DATE: October 22nd, 2003
sundown salon was invited by the mak center to present an evening of events at the renowned schindler house in west hollywood to coincide with the opening of the disney concert hall. three hundred showed up to enjoy the design, dance, music, performance, readings, sculpture, installations, sapporo beer cans, balloons & video projections spread throughout the house and gardens, which together created a series of moments that captured the current creative energy of los angeles.
after it was built in the 20's, the schindler house became a center of los angeles art and culture: "the schindler house enjoyed a vibrant social-intellectual life from 1922 through the 1950s due to the activities of pauline schindler. her salons, dinners and political meetings brought the discussion of far-reaching ideas into the intimacy of domestic space." sundown salon continues this tradition by offering the house on sundown drive in mount washington as a venue for the free exchange ideas. it was a thrill to bring these events to the home that inspired them.
> participant list:
dance
> adam hundt & hitomi yamada / schindler butterfly dance
> paige clark / bellydance
design
> justin beal / balloons & ice bar
> graft / the vegetable garden
music
> 'los super elegantes' / milena muzquiz & martiniano lopez-crozet
> 'd'argento' / giles miller, anna sew hoy, jason taylor
& amy yao
performance
> dawn kasper / 'evil series #16: murder at the schindler
house'
> yoshua okon
reading
> trinie dalton / 'slumber party'
> jennifer krasinski / 'dead of winter'
video
> alice könitz / 'Owl Society'
sculpture
> anna sew hoy / sapporo beer distribution, consumption
& sculpture
documentation
> susanna howe / photo
> lance orchid / video / staging
> curated by fritz haeg
>
adam hundt & hitomi yamada
Adam and Hitomi will be performing an improvisational dance responding to the
unique beauty of the Schindler House. They will begin the dance moving through
the audience, interacting if they so choose, or appearing to be oblivious to
them. Hitomi and Adam wil eventually meet on the central lawn, responding to
each other, then departing the space, dancing through the audience as they began.
Hitomi Yamada was born in Nara, Japan. She began studying at the Akemi Ishikawa Studio in 1980 and then trained at the National Beijing Dance Academy from 1989–92. She studied at the School of American Ballet in New York from 1992 to 1994. Hitomi has danced with the Connecticut Ballet Theatre, Ballet El Paso, Ballet Chicago and James Sewell Ballet. She has been a guest artist with the Chicago Festival Ballet and Minnetonka Dance Theatre and performed in the Osaka Ballet Festival in 1995. She has been with Ballet Pacifica for 3 seasons.
Adam Hundt was born in Dayton, Ohio. He began dancing under the direction of Barbara Pontecorvo and Jon Rodriquez. Hundt studied ballet under the faculty of Violette Verdy, Jacques Cesbron and Leslie Peck at Indiana University. He later performed works by Robert Battle, Kristofer Storey, Harrison McEldowney, Jessica Lang, Ron de Jesus and Lou Conte. Hundt was a member of American Repertory Ballet in New Jersey, where he performed works by Septime Webre, Val Caniparoli and Graham Lustig. This is his second season with Ballet Pacifica.
link: ballet pacifica
>
paige clark
Paige Clark has been studying bellydance, also known as Raks Sharki, for two
years. As a dancer she prefers the risk of improvisation to planned choreography
and live music to recorded. Her favorite dance experiences to date have been
at Middle Eastern Music and Dance Camp, an annual weeklong seminar for dancers
and musicians in the Mendocino woodlands. Paige's inspirational performances
have been seen at the Staples Center, Club Gitana and Café Metropol.
Incidentally, she has an MFA in art from CALARTS and a BFA in painting from
Carnegie Mellon University. She resides in Los Angeles. top
>
justin beal
"Inflatables are trippy, cheap, light, imaginative spaces, not architecture
at all"
-Lloyd Kahn (from The Whole Earth Catalog)
"Inflatables
suggest a schizophrenia in the mind of the designer who is torn between his
utopian vision and something much more perverse"
-Marc Dessauce (from an interview with Justin Beal in July 2002)
Justin Beal is an artist and an architect who recently moved to Los Angeles.
link: justin beal
>
piper olf & cristina forrer
Cristina and Piper will be making a utilitarian object that can be directly
used by people at the Schindler House for entertainment purposes. It will be
outside.
