In 1945, R.M. Schindler wrote to Elizabeth Bauer Mock, director of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, advising her that if she wanted to get a better picture of how modern architecture was developing in the West, she should look at “Dr. Block’s collection of colored slides.” German émigré architect Fritz Block was an aficionado of the Leica camera and Kodachrome film and one of the few photographers that Schindler would ever recommend. 

This lecture is free and open to the public - no rsvp required.

SUSAN MORGAN

Susan Morgan’s writing about art, design, and cultural biography has been featured in exhibition catalogues, artist monographs, and mainstream publications. She is the editor of Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader (East of Borneo Books, 2012) and, with Kimberli Meyer, co-curated Sympathetic Seeing (MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, 2011), the first exhibition about the groundbreaking work of writer and social critic Esther McCoy. 

Join artists and writers for some words about spaces, an afternoon of readings that explore working with and against architecture and its physical and psychological effects. Organized in conjunction with Garage Exchange Vienna–Los Angeles: Plastic, Plastic, Plastic featuring work by Kerstin von Gabain and Ellen Schafer at the Mackey Apartments Garage, the afternoon features readings on memory, intimacy, precarity, air conditioners, subletting, getting locked out, doors that won't stay shut, windows, and the daily survival strategies artists use to navigate the spaces around them. The reading event is organized by Olivia Leiter and Rahel Levine.

Readings by Michael Kennedy Costa, Dorit Cypis, Angella d’Avignon, Steve Kado, Olivia Leiter, Rahel Levine, Naoki Sutter-Shudo, Christopher Yang, Kim Ye, and Kim Zumpfe.

Related Exhibition

Come to the Schindler House during visitor service hours 3:00PM — 5:00PM to receive a tarot reading by an invited guest from artist Renée Petropoulos. Readings will take place in the Chase Courtyard on Petropoulos’ shag carpet installation.

First come first serve and free with the price of admission.

RENÉE PETROPOULOS

Renée Petropoulos, a Los Angeles native, received her BA in Art History specializing in Islamic Art, MA in video, and MFA in painting from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Her interest in nationalism and identity via pattern, repetition, and color is reflected through her public works such as the one found in the Los Angeles International Airport Delta Terminal. She lives in Venice, California and is Professor emeritus at the Otis College of Art and Design in the Graduate Studies Department.

Cynthia Vargas and Seeking Zohn co-curator Mimi Zeiger will explore the translations, triangulations, and displacements that arise between Vienna, Los Angeles, and Guadalajara. Vargas, a curator and researcher whose family is from Guadalajara, will share reflections on Zohn’s architecture and narratives of transnational identity.

CYNTHIA VARGAS

Cynthia Vargas is a curator, researcher, and explorer. Her practice encourages curiosity, generosity, and well-being. In 2020, she founded Stairwell, an experimental art space and residency housed in a domestic space in the Westlake-MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles. Recent residencies, exhibitions, and collaborations include Carmen Argote, Dog Glove Hand; Leonardo Bravo, Constant Relation; and Big City Forum, Stories that Move. Cynthia serves on the board of Clockshop and Barnsdall Arts.

MIMI ZEIGER

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles–based critic, editor, and curator. She was co-curator of the 2020-21 cycle of Exhibit Columbus and the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Projects include Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen. Zeiger has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Aperture. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. She is a SCI-Arc visiting faculty member.

Related Exhibition

MAK Center Patrons and Members are invited to the private gathering Sunset at Schindler including a cocktail reception for Seeking Zohn hosted by MAK Center Director Jia Yi Gu, artist Zara Pfeifer and co-curator Mimi Zeiger.

Join us for a viewing of the exhibition with cocktail drinks generously provided by Tepozán Tequila. Following the reception, join Cynthia Vargas and Seeking Zohn co-curator Mimi Zeiger in conversation exploring the translations, triangulations, and displacements that arise between Vienna, Los Angeles, and Guadalajara. Vargas, a curator and researcher whose family is from Guadalajara, will share reflections on Zohn’s architecture and narratives of transnational identity.

Related Exhibition

Join Mimi Zeiger, co-curator of Seeking Zohn, on a tour of the exhibition. She will lead a tour and offer insight into the artists’ work, the archive of Alejandro Zohn, and discuss how to translate civic architecture from Guadalajara to the Schindler House. MAK Center supporters are invited to the VIP Curatorial Walkthrough with Mimi Zeiger on June 28, 2023, from 5pm to 6pm.

