Saturday, March 31st at LAXART (2640 S. La Cienega Blvd)
LAXART 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.