Passages — homeLA

Sowden House

January 12 + 13, 2019

Artists: Rebecca Bruno (w/ Flora Wiegmann, Sam Widaman, and Lynn Ellen Bathke, Low Leaf, Mak Kern, Emily Marchand, Odeya Nini, Tyler Matthew Oyer, Kenzie McClure, Delaram Pourábdi, Zaquia Mahler Salinas, Crystal Sepúlveda, Vox, Theresa Wayman, Cheng-Chieh Yu

PASSAGES at the Sowden House, a two-day immersive performance, installation, and ﬁlm event.

PASSAGES at the Sowden House engages the architecture, history, and ethos of this historically significant home through site responsive works of Los Angeles and San Diego based choreographers, vocalists, performance artists and musicians. The event is about activating the intersections of these artistic mediums in the public-spirit of the home’s current owners. Jenny Landers and Dan Goldfarb who acquired the Los Feliz home in 2017 have made it their mission to host philanthropic events in support of the arts, animals, and social causes.

Constructed in 1926 by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) at the commission of painter and photographer John Sowden, the cave-like house was built using concrete textile blocks with Mayan themes similar to Los Angeles residences designed earlier in the 1920s by Frank Lloyd Wright. Through myth, transfer of ownership, renovation and redesigns, and association with the infamous Black Dahlia murder of 1947, the Sowden House is a portal not lacking in artistic and humanistic ground. This notion of portal is evocative of our time and the basis for PASSAGES at the Sowden House.

homeLA has been bringing residents of Los Angeles together around dance and art in private space since its inception in 2013. For the project’s twentieth event, homeLA Founder Rebecca Bruno has collaborated with Founder and Creative Director Delaram Pourábdi of PARADEUX on a dance ﬁlm in which their respective mediums meet through the home’s cyclical layout. The ﬁlm follows Bruno’s unfolding physical relationship with the site and a soft sculpture made of an inherited shoulder pad collection owned by the choreographer’s grandmother. Pourábdi’s visual style is both mystical and tense giving multidimensional shape to the ﬁlm’s scenes and the home’s greater narrative.

Following the creation of this ﬁlm, Bruno, Landers, and Pourábdi invited a series of artists to create ephemeral body-based works in relationship with the Sowden House paying special attention to the term passages as it relates to time, the built environment, and the senses. Artists include such choreographers as Crystal Sepúlveda (known for her collaboration with artist Clarissa Tossin at the Hollyhock House), Cheng-Chieh Yu, Zaquia Mahler Salinas (San Diego), and Kenzie McClure, sculptor Mak Kern, culinary artist Emily Marchand, experimental vocalist Odeya Nini, performance artist Tyler Matthew Oyer, and musicians Theresa Wayman of Warpaint, vōx, and, Low Leaf.