This event is by invitation only.

MIMI ZEIGER

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles–based critic, editor, and curator. She was co-curator of the 2020-21 cycle of Exhibit Columbus and the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Projects include Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen. Zeiger has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Aperture. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. She is a SCI-Arc visiting faculty member.

Related Exhibition

Jas Lin 林思穎 restages their site-specific performance triptych, Schindler House Haunting, with FITNESSS in a fourth iteration for the West Hollywood Pride Arts Festival. Originally commissioned by homeLA as a part of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture centennial celebration Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making, this reverberation continues to build on R.M. Schindler’s “space architecture”, which shattered notions of useful domestic space partitioning interior and exterior, self and Other. Fear of the ghost is fear of the Other, both inside and outside of oneself– a gaze that turns queer, non-white, femme, wild bodies into ghosts. By embodying a figure of abjection and contradiction, Lin turns boundaries and binaries inside out, making visible the repression and oppression organized under dominant social frameworks. Paced to the duration of the sunset, the haunting moves with the ephemerality between lightness and darkness, contemplating the relationship between architecture, land, and spectral traces. The immersive musical score by FITNESSS is composed of breaths, creaks, and echoes resounding from both Lin’s body and the skeleton of the house.

Music/Sound Design by FITNESSS. Costume Design by aeon. Lighting Design by FITNESSS. 

Flash warning: The second part of the performance contains flashing lights.

Please Note: All reservations need to be made through the Hit app. Reservations will open 6 days before the event.  Please save the event on the Hit app. All users who are tracking the event will receive a push notification and in app notification when the event goes live. Reservations are being handled by the City of West Hollywood through the Hit app. Connect with them at www.thehitapp.co.

JAS LIN 林思穎

jas lin 林思穎 (they/them) is a performance artist, choreographer, and constant (un)becoming born and based on Tongva Land (Los Angeles). lin stages exorcisms and tantrums for purging choreographies of the learned body and shutting down internal and external surveillance cameras that suggest there is a Proper way to move through the world. their practice of deep feeling is invested in re-membering what the body has been manipulated into forgetting. they value performance as a ritual of deep presence — by returning to our senses, we can reawaken to our possibility, connection, and agency within the world around us. lin’s practice emerges from a vast lineage of teachers, from friendships to films to flowers. centering play in the everyday, they experiment with multiplicity and contradiction while dancing with the world as their body.

jas worships the elsewhere and the otherwise, and loves to co-create shared fugitive worlds and live in them. their choreographies, films, workshops, and lectures have been shared around the world, including at Danshallerne Copenhagen, MOCA Los Angeles, Power Station of Art Shanghai, and Mitski’s Laurel Hell Tour. jas is committed to the life-long process of un-learning and un-teaching hierarchical, Othering, and superficial ways of moving, being, sensing, and knowing. they believe movement to be a manifestation and actualization of potentiality — that together, we can dance the possible into being.

FITNESSS

FITNESSS is an artist who defies traditional categorizations. A FITNESSS performance is an expression of raw energy—creating immersive experiences that challenge conceptions of being and communion through movement, electronic sound architecture, and post-modern aesthetics. With an emphasis on audience involvement and collective presence, FITNESSS’ work explores the volatile nature of interpersonal dynamics, as well as the transformative power of crowd synchronization. FITNESSS has interfaced and collaborated with audiences around the world—most recently in Tokyo and southeast Asia.

ABOUT THE WEST HOLLYWOOD PRIDE ARTS FESTIVAL

Pride starts here. For decades, West Hollywood has been home to one of the largest annual Pride celebrations in the world, drawing hundreds of thousands of revelers each June. In 2022, the City of West Hollywood kicked-off its inaugural WeHo Pride, which included various programming from the City and its partners. WeHo Pride 2023 will kick things off on Harvey Milk Day, May 22, with the start of a 40-day WeHo Pride Arts Festival. Then, we’ll lead June Pride month celebrations with WeHo Pride Weekend from Friday, June 2, 2023 through Sunday, June 4, 2023 including a free weekend Street Fair. And don’t forget about our partners’ events such as the music festival OUTLOUD @ WeHo Pride, the annual Dyke March and Women’s Freedom Festival (details to be announced soon), and Sunday’s WeHo Pride Parade.

Come to the Schindler House during visitor service hours 3:00PM — 5:00PM to receive a tarot reading by an invited guest from artist Renée Petropoulos. Readings will take place in the Chase Courtyard on Petropoulos’ shag carpet installation.

