Aaron Betsky discusses his research concerning the body and sexuality in architecture and design. His interest in the subject began during his first teaching assignment at the University of Cincinnati when he noticed his interior design class consisted of forty women and one gay man. Pondering why this difference in gender make up exists between architectural and interior design, he began to explore ways in which ideas of gender performance are wrapped up with notions of space and building.

Heather Flood introduces M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel of Matmos, identifying them as an experimental music practice whose recent activities include an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art and a world tour with Björk. Schmidt and Daniel perform some of their music, which includes audience participation and pre-recorded video segments.

M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel perform some of their music, which includes audience participation and pre-recorded video segments. The video sequences range from the abstract forms to portrayals of burning skin, with sound samples corresponding to the on-screen segments.

A gallery talk with David Eskenazi [Principal d.esk / SCI-Arc design studio and visual studies faculty] in his recent exhibition Slump Model Installed at the Woodbury University Wedge Gallery. The installation, part of an exhibition series curated by Ryan Tyler Martinez, presents a large model made with modeling techniques and structural logics more commonly found at a smaller scale size, and as such the model’s form collapses and deforms.

The Pantheon of Queer Mythology is an immersive experience in which the audience is taken through the whimsical worlds of a group of Queer deities representing the struggles, contradictions, hopes, and victories of some queer experiences today.

The project bridges the analog production of fashion with digital media through the use of photogrammetry. The digitization of the models in these physical garments weaves the tactile intricacy of detailed fashion with endless virtual forms of storytelling in a seamless relay of interaction. The Pantheon of Queer Mythology recently made its world premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.

Dora Epstein Jones introduces Diane Ghirardo, discussing her contributions to the understanding of architecture, urbanism and the social realm in Los Angeles. She praises Ghirardo’s books Out of Site and Architecture After Modernism for engaging not only architecture’s aesthetic aspect, but its economic and social realities.

Ghirardo begins her lecture with an explanation of the geography of Cape Town and discusses the difficulties in assessing history and the associated populations due to unavailability of official records. She discusses the history of the place in relationship to political changes and policies implemented and their role in shaping the neighborhood.

Curated by Mimi Zeiger, Soft Schindler brings together contemporary artists and architects to explore questions of softness within the narrative of Pauline Schindler’s history at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House.

Soft Schindler participants, through their respective practices and presented works, show the incompleteness of binary ideas in architecture, sculpture, and design— femininity vs. masculinity, inside vs. outside, heavy vs. light, rational vs. emotional—framing such notions outmoded. Each of these practitioners makes non-conforming aesthetics and ideologies manifest in space.

Soft Schindler October 12, 2019 – February 16, 2020

SCI-Arc Channel joins Tim Ivison to explore the history and transformation of Fritz Haeg’s Salmon Creek Farm. The New York Times says: ‘Salmon Creek Farm is communal living, the 21st-century way. Haeg’s vision is to bring together artists whose work, he says, ‘‘goes beyond conventional studio practice,’’ and who, rather, are ‘‘responding to wilderness and the basics of daily life.’’’

Salmon Creek Farm is located two miles from California’s Mendocino coast on 35 acres of mostly second-growth redwoods. From gardens, meadows and fruit orchard on a ridge-top, the property slopes down to Big Salmon Creek in the valley. A cottage in the orchard is followed by an octagonal sauna, various out-houses and out-buildings, and ten hand-crafted cabins secluded on footpaths throughout the property and across a tributary that bisects the land.

Join LAXART Executive Director, Hamza Walker and Deputy Director, Catherine Taft, as they discuss the history of “alternative spaces,” LAXART’s diverse programming and their current exhibition, “Remote Castration.”

On October 19, 2018, SCI-Arc presents Rough Coat, a public exhibition by Mira Henry. In Henry’s words: “This is a story of constructing a monumental blanket. Blankets, as we know, are soft, submissive, and tolerant. They are inviting to use and easy to put away. The monumental, by contrast, suggests a stern grandiosity—something heroic to build and equally heroic to remove. Here is the set up: in which the relaxed quality of interior comforts are thrown against the rigorous logic of an architectural surface. After that, as is often said, one thing leads to another.”

Henry is the principal of Henry Architecture (HA) and the co-principal of the collaborative project Current Interests. She is design faculty at SCI-Arc.

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill (Guest Curator – Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985) and Theresa Sotto (Assistant Director Academic Programs - Hammer Museum) discuss the exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985. The exhibition focuses on the artistic practices of women artists working in Latin America and US-born women artists of Latino heritage between 1960 and 1985, providing insight into this important period in Latin American history and in the development of contemporary art.