VILLA AURORA turns 25 - The Countdown

During 25 days, from November 7th to December 1st, we are offering posts on social media highlighting Villa Aurora artists-in-residents and projects that focus on Villa Aurora. We hope you will join us on this journey!

VILLA AURORA turns 25 - The Countdown 1

Dear Friends,

we will be celebrating our 25th anniversary on December 1, 2020!

While we would like nothing more than get together with you to ponder past accomplishments, current projects, and plans for the future, we hope that you will, for the time being, enjoy VILLA AURORA turns 25 - The Countdown.

During the next 25 days, we will be offering posts highlighting Villa Aurora artists-in-residents and projects that focus on Villa Aurora. We hope you will join us on this journey into our past and we are looking forward to party with you in 2021.

If you haven't followed us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter yet, now is the right time to join us!

Your Villa Aurora Team, Los Angeles and Berlin

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During his fellowship at the Getty Research Institute, Heiner Müller decided to move into the newly renovated Villa Aurora with his family. Thus, he became the first guest and unofficial honorary fellow even before the house opened as an artist residency on December 1st in 1995.

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Heiner Müller stayed in the house for several weeks with his daughter Anna and his wife Brigitte Maria Mayer. He was already very sick with cancer when his wife wrote The Final Battle, a gripping, very personal text about their unusual time in the Palisades.

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Die Kaschierte Bibliothek aus der Serie L O N G I N G (The Hidden Library from the Series L O N G I NG) von Thomas Klegin

1999 Installation im Speisezimmer (Installation in the dining room) Villa Aurora / Los Angeles Hartfaserplatte (Masonite) / Kunststoffsaugnäpfe (PVC) / Neonleuchten (Circle light) / The Cambridge Modern History, (Vol.I - XIII, Cambridge 1911/1934) / 1 Tisch (1 table) geschredderte Zeitungen L.A. Stadtkulturmagazine (shredded newspaper, L.A. Stadtkulturmagazine: LA Weekly / New York Times Oct.1st - Dec. 8th, 1999.

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Jan Brandt:

I could hardly believe my luck when I was awarded a residency fellowship at Villa Aurora in 2014. I gave myself a week to acclimate. And withing the first couple of days, I became so fascinated by the people and the place that I decided to postpone working on my novel and decided to write about the country and its people. About a flea market, an actress from the sticks, a rapper from Watts, the killing of a skater in Echo Park, a German chef and an American collector of GDR memorabilia. About Paradise on the Pacific – and the effort it takes to be able to stay. The result is my Dream City Diary “Stadt ohne Engel – Wahre Geschichten aus Los Angeles” (City without Angels – True Stories from Los Angeles).

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Georg Nussbaumer

-organ:re animation

a selection of the organpipes of the villa aurora organ is connected to pink balloons. their deflation excites long high and short low tones: a funnelshaped piece.

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The german fellows are leaving every three months, but Betty Herrera and Juan Soto are not leaving. Years ago they immigrated from Guatemala and Mexico. Every week they work here in the villa. They are busy with hoover, garden vacuum or lawn-mower. „If you work hard, you get a reward after and after“ says Juan the gardener. Betty, the chief of the cleaning team, managed it and made it a good living. She lives in a hard earned house, which really is a showcase. Her life is one for money, only for her sons future. Of course that’s a kind of life, which demands for a spiritual balance. In a small backyard church Betty plays a main role in the community.

This film was realised by Christine Lang during her stay in the Villa Aurora January to March 2007.

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Sabine Reinfeld

“Miss Reception”

Didn't everything start in a garage in California?

Here comes MISS RECEPTION at her work in the garage of Villa Aurora!

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villa watch

Video, 16 min 16 sec, 2005

Natascha Sadr Haghighian in collaboration with Judith Hopf

The video is an adaptation of a scene from Luis Buñuel’s ‘Exterminating Angel’. While a group of people are stuck in a cultural institution for no obvious reason, concerned relatives, gapers, police and the media gather outside.

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Aurelia Mihai - Das ist die Stunde (This the hour), 2001

(Photo)-Readings

Lion Feuchtwanger’s exposition of the figure of Francisco de Goya became the point of departure for Aurelia Mihai’s video and photo installation “Das ist die Stunde” (This is the hour) created in 2001. The installation consists of two videos and three photographic works. The underlying rhythm and mood of the various motifs refer to the full-blown backdrop of the library in Feuchtwanger’s study in the Villa Aurora, his home during his California exile.

