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

Transition to Sculpture

Transition to Sculpture

If Manolo Valdés’s paintings convey a search for materiality, his sculpture does so even more. Today, sculpture has taken over most of his workspace, his time, and his efforts.

Modernity Building the Modern / Reshaping the Modern

Modernity Building the Modern / Reshaping the Modern

A firm believer in the idea that a collection needs to be upheld at least by four generations and comparing this continuity to a relay race, Nahit Kabakcı began creating the Huma Kabakcı Collection from the 1980s onwards. Today, the collection can be considered one of the most important and outstanding examples among the rare, consciously created, and long-lasting ones of its kind in Turkey.

The Golden Horn

The Golden Horn

When regarding the paintings of Istanbul by western painters, Golden Horn has a distinctive place and value. This body of water that separates the Topkapı Palace and the Historical Peninsula, in which monumental edifices are located, from Galata, where westerners and foreign embassies dwell, is as though an interpenetrating boundary.