Framing the Narrative

Januray 25, 2025

Framing the Narrative: The Interplay of Architecture, Art, and Movement in Film

January 25, 2025
3:30-5:30p with reception
Wolford House
Mt Washington, CA 90065

homeLA presents Framing the Narrative: The Interplay of Architecture, Art, and Movement in Film, an intimate conversation between Simon Leung, Christina Burchard with Genna Moroni, and Clarissa Tossin with Crystal Sepúlveda, facilitated by architect scholar, Jia Yi Gu.  Framing the Narrative explores how modern architectural settings influence artistic expression in video and film. The discussion will highlight three projects: Simon Leung’s opera Act 2, filmed at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House; Clarissa Tossin’s Ch’u Mayaa, set at Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Hollyhock House; and the upcoming film by Christina Burchard and Genna Moroni, I am a disaster, this is a disaster, inspired by the Wolford House designed by James DeLong. Each project exemplifies the dynamic relationship between architecture and creative processes in visually compelling Los Angeles settings. Framing the narrative will be held at the Wolford House, directed by Lena Daly,  in Mt Washington on Saturday, January 25, 2024, from 3:30-5:30p, with a sunset reception. 

Framing the Narrative is part of homeLA’s residency at the Wolford House in January.  This program is hosted by and presented in partnership with Lena Daly of the Wolford House.  Framing the Narrative is part of homeLA’s residency at the Wolford House in January.  It is hosted by and presented in partnership with Lena Daly of the Wolford House.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Framing the Narrative is part of homeLA’s residency at the Wolford House in January.  It is hosted by and presented in partnership with Lena Daly of the Wolford House.

BIOS

Christina Burchard
Christina Burchard is a documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles. In 2023, she premiered her documentary-hybrid film, "MISS BROWN", at the Tribeca Film Festival. She directed Season 2 of "THE CONFESSION TAPES" (A24), which explored the culpability of the criminal justice system, and two seasons of the Emmy-nominated series "WHY WE FIGHT" about a charismatic boxer battling opioid addiction. Christina has a passion for movement, and regularly works with dancers and musicians. Her dance film "LORELEI" stars principal dancers from The Joffrey Ballet, and premiered with the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra showcasing the contributions of female film composers. She has also created work through an ongoing collaboration with Pakistani-American composer Qasim Naqvi, featuring dancer Matthew “ET” Gibbs. Before pivoting to directing full-time, Christina began her career as a feature editor and worked with the team on the Academy Award winning film "CITIZENFOUR". As a former Creative Director at MasterClass, she directed a performance from Metallica and has been in the studio with St. Vincent, Alicia Keys, and Mariah Carey. During her tenure she also worked with Es Devlin, Jeff Koons, Gloria Steinem, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Tyler Mitchell, and more. Christina has directed, edited, and/or developed projects supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, and The Harnisch Foundation, as well as HBO, Showtime, Netflix, A24, ESPN, PBS, VICE, the International Venice Film Festival, IDFA Amsterdam, NYFF, Sundance, Tribeca and the Toronto Film Festival.

Jia Yi Gu
Jia Yi Gu is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures (i.e. how we know and show our histories). Her research and courses explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu. She develops exhibitions, texts, and experimental programming and projects. Over the past decade, she has cultivated a pedagogical and curatorial practice centering on transdisciplinary and inquiry-based exhibitions, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional work. Previously, she was director and curator at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architecture. She is currently a Board member of the Feminist Center for Creative Work.

Simon Leung
At the center of Simon Leung’s work as an artist is a meditation on the ethical challenge, broadly defined, situated in specific contexts. Some of his projects include “a trilogy” on the residual space of the Vietnam War; a live/video performance addressing AIDS in the figure of the glory hole; an extended proposal of Marcel Duchamp’s oeuvre as a discourse in ethics; a rumination on war via the site/non-site dialectic by way of Edgar Allan Poe; context-specific works centering on the squatting body as a heuristic cipher; “art workers’ theater” dealing with the intersection of art/labor; reconsiderations on the use of abstraction and allegory in addressing political force in his home town, Hong Kong; and an opera set in Griffith Park divided into three acts, the second of which was recently completed for the exhibition, “Scratching at the Moon” at ICA LA in 2024. He is Professor in the Department of Art at University of California, Irvine, where he is also affiliate faculty in Asian American Studies and UCI Critical Theory.

