Reading: Curated Decay with Jia Yi Gu and Rosario Talevi has been postponed due to illness. Please check in soon for the new date.

Contemporary preservation often prioritizes principles of permanence in the production and significance of cultural memory. With an alternative perspective, this reading circle invites you to explore philosophies of ruination as meaningful heritage culture. We will gather and read together a selection of fragments of Caitlin DeSilvey’s “Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving”. In her book, DeSilvey challenges conventional ideas around preservation and heritage conservation by acknowledging other agencies in the process of decay. 

Reading group discussions take place in a salon-style. Attendees are encouraged (but not required) to come prepared, having read an excerpt announced and made public ahead of time. Copies of the text will be provided.

CURATED DECAY by CAITLIN DESILVEY

Curated Decay chronicles Caitlin DeSilvey’s travels to places where experiments in curated ruination and creative collapse are under way, or under consideration. Through accessible and engaging discussion of specific places and their stories, it traces how cultural memory is generated in encounters with ephemeral artifacts and architectures.

An interdisciplinary reframing of the concept of the ruin that combines historical and philosophical depth with attentive storytelling, Curated Decay represents the first attempt to apply new theories of materiality and ecology to the concerns of critical heritage studies.

Landing: Tongva Land Visit with Joel Garcia has been POSTPONED due to rain and a flash flood warning. Please stay tuned for the new date.

Historic houses are widely dependent on the generous transfer of property from private homeowners to public institutions. In 1976, Schindler’s wife Pauline formally established the non-profit organization Friends of Schindler House to preserve the house for future use, transferring the house into FoSH’s ownership. MAK Center operates the Schindler House on gifted land, alongside two other properties. 

Can modernist heritage sites learn from indigenous principles of land stewardship and incorporate principles and practices of the First People? The off-site visit begins in an ancestral site in Altadena, recently returned to the  Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy. This one acre property is the the first site in 200 years ceded back to the Tongva community, since the end of the California mission system in 1833.

MAK Center invites participants to join us for a conversation on land stewardship and indigenous principles of conservation with Indigenous artist and cultural organizer Joel Garcia. 

REGISTER HERE

JOEL GARCIA

Joel Garcia (Huichol) is an artist, arts administrator and cultural organizer with 20+ years of experience working transnationally focusing on community-centered strategies. His approach is rooted in Indigenous-based forms of dialoguing and decision-making (non-hierarchical) that uplifts non-institutional expertise. Joel uses art and organizing to raise awareness of issues facing underserved communities, inner-city youth, and other targeted populations. As an artist, he uses printmaking to explore masculinity through Indigenous perspectives through his project “Tatewari,” as well as other social justice issues with his work garnering national press in publications such as the LA Times, NY Times, and Artforum among others. He’s co-founder and director of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous based arts & culture collaborative centering indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles by using arts-based strategies to advocate for and organize to highlight issues impacting native artists and youth.

Re-Writing: A Workshop on Convivial Rules with Jia Yi Gu and Rosario Talevi has been postponed due to illness. Please check in soon for the new date.

Re-Writing: A Workshop on Convivial Rules brings together MAK Center artists, architects, administrators and cultural workers to workshop the Schindler House List of Restrictions. 

The Schindler House List of Restrictions was developed by MAK Center and conservation leadership as a set of guidelines that can accommodate the inherent wear and tear of programming a historic house. As a governing document, the List of Restrictions establishes the tone and caretaking associated with the house’s use. These house rules are inherited and interpreted by generations of artists, architects, and administrators and illustrates the challenges between contemporary preservation and contemporary art, where the making of exhibitions is often a delicate act of placing art within another work of art.

The workshop invites participants to advance a culture of collective stewardship of the house and its stakeholders, through a rewriting exercise focused on language of conviviality, affirmation, and care. The resulting convivial rules will be incorporated as part of MAK Center’s house guidelines circulated to audiences and artists. 

Participants are invited to read “A Cake You Can’t Eat” a dialogue between Julian Hoeber, Renee Petropoulos, Kimberli Meyer and Anthony Carfello in 2014, that is an originating event for the program.