Christina Forrer was raised in Zurich Switzerland, where she pursued an education in architecture. She left Europe to attend Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Christina has interned for Michael Sorkin and Open Office in New York City. She will graduate in the spring of 2003.
Piper Olf was born in Castleton, NY. She attended Rochester Institute of Technology to learn woodworking, and then received a degree in Environmental Design from Art Center College of Design. Piper recently participated in a collaborative project at LACMALab. She is currently working for the Art Center College of Design Library, CLUI, and Daniel Lawrence Architecture.
> graft / design
>
'd'argento' (anna sew hoy, giles miller, jason taylor & amy yao) / music
D ARGENTO is inspired by the horrific sounds of Goblin, the group that scored
many of Dario Argento s movies. The typical Dario Argento film involves an encounter
with evil in which the hero or heroine witnesses a stream of terrifying bloodbaths.
The innocent schoolgirl or the dedicated artisan (such as Argento himself),
going about their lives in a hyper-stylized jetset milieu, watches as the people
around them die one gruesome death after another. D ARGENTO lovingly reproduces
the cool modern sounds of the hip crowd, and then rips em apart, with horrible
results. D ARGENTO is the death scream of a pretty ballet student as her neck
is sliced by the glass of her dorm room window, or the soundtrack for a meat
cleaver slamming into the back of a sophisticated publicity agent. D’ARGENTO
is a one night only collaborative of artists and musicians Amy Yao, Anna Sew
Hoy, Jason Taylor and Giles Miller.
>
'los super elegantes' (milena muzquiz & martiniano lopez-crozet) / music
Los Super Elegantes is the collaborative team of Milena Muzquiz and Martiniano
Lopez-Crozet. They work as musicians (songwriters and performers) and as playwrights—and
actors in their own plays. In their live musical performances, Muzquiz and Lopez-Crozet
perform within the framework of the classic duo, making use of inevitable male
and female stereotypes, milking the clichés for theatrical effect, but
in going so over the top with man/woman drama injecting,,an element of critique.
When LSE began in 1995, stage improvisation was their drive and focus, the heart
of the enterprise. Punk rock, or the by then diffuse punk aesthetic, was a crucial
early inspiration. In the punk spirit, LSE chose to exploit musical and technical
impoverishment, making a virtue of whatever skills they possessed rather than
fussing over getting it “just right”: the message was the key, and
the example of punk gave LSE all the license they needed. Technical sophistication
would develop through process. In like spirit, LSE began making home music videos,
in which Muzquiz and Lopez-Crozet lip-synched to their songs. These videos featured
plenty of stereotypical music-video special effects, e.g., drips and wipes.
In their performances ands videos, LSE ripped off choreographed moves and banter
of classic American performers like Liza Minelli and Frank Sinatra, obliquely
commenting on preconceived notions of the entertainer and entertainment—the
business of America, par excellence? The archetypal situations of European and
Latin American sex comedies, as well as the über-passionate flavor of Latin
American ballads, were also fodder for LSE’s early work. Subsequently,
LSE has concerned itself more with the music itself, dealing with the clichés
of a song’s construction. LSE explored the standard formats—the
musical and lyrical tics, as it were—that animated the romantic anthem,
the Broadway tune, the heavy-metal song. Eventually, this practice evolved—morphed
perhaps?—into an exploration of various styles within a single piece of
music, a bit like a collage but one that is actually composed rather than sampled.
Throughout this period, LSE have written and directed three musical plays: Pietro
and Paola is based on Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, where a street hustler rips
off a prostitute. Angie and Eric is a play about boredom and social interaction
in Los Angeles. The Falling Leaves of St. Pierre concerns sadistic relationships
in a working environment. Music functions as a narrative element throughout
each of these plays, almost as a character itself rather than “background.”
Although all these plays have storylines, they are really more about style,
a particular aesthetic, the isolation of certain supercharged icons—rather
like the music of LSE.
link: los super elegantes / top
dawn
kasper
Dawn will present a physical study of time and space in the form of a new piece
inspired by the Schindler House, "Evil Series #16: Murder at the Schindler
House". "The Evil Series" is an on-going, multi-media based,
performative project. A project that explores the blurring boundaries within
and around the concepts of "evil".