Genna Moroni
Raised in LA, Genna is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher whose approach to dance is rooted in authenticity and purpose. She was a founding member of Ate9 Dance Company where she performed at renowned venues such as Jacob’s Pillow, White Bird Dance, CAP UCLA and The Joyce Theater. Since 2009 Genna has worked alongside Barak Marshall as his choreographic assistant/rehearsal director in building new works. Over the last few years, Genna has been working more fluidly within commercial dance. Her specialty has been movement coaching/directing for and preparing actors for filming in addition to choreographing and dancing. In 2020 Genna launched her collective Gorgeous Ugly Movement (G.U.M. Co) as a place where movement artists explore their range and ability to tell stories through physicality. In 2022 Genna joined DanceFilmmaking.com as creative producer to help grow accessibility and awareness to dance filmmaking. Genna’s hope is to cultivate joy and understanding through movement. Genna was named Dance Magazine’s “25 to watch” for 2025.

Crystal Sepúlveda
Crystal Sepúlveda is an interdisciplinary dance artist and somatic practitioner based on Cahuilla, Luiseño, Serrano, and Tongva unceded land. Her movement research focuses on emergent practices of healing and self-determination from a boricua diaspora, post-Huracán María, and anti-colonial positionality. Sepúlveda maintains an ongoing performance practice in improvisation and works collaboratively and across disciplines to compose sound, movement, and video projects for live performance and installation. Her choreographic work and collaborative projects have been presented at Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Highways Performance Space, Human Resources LA, The Women’s Center for Creative Work (Los Angeles); Center of Music and Audio Technologies (Berkeley); dança em foco Festival International (Rio de Janeiro, BR); Lake Studios Berlin (Berlin, Germany); Centre Dürrenmatt (Neuchâtel, Switzerland) and at Musée des beaux-arts (Le Locle, Switzerland). crystalsepulveda.com

Clarissa Tossin
Clarissa Tossin is a visual artist who mainly works with moving-image, sculpture and installation to propose alternative narratives for places defined by histories of colonization. Tossin’s childhood in Brasília heavily influenced early films and installations deconstructing Brazil’s modernist history, which over the years have expanded to encompass geographies ranging from her adopted home of Los Angeles to the vast realms of outer space. Tossin has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, and is currently featured in major exhibitions such as the Prospect.6 Triennial in New Orleans; Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice at the Hammer Museum (part of Getty's PST Art & Science Collide initiative); and the 2024 Whitney Biennial. Looking ahead, she'll be a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in Spring 2025, followed by a major 14-year survey exhibition at the Museum of Art in São Paulo (MASP), opening in October 2025. This show, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, will be accompanied by a bilingual book featuring essays by prominent scholars including Marcela Guerrero (Whitney Museum), Jennifer Roberts (Harvard University), and Elena Shtromberg (The University of Utah).

Wolford House
The Wolford House is an artist-run exhibition space founded in 2023 by Lena Daly with the intention of sharing this historically private home with the greater community of Los Angeles and beyond. Built in 1947, this historic house is one of many mid-century gems tucked into the verdant, rolling neighborhood at the top of Mount Washington. The house, designed by architect James DeLong, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, was designed to be walked through in a loop. Lloyd Wright’s influence is evident in DeLong’s employment of Usonian philosophy and style which builds around nature at a human scale. Maintained in its original state, the house possesses unique details in the built-in cabinetry, mirror installations, and lighting fixtures. Made of soft redwood plywood, the home feels like a sculpture in and of itself. Since its founding, the house has exhibited over 40 artists at different stages of their careers and practices with a focus on how the natural lighting of the space intermingles with the work. The house was sited on the location with incredible panoramic views from the Griffith Observatory to downtown. Los Angeles is host to a number of masterpieces of modern architecture but many of them remain inaccessible to the public. The Wolford House presents us with the opportunity to share art, architecture, and an iconic view.