Families and children ages 4-10 are welcome to join the MAK Center in a sensing exercise inside and outside the remarkable domestic space of Schindler’s architecture. Eschewing formal readings of building form, the activity encourages haptic, aural and olfactory experiences of modernist architecture, its ecology, and its surroundings. The program invites families to engage in the environment and explore new modes of sensing together.

REGISTER HERE

Choreographer Alexsa Durrans presents a dance workshop that inspects the conditioning our bodies undergo when institutions ask us to carry complex systems of knowledge making and labor practice. How can we acknowledge and interrogate these tangled systems through the rigorous work of movement: gesture, posture and rhythm?

In this workshop, participants rest, talk, engage and move together, using each other as guiding posts and learning modules. The class explores movement in the body that quirks, glitches and side-tracks from embodied, or inscribed actions — a deviation from what is assumed for our bodies to do and participate in. 

The workshop is free and open level. No prior movement experience is required. We encourage a space for all folx to come and center their own practices while engaging with and encouraging the work and labor others bring into the space.

REGISTER HERE

ALEXSA DURRANS

Alexsa Durrans is choreographer and video artist. She received her BA from UCLA in World Arts and Cultures/Dance and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Choreography with a concentration in Integrated Media. Alexsa creates site specific movement landscapes and sculptural video installations. Her practice researches knowledge sharing systems by coaxing movement to topple over written and verbal language in order to look at slippages in both forms. Alexsa believes that working with the body is to resist docility and to imagine new ways of filling time and space. 

Who plans the parties for the party planners? Hosted in collaboration with QNA, this house party invites past and present queer party organizers in Los Angeles to be “archived” throughout the night by photography, videography, music, and dance.

Past queer parties have often lacked documentation and archival materials due to budget and/or an anti-survellence effort to maintain safety in privacy and anonymity. Similar efforts position the private space of a “home” or “house” as a safe and private space for the LGBTQ+ community to express love and party— increasingly now in the wake of recent gun violence and domestic terrorism in gay and queer nightclubs and bars, Pulse (2016) and recently Club Q (2022).

While the camera is often focused on the party-goer, this event reorients the gaze back to the work of queer organizing. Archiving: Queer House Party seeds the beginnings of a valuable archive of all of the queer organizers and parties in Los Angeles that have happened past and present.  

R.M. Schindler’s domestic architecture opens as a space to host, document, and archive this rare and valuable moment of queer organizers in Los Angeles coming together — situating the MAK Center as a repository of a special archive for future use.

QNA L.A.

QNA (Louie Bofill, Jae-an Crisman, Paulie Morales, Ly Tran, and Howin Wong) is a Los Angeles-based collective and platform that highlights queer and trans API artists and culture through art, nightlife, and community.

This program is postponed due to COVID-19. Please stay tuned for more information coming by subscribing to our mailing list or following us on socials.

ELKE KRASNY

Elke Krasny, PhD, Professor for Art and Education and Head of the Department of Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Krasny’s scholarship, academic writings, curatorial work, and international lectures address questions of care at the present historical conjuncture with a focus on emancipatory and transformative practices in art, curating, architecture and urbanism. The 2019 exhibition and edited volume Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, curated and edited together with Angelika Fitz, was published by MIT Press and introduces a care perspective in architecture addressing the anthropocenic conditions of the global present. Her 2020 essay ‘In-Sorge-Bleiben. Care-Feminismus für einen infizierten Planeten‘ develops a care-ethical perspective for pandemic times and was published by transcript in Michael Volkmer’s and Karin Werner’s volume Die Corona-Gesellschaft.

Barcelona-based architect studio, TAKK and participants of the 3-day building workshop host a brunch discussing interspecies architecture. After sharing insights, challenges and outcomes of Assembling: Props for Learning, the duo will engage in dialogue with Reorientations curator Rosario Talevi addressing issues around the ecologies and design of living spaces for a wide range of users - human and non-human- and its implications within the current climate emergency and ecological breakdown.

