Nomadic Nights: Lisa Anne Auerbach and Karl Haendel

7463 Mullholand Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90046
6:30 – 9:00 PM

This Nomadic Night took place at the John Lautner Garcia House. Built in 1962 by influential American architect John Lautner, the Garcia House combines progressive engineering, humane design, and a dramatic, space-age flair. Lautner approached architecture with the notion of a building as a “total concept,” his constructions rooted in the idea that a “home” should be integrated completely into its particular site. The translation of this idea is direct when observing the Garcia House, and Lautner’s other work in Southern California: an organic flow between in- and outdoor space that links both elements inseparably.

The evening featured artists Lisa Anne Auerbach and Karl Haendel:

Lisa Anne Auerbach invited guests to “pattern their enemies,” a collective effort to create the pattern for a knitted blanket inscribing the names of personal adversaries within. A nod to Madame Defarge, the villain in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities that relentlessly knits the names of those to be executed in the French Revolution, Auerbach sees the process of transforming language into fabric as one of a strengthening of resolve, a battle cry, a means to harbor a host of metaphysical “bad energy,” and, perhaps on that specific day, an action in parallel to the inscription of the “righteous” in the “book of life.”

Karl Haendel demonstrated how to cook beef bourguignon, a traditional French recipe often thought to be a major achievement for a chef-in-training. Haendel sees the gesture not just as a kind of educational effort, but as a way to share a communal activity with his guests, something he describes as more “about other people than the way making art often feels.”