Dawn Kasper is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist. Receiving her MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in (2003) and her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in (1999). Some group exhibitions include: ‘Record’ Two nights of film and video 210two Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2003) / ‘Recess’ Group Exhibition, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2003) / Group Exhibition, Anna Helwing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2003) / ‘Art Chicago’ Group Exhibition, Chicago Art Fair / Anna Helwing Gallery, Chicago, Ill (2003) / ’Residue’, Project Art Space, Washington Project For The Arts, Washington DC (1999). Solo exhibitions include: ‘Bambi Meets Hulk Hogan’, Bradford Gallery, Richmond VA (1999) / ‘Shake It Off’ Henry Street Gallery, Richmond VA (1999).
>
yoshua okon
Yoshua Okon was born in Mexico City in 1970. He currently lives and works between
Los Angeles and Mexico City. In 2002 he received his MFA from UCLA with a Fulbright
grant. In 1994, he founded La Panaderia, an artist-run space in Mexico City.
He has participated in shows at P.S.1, MoMA, The California Biennial at the
OCMA, Kunstwerke Berlin, and The Project Gallery in N.Y. and L.A. amongst others.
He also had solo shows at Art & Public in Geneva, Centro de la Imagen and
Galeria Enrique Guerrero in Mexico City amongst others. He has taught art at
the Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City and at UC San Diego. Okon has recently
received a Rockefeller grant to work on a book on La Panaderia and has been
invited to participate in the 2003 Istambul Biennial.
link: yoshua okon / top
>
trinie dalton
Trinnie will be reading her short story "Slumber Parties", about teenage
memories of staying up late with girlfriends, while other teenage girls are
being stalked in horror movies.
Trinie Dalton is a writer from Los Angeles. She writes book, music, and art reviews, and has upcoming work in Cakewalk, K48, Court Green, and the British anthology Frozen Tears. She's currently at work on her first book of stories, and is an MFA student at Bennington Writing Seminars in Vermont.
>
jennifer krasinski
Jennifer will be reading an excerpt from her short story 'The Dead of Winter'.
She is a filmmaker and writer, and is currently finishing work on her short film, MISANTHROPE. She received her MFA from Art Center College of Design. top
>
alice könitz
Sundown @ Schindler will be the first screening of her new video 'Owl Society'.
After a strenuous 800 mile hike through sun and forest the models Chicago and
Baltimore and their Agent find their temporary home on a tilted tree in a lush
sub-tropical forest area of Griffith Park / Actors: Erik Bluhm, Paul Gellman,
Skylar Haskard, Alice Könitz & Mari Murao / Camera: Michael Rashkow
& Isabel Spengler / masks, costumes, sculpture, play, direction, editing
& production: Alice Könitz.
Artist Alice Könitz, born and raised in Germany, now lives and works in Los Angeles. She graduated from the MFA program at Cal Arts in 1999, and from the Kunstakademie in Düssseldorf in 1996. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles and internationally. She is represented by Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects and by Boomeditions, Campbell and Francis, Oak Park and New York. top
memories:
Murder at The Schindler House - I had the pitchfork in my neck and I was laying there motionless. Time just melted away, I could recognize peoples voices but couldn't move my head to see anyone. People felt compelled to talk to me, but I needed to stay in character. Someone put a beer on my belly and then removed it immediately after some giggling. Other people set up a little picnic area and began to eat dinner. I could hear Los Super Elegantes and then after a while Dargento took over and I couldn't hear anything but an ambient beautiful sound that made me feel like I was in a movie for the rest of the evening. After a few hours I decided to get up and walk around. I pulled the fork out and slowly started moving. The flashlight that was placed next to me as my last minute lighting solution had burned out. I got up and walked around, thought about getting my portrait taken but there was a line so I walked around front to catch the belly dancer. Leaning against the pitchfork for support I watched transfixed as the belly dancer moved and shook activating the space around her. I wished that I could let go of my muscles and fall to the ground. The entire evening at the Schindler House was amazing. Fritz had organized yet another Sundown Salon that blew me away and I came away from the night transformed and enlightened. - Dawn Kasper