TAKK

TAKK is a space for architectural production focused on the development of material practices in the intersection of nature, culture, technology and politics, with particular attention to the challenges raised by the age of Anthropocene. TAKK’s architectural experiments are test sites for exploring critical architecture that aims at building more open societies. While TAKK’s choices of materials and forms can seem at odds with the idea of an ecologically aware practice, the studio sources from regional supply chains and off-the-shelf supplies as a means of localizing and customizing. Much of their design work is also invested in a disassembly process after the facts of use, in which the afterlife of objects and materials are considered with the same intention and scrutiny as their assembly. Finally, working in the specter of modernism, the use of colors and ornament become overtly political gestures for TAKK.

ROSARIO TALEVI

Rosario Talevi is a Berlin-based architect, curator, editor and educator interested in critical spatial practice (Rendell), transformative pedagogies and feminist futures. Her work advances architecture as a form of agency – in its transformative sense and in its capacity for acting otherwise (Schneider) and as a form of care – one that provides the political stakes to repair our broken world (Tronto). Rosario is a founding member of Soft Agency, a diasporic group of female architects, artists, curators, scholars and writers working with spatial practices and Floating e.V., the non-for-profit association organising, programming and maintaining Floating University in Berlin. She was Guest Professor of Social Design (2021-22) at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg. Currently, she is a fellow at the Thomas Mann Haus in Los Angeles, California.

Reorientations turns the Thomas Mann House kitchen into a site of dialogue, hospitality and reciprocity for a communal dinner. In this collaborative event, MAK Center Director Jia Yi Gu and 2022 Thomas Mann Fellow Rosario Talevi will convene a discursive dinner in the kitchen of the Thomas Mann House. Guests are invited to speak on their work and propositions for the upcoming program. This informal dining situation aims to position a shared tone and a common ground for the days to come and following Reorientations programming. 

With fellows and residents from the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Thomas Mann House, and guests Alexsa Durrans, Joel Garcia, Julia Tcharfas, TAKK and QNA.

THOMAS MANN HOUSE

The Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles aims to create a vibrant transatlantic space for debate, where outstanding personalities, in dialogue with each other and the host country, address fundamental contemporary and future issues related to politics, society, and culture.

The Thomas Mann House is a residency center owned by the Federal Republic of Germany. The Thomas Mann Fellowships enable academics, pioneering thinkers, and intellectuals who live, or have lived, in Germany to tackle the pressing challenges of our time and to foster the intellectual and cultural exchange between Germany and the United States. 

Assembling: Props for Learning is a 3-day hands-on building workshop where participants are invited to work side by side with Barcelona-based architecture studio TAKK. The workshop assembles a series of props specially conceived to accommodate activities for the first iteration of Subject Studies: Reorientations. Participants engage in a convivial and communal atmosphere within the exceptional domestic space designed by R.M. Schindler while assembling milled formwork, foam sheeting, chicken mesh, and wax paraffin into new furniture: the Isolation Daybed, the Reading Corner, the Biodiversity Lamp, and several Wax Stools. Dining, digesting, and discoursing run in parallel to the activities of assembling and building, with morning and afternoon collective meals and communal care provisions. 

Part building-workshop, part pilot program, Assembling: Props for Learning proposes architectural assemblies that encourage new formats for exchange and co-inhabitation. Participants are invited to come ready to experiment with a new ethos for architectural production with the design duo — exploring new technologies, materials, assembly systems, hardware, and off-the-shelf items. Contributors explore TAKK’s architectural attitude through embracing effusive materials, supply chain technologies, otherworldly shapes, textures as ornament, and saturated colors. Participants will be building: an Isolation Daybed, Reading Corner, Biodiversity Lamp, and several Wax Stools, and are invited to use the props during the run of public programs for Subject Studies: Reorientations.

ABOUT TAKK

TAKK is a space for architectural production focused on the development of material practices in the intersection of nature, culture, technology and politics, with particular attention to the challenges raised by the age of Anthropocene. TAKK’s architectural experiments are test sites for exploring critical architecture that aims at building more open societies. While TAKK’s choices of materials and forms can seem at odds with the idea of an ecologically aware practice, the studio sources from regional supply chains and off-the-shelf supplies as a means of localizing and customizing. Much of their design work is also invested in a disassembly process after the facts of use, in which the afterlife of objects and materials are considered with the same intention and scrutiny as their assembly. Finally, working in the specter of modernism, the use of colors and ornament become overtly political gestures for TAKK.

