“Permanence was never the test of folk art.”

— Esther McCoy from Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village

Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey (1896–1988) began building Bottle Village in her 60s, a collection of bottle-constructed houses that became her life’s work. The site housed her extensive pencil collection, her assemblage artworks, herself, and her family. Visitors periodically visited and Prisbrey would host, give tours, sing songs, and tell stories. As an artist-built environment and Prisbrey’s home, Bottle Village is the embodiment of an evolving social sculpture. Formed in July 1979, Preserve Bottle Village Committee is a non-profit organization created to acquire and preserve the historic site when it was facing demolition after Prisbrey had to sell the site to a private developer. In the context of Prisbrey’s vision, the task of preservation becomes a question, how would she want her work to be viewed, restored, or rebuilt when she is no longer around? These imperatives become essential to providing a direction forward for Bottle Village. 

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to present a public discussion with writer, curator and art conservator, Rosa Lowinger and architectural historian and former Acting Director of Preserve Bottle Village Committee, Daniel Paul. They will discuss their individual practices in relation to the ongoing preservation of Bottle Village in the context of the exhibition Kathi Hofer and Preserve Bottle Village Committee. 

ROSA LOWINGER
Rosa Lowinger is a Cuban-born American art and architectural conservator and writer. She is the founder of RLA Conservation, LLC (www.rlaconservation.com), a practice with offices in Los Angeles and Miami. Rosa is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation, the Association for Preservation Technology, and American Academy in Rome, where she conducted research on the history of vandalism to art and public space. Her books include: Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt: 2006) and the recently published Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair (Row House: 2023). She will be the keynote speaker at the 2024 Docomomo US Conference to be held in Miami.

DANIEL PAUL
Daniel Paul began historic preservation volunteer work at Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village 30 years ago, just one week after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. During his 15 years onsite, he coordinated with a noted rebuilding team, State Offices, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency for damage repair monies, he authored public facing materials, and in 1996, wrote the National Register of Historic Places landmark application that helped protect Bottle Village. Daniel holds a master’s degree in art history from the California State University Northridge. His master’s thesis presented the origin story of 1970s-era Late-Modern glass skin office park architecture.

Related Exhibition

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

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.

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.

**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 past seven years have seen a rush of art exhibitions about artificial intelligence and machine learning. These shows have parsed both cultural fantasies and cold hard facts of AI in its current forms. These shows’ curatorial frames are at times fiercely critical and at other times fawning. In X-TRA 24.1, Editor Anuradha Vikram focuses on one such blockbuster exhibition, Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI at the De Young. In their essay, “Uncanny Views: Reflections on the Human in the Age of AI,” Vikram probes the show’s position, established through artworks both skeptical of and in thrall to algorithmic control. Vikram puts forth an argument that institutions must better grapple with their framings of the human.

On October 28, Vikram joins Mashinka Firunts Hakopian in conversation at the MAK Center’s Mackey Apartments. Hakopian is a professor, writer, and scholar versed in critical imaginaries of technology and AI. Vikram and Hakopian explore how museum exhibitions subtly reinforce established orders and the norms embedded in quantitative systems. As we learn to live with a menagerie of uncanny beings—non-human intelligences, eerie avatars and bots, figurations just at the edge of understanding—how might we understand the influence of the art that takes them up as subject, as collaborator? What models of the human—as unknowable or knowable, as quantifiable or illegible—are encoded into AI artworks? What and who are designed as abject? What institutional critiques of technological policing, mass surveillance, predictive algorithms, and data extraction could be radical?

Nora N. Khan, Executive Director of Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism, publisher of X-TRA, will moderate Uncanny Intelligences. The discussion closes X-TRA’s programming around volume 24, issue 1, following a sold-out screening and conversation with Theo Anthony around his film All Light, Everywhere, and the issue’s July launch at LAXART. Please join us and continue to support independent publishing of sharp, experimental criticism.

Anuradha Vikram

Anuradha Vikram (born 1976, New York, NY; lives in Los Angeles) is a writer, curator, and educator. Vikram’s book Decolonizing Culture (Sming Sming Books, 2017) helped initiate a global movement to decolonize arts institutions and monuments. They have written for art periodicals and publications from Paper Monument, Heyday Press, Routledge, and Oxford University Press. They are an Editorial Board member at X-TRA and an editor at X Artists’ Books.

Vikram is faculty in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. They hold an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts and a BS in Studio Art from NYU.

Mashinka Firunts Hakopian

Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian-born writer, artist, and researcher residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor of Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. In 2021, she was a Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the Oxy Arts exhibition "Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI" with Meldia Yesayan. Her book, The Institute for Other Intelligences, is forthcoming from X Artists’ Books.