First come first serve and free with the price of admission.

RENÉE PETROPOULOS

Renée Petropoulos, a Los Angeles native, received her BA in Art History specializing in Islamic Art, MA in video, and MFA in painting from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Her interest in nationalism and identity via pattern, repetition, and color is reflected through her public works such as the one found in the Los Angeles International Airport Delta Terminal. She lives in Venice, California and is Professor emeritus at the Otis College of Art and Design in the Graduate Studies Department.

LINDA BESEMER

Linda Besemer has taught painting and drawing at Occidental College since l987. She has also taught academic courses in and gender theory in the Women’s Studies Department. She has served as the Chair of both the departments of Art History and Visual Arts and Women’s Studies. In 2005, Professor Besemer was awarded Occidental’s faculty honor for professional achievement: The Graham L. Sterling Memorial Award. And, in 2006, she was granted an endowed professorship and became The James Irvine Distinguished Professor of the Arts.

Besemer’s paintings have been featured in numerous museums, most notably: The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC, SITE Sante Fe, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Albright Knox Museum, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Arts, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art, The Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, The Portland Art Museum, and The Palm Beach ICA.

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to present the 21st iteration of Garage Exchange Vienna—Los Angeles: Plastic, Plastic, Plastic featuring new work by Vienna-based artist Kerstin von Gabain and Los Angeles-based artist Ellen Schafer at the Mackey Apartments Garage Top Gallery. The artists confront the legacy of Modernist idealism that Schindler considers in his architectural work alongside the proliferation of mass-produced materials.

Plastic, Plastic, Plastic
Text by Angella d’Avignon

“The German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht hated the Westside. He hated Hollywood, the only part of Los Angeles he seemed to be familiar with. When he arrived in 1941, Santa Monica was flat while he lived there—nothing but manicured lawns and oil derricks in dust fields.

The Mackey Apartments are replicated* at Disney World in Florida to signify a modern California apartment—the platonic ideal of apartments, landmarked as classic Los Angeles architecture although they were built in the last eighty or so years. The idea that California held the dream of the mythic West itself in its "empty" landscape, that acreage could ensure legacy, that private property meant success. These precious places built by eccentrics and exiles, polished apartments made for one specific person, sit empty most of the time, while renters drift in and out of sublets and single family studios. These interiors hold other people's boring day to day existences, hovering together anachronistic in the psychic space of a room.

In Los Angeles, you can tell the time of the month by the amount of furniture on the sidewalk—entire sofa sets, wayward mattresses, coffee tables and glass cabinets. Recognizable objects from one's interior is a kind of body horror—I once spotted a stack of metallic plastic cups I'd bought for my first apartment in my twenties from a store I thought was expensive. No one else had party cups like mine at the time, yet here they are on someone else's stairs, outside someone else's apartment that looks replicable, like it could be anywhere in suburban Southern California.

The word polymer means ‘of many parts,’ and polymers are made of long chains of molecules. Polymers abound in nature. Cellulose, the material that makes up the cell walls of plants, is a common natural polymer. Synthetic polymers are made up of long chains of atoms, arranged in repeating units, often much longer than natural ones. The length of these chains, and the patterns in which they are arrayed, make polymers strong, lightweight, and flexible. In other words, it’s what makes them so plastic.

Plastic ensured that human manufacturing would never be limited by the resources offered by the natural world. Roland Barthes called plastic ‘miraculous,’ writing that ‘plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation,’ since any substance—ivory, tortoiseshell, glass—could be made from plastic. Barthes continues, ‘The hierarchy of substances is abolished: a single one replaces them all: the whole world can be plasticized, and even life itself since, we are told, they are beginning to make plastic aortas.’ The 21st century world is saran wrapped: by 2050, the ocean will be more plastic than water.

While plastic wooed the mid-century U.S, long-chains of houses proliferated across Brecht's hellish flat fields, entire neighborhoods sprouting up like manicured weeds, filling with mass manufactured domestic housewares made in consumer-grade plastic, taunting the poet's former presence in Los Angeles, after he fled again for his native Germany after 15 years of exile in the U.S. during World War II. Layers of layers of daily life held forth in these houses and apartments, each one haunting the next generation while the plastic utensils, hair combs, high chairs, bed pans, and party cups outlive every vision of utopia that anyone's had about Los Angeles since. 