The locations for programs vary and will be disclosed upon RSVP.

Assembling: Props for Learning is a 3-day hands-on building workshop where participants are invited to work side by side with Barcelona-based architecture studio TAKK. The workshop assembles a series of props specially conceived to accommodate activities for the first iteration of Subject Studies: Reorientations. Participants engage in a convivial and communal atmosphere within the exceptional domestic space designed by R.M. Schindler while assembling milled formwork, foam sheeting, chicken mesh, and wax paraffin into new furniture: the Isolation Daybed, the Reading Corner, the Biodiversity Lamp, and several Wax Stools. Dining, digesting, and discoursing run in parallel to the activities of assembling and building, with morning and afternoon collective meals and communal care provisions. 

Part building-workshop, part pilot program, Assembling: Props for Learning proposes architectural assemblies that encourage new formats for exchange and co-inhabitation. Participants are invited to come ready to experiment with a new ethos for architectural production with the design duo — exploring new technologies, materials, assembly systems, hardware, and off-the-shelf items. Contributors explore TAKK’s architectural attitude through embracing effusive materials, supply chain technologies, otherworldly shapes, textures as ornament, and saturated colors. Participants will be building: an Isolation Daybed, Reading Corner, Biodiversity Lamp, and several Wax Stools, and are invited to use the props during the run of public programs for Subject Studies: Reorientations.

ABOUT TAKK

TAKK is a space for architectural production focused on the development of material practices in the intersection of nature, culture, technology and politics, with particular attention to the challenges raised by the age of Anthropocene. TAKK’s architectural experiments are test sites for exploring critical architecture that aims at building more open societies. While TAKK’s choices of materials and forms can seem at odds with the idea of an ecologically aware practice, the studio sources from regional supply chains and off-the-shelf supplies as a means of localizing and customizing. Much of their design work is also invested in a disassembly process after the facts of use, in which the afterlife of objects and materials are considered with the same intention and scrutiny as their assembly. Finally, working in the specter of modernism, the use of colors and ornament become overtly political gestures for TAKK.

The locations for programs vary and will be disclosed upon RSVP.

Assembling: Props for Learning is a 3-day hands-on building workshop where participants are invited to work side by side with Barcelona-based architecture studio TAKK. The workshop assembles a series of props specially conceived to accommodate activities for the first iteration of Subject Studies: Reorientations. Participants engage in a convivial and communal atmosphere within the exceptional domestic space designed by R.M. Schindler while assembling milled formwork, foam sheeting, chicken mesh, and wax paraffin into new furniture: the Isolation Daybed, the Reading Corner, the Biodiversity Lamp, and several Wax Stools. Dining, digesting, and discoursing run in parallel to the activities of assembling and building, with morning and afternoon collective meals and communal care provisions. 

Part building-workshop, part pilot program, Assembling: Props for Learning proposes architectural assemblies that encourage new formats for exchange and co-inhabitation. Participants are invited to come ready to experiment with a new ethos for architectural production with the design duo — exploring new technologies, materials, assembly systems, hardware, and off-the-shelf items. Contributors explore TAKK’s architectural attitude through embracing effusive materials, supply chain technologies, otherworldly shapes, textures as ornament, and saturated colors. Participants will be building: an Isolation Daybed, Reading Corner, Biodiversity Lamp, and several Wax Stools, and are invited to use the props during the run of public programs for Subject Studies: Reorientations.

ABOUT TAKK

TAKK is a space for architectural production focused on the development of material practices in the intersection of nature, culture, technology and politics, with particular attention to the challenges raised by the age of Anthropocene. TAKK’s architectural experiments are test sites for exploring critical architecture that aims at building more open societies. While TAKK’s choices of materials and forms can seem at odds with the idea of an ecologically aware practice, the studio sources from regional supply chains and off-the-shelf supplies as a means of localizing and customizing. Much of their design work is also invested in a disassembly process after the facts of use, in which the afterlife of objects and materials are considered with the same intention and scrutiny as their assembly. Finally, working in the specter of modernism, the use of colors and ornament become overtly political gestures for TAKK.

The locations for programs vary and will be disclosed upon RSVP.