MODERATOR

Nora N. Khan is a curator, editor, and writer of criticism on digital visual culture, the politics of software, and philosophy of emerging technology. She is the Executive Director of Project X for Art and Criticism, publishing X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal in Los Angeles. She is also the Curator for the next Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement in 2023, with Andrea Bellini, hosted by Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève. Khan’s short books are Seeing, Naming, Knowing (Brooklyn Rail), on the logic of machine vision, and Fear Indexing the X-Files (Primary Information), co-written with Steven Warwick. Forthcoming are No Context: AI Art, Machine Learning, and the Stakes for Art Criticism (Lund Humphries), The Artificial and the Real (Art Metropole), and a hybrid memoir about criticism from Strange Attractor Press.

ABOUT X-TRA

X-TRA’s mission is to sustain a vibrant critical discourse about contemporary art and foster inclusive networks and expansive thinking. X-TRA’s journal, website, and public events create forums for the diverse voices of artists and writers. X-TRA cultivates a deep understanding of contemporary art, explores a wide range of ideas and artists’ work, and strives to do so with generosity and integrity.

Come to the Schindler House during visitor service hours 3:00PM — 4:30PM to receive a tarot reading by an invited guest from Renée Petropoulos as an extension programming of her shag carpet installation and proposal for the exhibition Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making. Invited readers include: Jade Gordon (July 1)⁠, Meg Cranston⁠ (August 5), and Asher Hartman (September 2).

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

Renée Petropoulos

Renée Petropoulos, a Los Angeles native, received her BA, MA, and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her interest in pattern, repetition, and color is reflected through her public works such as the one found in the Los Angeles Metro Orange Line. She lives in Venice, California and teaches at the Otis College of Art and Design in the Graduate Studies Department.

JADE GORDON

Jade Gordon is an artist, actress, and founding member of the theatrical art collective My Barbarian. My Barbarian recently had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art that traced their practice over the past two decades. Gordon has recently collaborated with Megan Whitmarsh for the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA.

MEG CRANSTON

Meg Cranston is an artist, writer, and the Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Otis College of Art and Design. Her recent exhibition at the Melistian Briggs Gallery is her fourth solo exhibition.

asher hartman

Asher Hartman is a writer, director, artist, teacher, and founder of Gawdafful National Theater. He was one of four writers whose texts provided the frameworks for the Hammer Museum’s Lifes.

Come to the Schindler House during visitor service hours 3:00PM — 4:30PM to receive a tarot reading by an invited guest from Renée Petropoulos as an extension programming of her shag carpet installation and proposal for the exhibition Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making. Invited readers include: Jade Gordon (July 1)⁠, Meg Cranston⁠ (August 5), and Asher Hartman (September 2).

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

Renée Petropoulos

Renée Petropoulos, a Los Angeles native, received her BA, MA, and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her interest in pattern, repetition, and color is reflected through her public works such as the one found in the Los Angeles Metro Orange Line. She lives in Venice, California and teaches at the Otis College of Art and Design in the Graduate Studies Department.

JADE GORDON

Jade Gordon is an artist, actress, and founding member of the theatrical art collective My Barbarian. My Barbarian recently had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art that traced their practice over the past two decades. Gordon has recently collaborated with Megan Whitmarsh for the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA.

MEG CRANSTON

Meg Cranston is an artist, writer, and the Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Otis College of Art and Design. Her recent exhibition at the Melistian Briggs Gallery is her fourth solo exhibition.

asher hartman

Asher Hartman is a writer, director, artist, teacher, and founder of Gawdafful National Theater. He was one of four writers whose texts provided the frameworks for the Hammer Museum’s Lifes.

Come to the Schindler House during visitor service hours 3:00PM — 4:30PM to receive a tarot reading by an invited guest from Renée Petropoulos as an extension programming of her shag carpet installation and proposal for the exhibition Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making. Invited readers include: Jade Gordon (July 1)⁠, Meg Cranston⁠ (August 5), and Asher Hartman (September 2).

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

Renée Petropoulos

Renée Petropoulos, a Los Angeles native, received her BA, MA, and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her interest in pattern, repetition, and color is reflected through her public works such as the one found in the Los Angeles Metro Orange Line. She lives in Venice, California and teaches at the Otis College of Art and Design in the Graduate Studies Department.

JADE GORDON

Jade Gordon is an artist, actress, and founding member of the theatrical art collective My Barbarian. My Barbarian recently had a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art that traced their practice over the past two decades. Gordon has recently collaborated with Megan Whitmarsh for the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA.

MEG CRANSTON

Meg Cranston is an artist, writer, and the Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Otis College of Art and Design. Her recent exhibition at the Melistian Briggs Gallery is her fourth solo exhibition.

asher hartman

Asher Hartman is a writer, director, artist, teacher, and founder of Gawdafful National Theater. He was one of four writers whose texts provided the frameworks for the Hammer Museum’s Lifes.