You See LA: Winter 2015
5 things to see and do around Los Angeles Handpicked by Design Media Arts Professor Peter Lunenfeld
Five things to see and do in and around Los Angeles this winter.
WINTER 2015 EVENTS HANDPICKED BY PETER LUNENFELD
Peter Lunenfeld is a professor in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts.
Image credit: Air BnB
I used to take my grad students to visit the artist Fritz Haeg at his trippy hilltop geodesic dome in Glassell Park (near Occidental College). Fritz is best known for the Edible Estates project, where he’d rip out classic lawns and replace them with sustainable vegetable gardens, but he also used to host Sundown Salon gatherings in the dome and the beautiful grounds that surround it. The house has a late hippie meets millennial alt-arts vibe, and it’s now available for rent, making it a perfect weekend launch pad for a feral art and culture weekend.
Fritz Haeg’s Hilltop Dome, Cave, Gardens & View is available for rent on airbnb.com.
Image Credit: Machine Project
Machine Project is one of the most amazing hybrid spaces in L.A. Part artist collective, part technology studio, part public pedagogical initiative, its contribution to the Silver Lake/Echo Park scene can’t be underestimated. It stages performances, hosts poetry readings, and has an electronics lab, but the best way to experience it is to take a workshop, because at Machine Project, it’s all about making. Upcoming workshops will focus on video projection mapping taught by the UCLA Design Media Arts’ own Gareth Walsh, M.F.A. ’07 and Kate Parsons, M.F.A. Candidate, ’15, a session that combines past life regression with 3D modeling, and DIY home cat architecture.
Machine Project hosts regular classes and workshops. Check the website for additional events and details.
Image credit: European Graduate School
LISTEN TO A FRENCH PHILOSOPHER!
It’s been a while since the French dominated our intellectual discourse, but there are still a few heavyweights left. If you want to get a feel for thinking as performance the way that Foucault, Derrida, and Baudrillard delivered back in the day, check out Parisian philosopher and aesthetician Jacques Rancière at the stunning new West Hollywood Public Library, designed by the Culver City architectural firm Johnson Favaro. The lecture is sponsored by CalArts’ Whap! Series and is titled, “Time, Narration, Politics,” which gives him the latitude to cover pretty much everything except DIY home cat architecture.
Jacques Rancière will give a talk titled “Time, Narration, Politics” on Tuesday, January 20 at 7 p.m.
Image Credit: The J. Paul Getty Trust
My favorite place to see the kinds of movies you can’t see outside of a great city is Cinefamily in the Fairfax District. The theater used to only show silent films, but now the programming is eclectic (they did the first public screening of Seth Rogen’s The Interview after the Sony terror threats) and the audiences are passionate. They occasionally serve snacks themed to the film, and, to add a little macabre history, the theater’s former owner was the victim of a famous murder-for-hire disguised as a box office robbery. Cinefamily only programs a few weeks out, so check the site, but this spring they are planning a retrospective of Swedish director Ruben Ostlund (he’ll be there, so you can blame him personally for the fight you had with your spouse after watching last year’s Force Majeure), the underrated Nicholas Cage, full tilt gonzo ‘80s horror film Vampire’s Kiss, and a rare 1983 documentary on Beat writer and all around provocateur William Burroughs.
The Cinefamily screening schedule is available the website.
Image Credit: The Venice Room
Esotouric runs the best bus tours of Southern California. I know, I know, buses are intrinsically uncool, but obsessives Richard Schave and Kim Cooper promise to take you into the “secret heart of Los Angeles,” and they deliver. Heavy on crime – the Black Dahlia and Raymond Chandler tours are classics – Esotouric is also great at introducing different parts of the city to each other. Their “Boyle Heights & The San Gabriel Valley: The Hidden Histories of L.A.’s Melting Pot,” will cover everything from the abandoned synagogues of the far East Side to the emergence of the Chicano rights movement to the best Chinese dumplings in Monterey Park.
Esotouric will lead “Boyle Heights & The San Gabriel Valley: The Hidden Histories of L.A.’s Melting Pot”on Saturday, February 7.
A full listing of upcoming tours is available on the website.