The narrative of transience is scaled by class. The burdens of precarity and desire meet in the well-appointed interiors whose objects' total value will never outweigh the endlessly unaffordable exterior in which they're housed. We are not the objects we consume but rather the paths we tread through spaces anonymous to anyone who treads them in our absence.”

*While the Prime Time Cafe at Disney World’s Hollywood Studios is not an exact replica of the Mackey Apartments, the Imagineers used it as inspiration to construct a general set of modern California apartments representing idealized mid-century living.

Come to the Schindler House during visitor service hours 3:00PM — 5:00PM to receive a tarot reading by an invited guest from artist Renée Petropoulos. Readings will take place in the Chase Courtyard on Petropoulos’ shag carpet installation.

First come first serve and free with the price of admission.

RENÉE PETROPOULOS

Renée Petropoulos, a Los Angeles native, received her BA in Art History specializing in Islamic Art, MA in video, and MFA in painting from the University of California, Los Angeles.  Her interest in nationalism and identity via pattern, repetition, and color is reflected through her public works such as the one found in the Los Angeles International Airport Delta Terminal. She lives in Venice, California and is Professor emeritus at the Otis College of Art and Design in the Graduate Studies Department.

LINDA BESEMER

Linda Besemer has taught painting and drawing at Occidental College since l987. She has also taught academic courses in and gender theory in the Women’s Studies Department. She has served as the Chair of both the departments of Art History and Visual Arts and Women’s Studies. In 2005, Professor Besemer was awarded Occidental’s faculty honor for professional achievement: The Graham L. Sterling Memorial Award. And, in 2006, she was granted an endowed professorship and became The James Irvine Distinguished Professor of the Arts.

Besemer’s paintings have been featured in numerous museums, most notably: The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC, SITE Sante Fe, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Albright Knox Museum, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Arts, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art, The Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, The Portland Art Museum, and The Palm Beach ICA.

**This event is at capacity**

Dustin Wong’s spring residency with Floating explores collaboration with local artists in the creation of site specific soundtracks. In this second of three dates, itself a collaboration between Floating and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Dustin is joined by performer and creator Kyoko Takenaka to explore the harmony between sound and space at the Schindler House. Together, responding to the nostalgic architectural elements of the Schindler House, they will traverse through Japanese folklore and yokai stories with butoh dance and music–starting with the tale of Kaguyahime (the princess from the moon, the oldest surviving monogatari). In theme with the stories they will tell, vegan desserts will be available on-site from Gu Grocery. 

This event is donation-based and reservations are required. Space is limited and please RSVP early to secure your seat.

ABOUT DUSTIN WONG

Dustin Wong (he/him) is a guitarist, composer, and being of unprecedented compassion and creativity. His nearly two-decade-long career is marked by a commitment to challenging himself and his collaborators. Whether recording with Ecstatic Sunshine, Ponytail, Takako Minekawa, or as a solo practitioner, he has consistently produced soundscapes that are dynamic, vibrant, and beloved.

ABOUT KYOKO TAKENAKA

Kyoko Takenaka (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary performance artist, actor, musician, filmmaker and movement facilitator based between Tongva land (L.A.), Tokyo and London. Their name Kyoko means “vibrations of sound child” in Japanese. Kyoko believes in artistic expression as a conduit for personal and collective liberation and is constantly exploring unbinary ways of thinking, moving and creating.

ABOUT FLOATING

Floating is a weekly all-ages outdoors arts series that explores the harmony between soundscape and landscape. As a collective, their programs nourish symbiotic relationships among kindred artists, environmental organizations, and unique land projects with the goal of inspiring deeper interdependence among our local communities, cultures, and environments.

Dustin Wong’s spring residency with Floating explores collaboration with local artists in the creation of site specific soundtracks. In this second of three dates, itself a collaboration between Floating and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Dustin is joined by performer and creator Kyoko Takenaka to explore the harmony between sound and space at the Schindler House. Together, responding to the nostalgic architectural elements of the Schindler House, they will traverse through Japanese folklore and yokai stories with butoh dance and music–starting with the tale of Kaguyahime (the princess from the moon, the oldest surviving monogatari). In theme with the stories they will tell, vegan desserts will be available on-site from Gu Grocery. 

This event is donation-based and reservations are required. Space is limited and please RSVP early to secure your seat.

