurora X Lookout FM Radio - Episode 17 of "if the house could speak"
Radio LOOKOUT FM
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 17
Feuchtwanger Refreshed: Road to Yosemite
As former German nationals, Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger were deemed ‘enemy aliens’ in the 1940’s, despite being refugees of Nazism.
In Feuchtwanger Refreshed: Road to Yosemite, USC MFA playwrights will present original short plays exploring themes of migration and surveillance inspired by Marta’s solo ski trip to Northern California on the eve of her fiftieth birthday in January 1941.
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.