Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

January 16, 2015

Photography & Architecture

TAGS

Architecture, Art, Barbara Bestor, Events, Frances Anderton, Gordon Baldwin, Grant Mudford, James Welling

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Barbara Bestor (architect and executive director of the Woodbury University Julius Shulman Institute) moderates a panel on the critical and engaged eye that photographers bring to the built environment. In LA the human experience of space has undergone constant transformation and we will discuss the urban environment and its changing representations.

Moderator: Barbara Bestor: Architect and Executive Director of the Woodbury University Julius Shulman Institute

Panelists:
Frances Anderton: Producer, Writer & Host of DnA, Design & Architecture, KCRW
James Welling: Artist & Professor of Photography, UCLA Department of Art
Mimi Zeiger: Critic, Editor & Writer
Grant Mudford: Photographer
Gordon Baldwin: Independent Curator, Writer & Editor, Former Curator
Department of Photographs, Getty Museum

November 19, 2014

Memos from the Front Line

TAGS

Architecture, Events

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Arkitekturens Grannar returns to FFAR (Ringvägen 141) for a public event with architect and critic Mimi Zeiger. In the talk she will tract the rise of publishing as practice through her own work. Memos from the Front Line rejects the binary of the print and digital divide and suggests that the commingling of the analog and algorithmic creates rich territory for cultural production, collective criticism, and architectural experimentation.

November 17-18, 2014

TEXTTEXT

OBSERVE/CRITIQUE

TAGS

Architecture, Digital Culture, Events

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TEXTTEXT is a workshop at the Sandberg Instituut Studio for Immediate Spaces that explores the act of critical writing as drawn from keen observation and experience. The workshop takes the form of three parts over the course of two days: Reading, Ramble, and Reflection. Through the use of existing texts, constraint exercises, fieldwork, research, and digital tools, TEXTTEXT offers participants a framework for the production of a critical essay and a meditation on collective criticism.

October 4-5, 2014

Intervention

Contemporary Artists and the Modern House

TAGS

Architecture, Events

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Panel discussion with artist Santiago Borja, critic Mimi Zeiger and curator/artist Anthony Carfello.

This two-day conference investigates the power of experimental art installations to remake the spatial and social realities of modernist house museums. The symposium responds to the curatorial shift in the maintenance of house museums, in which directors are supporting increasingly transformative art installations that both challenge and celebrate the modernist landmarks. These collaborations with artists point to alternative preservation strategies, which move away from the conservation of historic homes as static objects and instead affirm the importance of human occupation and transformation. The conference will host a series of conversations between house museum directors, curators, critics, artists and architects to reveal the curatorial motivations and artistic processes behind these interventions. Read More …

September 25-November 13, 2014

Host: Natural Histories for Los Angeles

Worldwide Storefront

TAGS

Alexei Tylevich, Andrew Kovacs, Anthony Martin, Architecture, Charlotte Hannson, Erin Besler, Events, Exhibitions, Ian Besler, Jia Gu, Jonathan Crisman, Jose Sanchez, Katya Tylevich, Laurel Consuelo Broughton, Leonardo Bravo, Luis Callejas, Productora, River Jukes-Hudson, Sam Lubell, Sarah Lorenzen, Wonne Ickx, Worldwide Storefront

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Host curators are Mimi Zeiger (Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design), Leonardo Bravo and River Jukes-Hudson (Big City Forum), and Sarah Lorenzen (Neutra VDL Research House).

This fall, curators from three Los Angeles-based organizations come together as part of World Wide Storefront, a Storefront for Art and Architecture project, to present Host: Natural Histories for Los Angeles. This series of exhibitions and events is a collaboration between Big City Forum, Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, and the Neutra VDL Research House.

Host: Natural Histories for Los Angeles explores the multivalent meaning of “host” though spectacle, parasitic opportunism, and domestic landscapes. The Neutra VDL Research House serves as the site of these investigations and the house, embedded with spatial effects—mirrors, screens, and pools of water—heightens and confuses the relationship between the domestic interior and the exterior.  Read More …

Summer 2014

THE LOS ANGELES SEMINARY FOR EMBODIED AND CIVIC ARTS

TAGS

Art, Events, Fritz Haeg, Urbanism

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Participant
Organized by Fritz Haeg

A ‘seminary’ is a piece of ground where seeds are sown for later transplantation. It is an environment in which something is propagated, from which something originates. The Los Angeles Seminary for Embodied and Civic Arts takes back this secular and potentially radical meaning. We also take back the word ‘radical’ – going back to the roots. We take back the word ‘sensual’ – treating all of the senses as sources of pleasure but also intelligence. We take back the word ‘embodied’ – to give a body to a spirit. We take back the word ‘civic’ – the activities of people in relation to their local area.

This summer around 10 to 14 of us gather for 12 hours a day, one day a week, for 12 weeks at my home/campus – featuring a resource library, subterranean lounge, workshop garage, wild food gardens, a communal kitchen, picnic tables, lots of little nooks and two geodesic domes – turning inward for an exploration of the embodied arts, turning to each other as a community of fellow artists interested in responding to the world around us, turning outward to pay attention to the city we live in, and ultimately ‘inseminating’ Los Angeles with our civic arts. Read More …

June 14, 2014

Our Public Space

Who Owns It, Who Shapes It, and Who Benefits From It

TAGS

Architecture, Events, Iker Gil, John Preus, Patrizia di Monte, Quilian Riano, Urbanism

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Our Public Space is a two-day program of lectures and a workshop presented by a concise list of national and international architects, designers, and artists addressing the current state of public space and the built environment. This program is organized by Dilettante Studios, MAS Context, and the Hyde Park Art Center and will take place on June 14 and June 15, 2014. With Iker Gil, John Prius, Quilian Riano, Patrizia di Monte, and Mimi Zeiger. Read More …

June 6, 2014

OfficeUS Working Summit Issues Talks

United States Pavilion at the la Biennale de Venezia

TAGS

Events

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OfficeUS 25 ISSUES TALKS, the inaugural working summit of the United States Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, la Biennale de Venezia, in Venice, Italy. The conversations will take place during the opening days, on June 6th, 7th, and 8th at the US Pavilion in the Giardini and will launch the six month investigation of OfficeUS. Read More …

April 30 - May 24, 2014

Letters to the Mayor

TAGS

Architecture, Articles, Events, Exhibitions, Urbanism

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As a civic figure, the architect has the privilege and responsibility to articulate and translate the collective aspirations of society, and specifically of those not able to sit at the decision-making tables.

Throughout history, architects have engaged with this responsibility and the structures of economic, political and cultural power in different ways and with varying degrees of success. With the rise of globalization and the homogenization of the contemporary city, the role of the architect in the political arena has often been relegated to answering questions that others have asked. While designing the next economically driven cultural-iconic-touristic object, an increasing amount of both architects and with them, politicians, have forgotten the ethics that should be associated with architectural practice and the potential of design in the construction of public life.  Read More …