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

The Chronicle of Sarajevo

The Chronicle of Sarajevo

Inspired by the great European masters, from Renaissance to Art Nouveau, Berber’s works exemplify the deep, opaque whites of his journeys through the fairy tale landscapes of Bosnia to the dark, macabre burrows of Srebrenica.

Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel

Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel

In 1998 Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu collaborated on an obvious remake of Marcel Duchamp’s Roue de Bicyclette, his first “readymade” object. Duchamp combined a bicycle wheel, a fork and a stool to create a machine which served no purpose, subverting accepted norms of art. 

Dancing on Architecture

Dancing on Architecture

I think it was Frank Zappa – though others claim it was Laurie Anderson – who said in an interview that ‘writing on music is much like dancing on architecture’.