Text excerpt by Magdalena Kröner (Thomas Mann House Fellow 2021)

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Anna McCarthy – Fassbinder in LALAland

The short film tells the story of a woman living in Los Angeles who pretends to be Fassbinder. She speaks Bavarian with a strong American accent. On the occasion of “her” birthday she gives the first interview since 33 years – commissioned by the Fassbindertage 2015.

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Steven Warwick

Re-engineering Villa Aurora

artist, writer and musician Steven Warwick presented a performance installation at the Villa in 2015. Utilizing the in house silent movie organ, Warwick performed an imaginary soundtrack for Los Angeles accompanied by composer Ulrich Krieger on saxophone. The installation included a film Warwick made at the Salton Sea (a toxic lake just outside of LA) alongside objects and ephemera (gun club targets, rainbow umbrellas, burning sage) and a performative spraying of perfume which had the essence of burning trash.

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Klaus Modick - Sunset

When I came to the Villa Aurora in 2009, I knew a lot about Feuchtwanger’s life and work. I had written my doctoral dissertation on him thirty years before. But the knowledge was academic, and the person Feuchtwanger was rather foreign to me. I only got to know him during the months I spent in his house. I lived in his room, slept in his bed, and in the morning, I looked into the same mirror in which he had also gazed at himself. And these glances became the nucleus of the novel “Sunset”.

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Thomas Florschuetz

Ohne Titel (Vorhang/Curtain) 04, 2000,

2-teilig/2 pieces, je/each 182 x 122 cm,

Cibachrome

Courtesy of Galerie m, Bochum and the Artist

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Los Angeles is a place of images and imagination. Tilman Peschel undermines Hollywood’s striking trivial iconography in self-staging photographs. Primitively crafted accessories ironize the means and create analytical and playful distance. Images about the power of images as role models.

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In 2017, Villa Aurora was entrusted with the administration of the Thomas Mann House.

Before the Thomas Mann House underwent an extensive restoration, Villa Aurora Fellows Sebastian Stumpf and Niklas Goldbach captured the iconic building for their projects "Seven Palms", 2017 and "1550 San Remo", 2017.

Sebastian Stumpf, "Seven Palms", 2017

courtesy Sebastian Stumpf and Galerie Thomas Fischer, Berlin

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"1550 San Remo Drive" was filmed in February 2017 on the premises of the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, California, USA.

The video features quotes from Thomas Manns diaries (1940-1943), architect JR Davidson and advertisements from the real estate companies which marketed the house, before it was bought by the German government in November 2016.

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Hans Diernberger

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Thomas Hettche – Woraus wir gemacht sind (What we are made of), 2006 Arrival in Pacific Palisades after traveling cross country. On the shores of the Pacific Ocean, behind me the continent, everything started to turn. In the garden of Villa Aurora and the silence of the parrots, in the shade of the eucalyptus tree, I began to write. This city in my dreams forever.

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Carsten Nicolai / alva noto

Villa Aurora (2004)

Carsten Nicolai as alva noto returned to assemble a second recording of compositions devoted to a number of creative figures including industrial designer Dieter Rams, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and German dramatist Heiner Müller.

In “villa aurora” we find ourselves among the dying moments of a held chord, until seconds later the lid of the piano is dropped shut, amputating its echo forever.

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Exactly one year ago he brooded over the connections between machine music, cyborgs and algorithms in the California sun. The sound artist Leo Hofmann showed the first study of his sound performance "Bias Dialogs", developed in LA, at the fellow reception in his studio apartment.

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Jens Brand, Philipp Lachenmann and Lutz Seiler (2003)

While working on our space-time experiments (“The Living and the Dead”, conceived and directed by Josefa Corválan), we took the opportunity to take these pictures. The protagonists are Jens Brand, Philipp Lachenmann, and Lutz Seiler.

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Michael Lentz “Pazifik Exil” (S. Fischer Verlag, 2007)

The novel recaptures the lives of the German exiles to America's Pacific coast, whose memories, conversations, and philosophical musings weave their way into the novel.

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Pazifik Exil Musical theater installation for six voices and live electronics based on Michael Lentz’ novel “Pazifik Exil”.

Libretto: Michael Lentz (Villa Aurora Fellow 2001)

Composition: Sergej Newski (Villa Aurora Fellow 2014)

Interludes: Paul Frick (Villa Aurora Fellow 2018)

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The Anniversary

Since Heiner Müller stayed at Villa Aurora, more than 450 artists have lived and worked here. We are profoundly grateful for your friendship and loyalty and cannot wait to celebrate this milestone with you in-person! While we wait, please enjoy this sneak peak of the English version of our video tour.

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Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e. V. is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office and Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Events | Villa Aurora Countdown to 25

VILLA AURORA turns 25 - The Countdown