ABOUT DUSTIN WONG

Dustin Wong (he/him) is a guitarist, composer, and being of unprecedented compassion and creativity. His nearly two-decade-long career is marked by a commitment to challenging himself and his collaborators. Whether recording with Ecstatic Sunshine, Ponytail, Takako Minekawa, or as a solo practitioner, he has consistently produced soundscapes that are dynamic, vibrant, and beloved.

ABOUT KYOKO TAKENAKA

Kyoko Takenaka (they/them) is a multi-disciplinary performance artist, actor, musician, filmmaker and movement facilitator based between Tongva land (L.A.), Tokyo and London. Their name Kyoko means “vibrations of sound child” in Japanese. Kyoko believes in artistic expression as a conduit for personal and collective liberation and is constantly exploring unbinary ways of thinking, moving and creating.

ABOUT FLOATING

Floating is a weekly all-ages outdoors arts series that explores the harmony between soundscape and landscape. As a collective, their programs nourish symbiotic relationships among kindred artists, environmental organizations, and unique land projects with the goal of inspiring deeper interdependence among our local communities, cultures, and environments.

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to present Seeking Zohn, an exhibition of works by Mexican-Austrian architect and engineer Alejandro Zohn (1930-2000) through contemporary photography and design. The exhibition takes as subject Zohn’s robust civic and commercial architecture built in Guadalajara from the 1950s to the 1990s, with an interest in how the city’s social, cultural, and material histories are interwoven with his structures. 

Commissioned photography and video by artists Adam Wiseman, Lake Verea, Onnis Luque, Sonia Madrigal, and Zara Pfeifer veer from the documentary conceit of architectural photography toward the subjective. This work is decidedly interpretive, seeking out the many narratives contained within parks, markets, collective housing, malls, and bureaucratic buildings. Zohn, a Jewish emigree who fled Vienna during World War II at the age of 8, dedicated his career to creating a modern Guadalajara. Through these photographs—acts of investigation and translation—we find glimpses of his utopian desire amidst the chaos, beauty, and violence of everyday life. 

Seeking Zohn is the first presentation of Zohn’s architecture in Los Angeles. The transposition of his work to L.A. places it in dialogue with R.M. Schindler’s designs. As both architects are Jewish émigrés, a parallel exists between the Austrian-Mexican and the Austrian-Angeleno’s experiences. The installation at the MAK Center creates a resonant triangulation between three cities: Vienna, Guadalajara, and Los Angeles. Billboards placed in the garden navigate between the urban scale of Zohn’s buildings and the intimacy of the Schindler House. Household objects designed by Studio Fabien Cappello and fabricated by artisans in Guadalajara build a bridge between the civic and domestic realms.

**This event is at capacity**

Join the artists and curators of Seeking Zohn for a walkthrough of the exhibition and an intimate discussion of their work.

Seeking Zohn, an exhibition of works by Mexican-Austrian architect and engineer Alejandro Zohn (1930-2000) through contemporary photography and design. The exhibition takes as subject Zohn’s robust civic and commercial architecture built in Guadalajara from the 1950s to the 1990s, with an interest in how the city’s social, cultural, and material histories are interwoven with his structures. 

Commissioned photography and video by artists Adam Wiseman, Lake Verea, Onnis Luque, Sonia Madrigal, and Zara Pfeifer veer from the documentary conceit of architectural photography toward the subjective. This work is decidedly interpretive, seeking out the many narratives contained within parks, markets, collective housing, malls, and bureaucratic buildings. Zohn, a Jewish emigree who fled Vienna during World War II at the age of 8, dedicated his career to creating a modern Guadalajara. Through these photographs—acts of investigation and translation—we find glimpses of his utopian desire amidst the chaos, beauty, and violence of everyday life. 

Seeking Zohn is curated by Los Angeles–based critic and curator Mimi Zeiger and Mexico City–based collaborative practice Tony Macarena: Lorena Canales and Alejandro Olávarri.

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to announce Final Projects: Group LII, exhibiting three works produced by our Artists and Architects-in-Residence, Cathleen Schuster, Marcel Dickhage, Louise Morin, & Melanie Ebenhoch. Final Projects: Group LII marks the culmination of the 52nd iteration of the Artists and Architects-in-Residence Program at the Mackey Apartments.

For the Saturday presentation of Louise Morin’s work, please visit The Garden, 1911 7th Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90018, on Saturday, March 11, 2023, from 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM. This is a free event, no RSVP required. Morin’s work will also be on view at the Mackey Apartments Garage Top for the duration of the exhibition.

Read more about our residency program here.