Saturday, March 31st at LA><ART (2640 S. La Cienega Blvd)
LA><ART and the Office of Aesthetic Occupation (officeofaestheticoccupation.blogspot.com) are pleased to announce the fourth iteration of Warren Neidich and Elena Bajo’s Art in the Parking Space. Entitled Special Actions in Varied Parking Lots in Variable Time, it will focus on several ephemeral performances occurring at various times and locations across Los Angeles over the course of two weeks.
A projected film collage is a study of urban planning in the Third Reich and its connections to the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, Bettina Allamoda’s video reflects images and details of architecture from the 1920s and 1930s up to the present. The “Haus am Horn,” the “Halle der Volksgemeinschaft,” and Oskar Schlemmer’s frescoes in the Bauhaus building by Henry van de Velde are intercut with less well-known monuments such as Nazi-era administrative buildings or garden fence posts originally found at concentration camps. The artist projected this film collage onto a wall, then recorded herself performing in front of, and together with, the moving picture. Allamoda at times becomes part of the projection - even part of the architecture itself. Each frame in this documentary-style video incorporates related bits of news, text, and quotes from Bauhaus masters culled from the artist’s extensive research. An accompanying soundtrack suggests a link to postwar Californian model homes, featuring 1960s psychedelia, ’70s Krautrock and ’90s British electronic instrumentals.
Bettina Allamoda is a Chicago-born artist who has lived and worked in Berlin since 1982. Her wide-ranging body of work encompasses sculpture, relief, installation, collage, photography, video, performance, artist’s books, and curatorial projects. Allamoda’s interest lies in the politics of the surface, the body, and physical and public space. Her work attempts to display and present how history is written, excavated, reinterpreted and rebuilt – and sometimes exploited by future generations.
In conjunction with Kelly Poe's exhibition For the Wild, LA><ART will hold a screening of the Oscar nominated documentary filmIf a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front at the Mandrake (2692 S. La Cienega Blvd.) on March 27, 2012 at 7 PM.
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of this ELF cell, by focusing on the transformation and radicalization of one of its members.
Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thrilller, the film interweaves a verite chronicle of Daniel on house arrest as he faces life in prison, with a dramatic recounting of the events that led to his involvement with the group. And along the way it asks hard questions about environmentalism, activism, and the way we define terrorism.
Drawing from striking archival footage -- much of it never before seen -- and intimate interviews with ELF members, and with the prosecutor and detective who were chasing them, IF A TREE FALLS explores the tumultuous period from 1995 until early 2001 when environmentalists were clashing with timber companies and law enforcement, and the word "terrorism" had not yet been altered by 9/11.
