Ben Thorp Brown, 2019
17’34”                                     

Filmed in Richard and Dion Neutra’s VDL Research House II, on Silver Lake Reservoir, Los Angeles, Cura brings to life the principles developed by the Austrian-American architect, who saw architecture as a therapeutic tool. He designed projects in which each environmental element was carefully calculated to elicit sensory and emotional responses in people. The main protagonist of the film is a tortoise, the ancient reptile embodying Cura, the goddess of care, voiced by American vocalist Joan La Barbara. The tortoise guides us through the house, delivering a monologue that mixes mythology with passages from Neutra’s main philosophical text, Survival by Design (1954).

This film was created as part of The Arcadia Center, a speculative wellness centre for our time, and a training space for a world that needs to restore its empathic abilities.

Hammam

Hammam

Cura

Cura

Dark Origins

Dark Origins

Stream of Consciousness / The Caves of Hasankeyf

Stream of Consciousness / The Caves of Hasankeyf

Robocaliptic Manifesto: techno-politics for liberation

Robocaliptic Manifesto: techno-politics for liberation

Behind Shirley

Behind Shirley

Party on the CAPS

Party on the CAPS

Undercurrent

Undercurrent

Audience with the Mad King

Audience with the Mad King

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Pera Museum invites artist Benoît Hamet to reinterpret key pieces from its collections, casting a humourous eye over ‘historical’ events, both imagined and factual.

Chlebowski’s Sultan

Chlebowski’s Sultan

This is one of Stanisław Chlebowski’s larger canvasses dealing with themes other than battles; only Ottoman Life at the Sweet Waters now at the Istanbul Military Museum can compare with it in size.

Demons, Symbols, and the Cosmos

Demons, Symbols, and the Cosmos

Beliefs surrounding illness and healing in Byzantium stem from the myths, astrology, and magic practiced around the Mediterranean by Jews, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Greeks.