Villa Aurora Events Archive
August 2018
Welcoming Reception
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Participants
Vika Kirchenbauer - visual artist, writer and music producer based in Berlin - will give a short introduction into her interdisciplinary method. Focusing on the political frictions between sound, moving image and performance, she will talk about the role of research and context in her work.
Stef Heidhues: "I regard my works as spatial images, as stage sets for a not (yet) written, not (yet) lived or experienced but potential narration. Thus, they create what I describe as tension fields: resonating spaces which arise out of the encounter of visually experiencable situations that can be experienced visually and read individually by their viewers."
Berlin based Hanno Leichtmann, electronic music producer, sound artist and curator will give insight to his various projects as well as to his current work in progress here in LA, a multichannel sound installation for the German dance company Sasha Waltz and guest.
Sarah Kürten's art is based on language. The author and artist creates conceptual texts, which she transforms into theater- and audio plays, large prints, installations and artists books. Thus her oeuvre meanders between performative expression, installation and narration. Her obvious interest in typography, graphic design, and text-image create the illusion of visual poetry. Kürten writes all of her texts herself, mostly in English. Many of them evolve from personal experience and situations, regarding architectural and institutional contexts.
Excerpt of a Performance FRAU BERLIN FRAMED (multimedia performance with i-pad camera, waterproof interior moulding frame, tripod easel with canvas, neoprene catsuit , 2 projectors, performer)
In the 2 large-format projection images, reflective intersections and performative actions arise between physical action and pictorial representation. Between staging and reality, between intentionality and medium, between image and space, my body confronts, acts, mediates. An attempt to demonstrate how the urgency and atmosphere of physical gestures can only produce meaning in close entanglement with their multiple media avatars. Between failure and appropriation, I try to choreograph a field of tension live and in projection.
Silent Salon 2018
Villa Aurora (520 Paseo Miramar, Los Angeles, CA 90272)
Information
Following the Silent Film Special of THE ANCIENT LAW (by E.A. Dupont) on June 5th, we will honor Ernst Lubitsch featuring four of his lesser known German comedies.
Ernst Lubitsch arrived in Hollywood in 1922. He was 30 years old. He soon achieved fame for his class comedies, expressing the unspeakable with a twinkle in the eye, clever editing and suggestive dialogue making any and all attempts at censorship impossible.
The German Lubitsch is less widely known, however, his more sweeping comedic effects are well-worth rediscovering. THE OYSTER PRINCESS (1919) already foreshadowed America. One inter-title reads "Das imponiert mir gar nicht" ("I am not impressed") tossing barbs at the country’s nouveau-riches. The slightly earlier I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN (1918) stuns with a cross-dressing-plot anticipating the "anything goes" atmosphere of the "sin city" of Berlin in the 20s. THE DOLL (1919) comes across like a Punch and Judy Show, rife with paper decor and earthy comedic effects. And last but not least THE MOUNTAIN CAT (1921). The film is a satire on militarism where everything, from the camera to the props go crazy. After Germany’s loss in WW1, this masterful film was no success then, but today it is more enjoyable than ever, also due to the fact, that Pola Negri, who later played Hollywod’s statutory vamp, was able to prove her comedic talent. (Martin Koerber, Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin)
We would like to thank The Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek for their support. “Before the Lubitsch Touch” was curated by Martin Koerber, Head of Audiovisual Heritage - Film of the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen.
June 5: Silent Film Special
July 7: Before the Lubitsch Touch #1
July 28: Before the Lubitsch Touch #2
August 18: Before the Lubitsch Touch #3
The Mountain Cat (Die Bergkatze)
(Germany 1921, 85 min., starring Pola Negri, Victor Janson and Paul Heidemann)
A charismatic lieutenant, newly assigned to a remote fort, is captured by a group of bandits, thus setting in motion a madcap farce. This is Lubitsch at his most unrestrained. (imdb)
Participant
Introduction by daughter of the filmmaker Nicola Lubitsch!