SCHINDLER HOUSE COMPANION TOURS

To Sit Is To Time Travel by Erik Benjamins

To Sit is to Time Travel, 2022

Audio Tour, 14:28 minutes

On the occasion of the exhibition Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making, Los Angeles-based artist and writer, Erik Benjamins has created an experimental audio tour that responds to a curious absence to present day visitors: seating. Inspired by two unique, but similarly spirited genres of writing, ekphrastic poetry and alt text composition, Benjamins has created a suite of room-specific descriptive texts of Schindler House seating as it once existed in situ. Working from a makeshift archive of images that document the house and its domestic rhythms prior to institutional stewardship in 1980, these descriptive responses begin with a seemingly straightforward formal analysis and quickly veer into poetic imaginings and embodied ruminations about the pleasures, alleviations, and potential discomforts possible for the present-day domestic sitter.

Tour Stops

1. Marian Chace Studio

2. Chace Patio

3. Chace Patio

4. Pauline Schindler Studio

5. Pauline Schindler Studio

6. Rudolph Schindler Bathroom

7. Rudolph Schindler Studio 

8. Schindler Patio

9. Schindler Patio 

Image Credits

1. Photograph by Malcom Lubliner, 1972. Courtesy of MAK Center Schindler House.

2. Photographer Unknown, 1941. Published in The Architecture of R.M. Schindler, E. Smith & M. Darling, eds., 2001.

3. Unknown photographer, ca. 1922. Courtesy of the Schindler Archive, AD&A Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara.

4. Photograph by Roger Sturtevant, ca. 1922. Courtesy of the Schindler Archive, AD&A Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara.

5. Photograph by Roger Sturtevant, ca. 1922. Courtesy of the Schindler Archive, AD&A Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara.

6. Photograph by Erik Benjamins, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

7. Photographer Unknown, ca. 1970. Courtesy of the Schindler Archive, AD&A Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara.

8. Photographer Unknown, 1924. Published in The Architecture of R.M. Schindler, E. Smith & M. Darling, eds., 2001.

9. Photograph by Andrew Jackson, ca. 1967. Courtesy of the Schindler Archive, AD&A Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Thank You

Jason Lipelis, Evan Kinori, Andrew Romano, Fiona Connor, Nicole Choy, Justin Coates, Julia Larsen, Reference Archivist, Architecture and Design Collection, AD&A Museum, UCSB, Jake Miles & Ale Cohen of Dublab, Ann Basu, Allie Smith, and Jia Gu of the MAK Center Schindler House.

ERIK BENJAMINS

Erik Benjamins is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. His work takes cues from design, performance and poetry to celebrate the potential for embodied knowledge, particularly in domestic settings. He recently co-curated “Built In”, a sprawling, site-specific group exhibition at the Neutra VDL House.