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While there is popcorn, there\u2019s no fixed seating, no timed screenings and no attempt to tell a linear history of film. From 5 p.m. until midnight, visitors are invited to wander freely through a dense labyrinth of sight and sound, where cinematic landmarks like George M\u00e9li\u00e8s\u2019 \u201cA Trip to the Moon\u201d (1902) and Luis Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s \u201cAn Andalusian Dog\u201d (1929) are scattered pell-mell throughout the galleries alongside contemporary pieces by artists including Marina Abramovi\u0107 and Wolfgang Tillmans. Venice-based artist Doug Aitken is also premiering a new project, titled \u201cHowl\u201d (2026), two days into the exhibit\u2019s run.<\/p>\n
On center stage, Arthur Jafa\u2019s \u201cApex\u201d (2013) makes its Los Angeles debut. Widely regarded as a masterpiece of video art, its driving, syncopated track pulses over media appropriated from music videos, news footage and pop culture to form a seductive montage of Black cultural achievement, scenes of brutality and vernacular pictures.<\/p>\n
\u201cApex\u201d screens directly across the auditorium from New York Herald cartoonist Winsor McCay\u2019s early animated film \u201cLittle Nemo\u201d (1911), which features a princely white child dancing alongside caricatures rooted in minstrel performance. Often contextualized as a milestone of artistic invention entangled with racist representation, \u201cLittle Nemo\u201d takes on a different valence here. The former\u2019s pulsing soundtrack tears apart \u201cLittle Nemo\u2019s\u201d enchanting dream logic, shattering the illusion that Nemo \u2014 despite its virtuosic rendering \u2014 can be so cleanly distinguished from its accompanying grotesque depictions.<\/p>\n
If the older film depends on a visual hierarchy that isolates refinement from racialized stereotypes, \u201cApex\u201d refuses that separation. It collapses cruelty and pleasure, grace and grief into a rhythmic kaleidoscope of feeling. The effect is exhausting and unsettling.<\/p>\n
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Lu Yang\u2019s \u201cDoku The Flow\u201d plays during the exhibit \u201cWhat a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem,\u201d presented by the Julia Stoschek Foundation at the Variety Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Cinematic montage \u2014 pioneered by Sergei Eisenstein and reinvented by Jean-Luc Godard \u2014 becomes an organizing principle of the exhibit, as artworks compete for attention. It would take roughly 12 hours to watch the show from start to finish, but Stoschek and Kittelmann recommend an hour or two of aimless wandering. Audio from one work bleeds into another, while flashes of familiar sounds and images \u2014 footage of 9\/11, a Britney Spears track \u2014 function as what Kittelmann calls \u201cmemory triggers\u201d that connect personal and shared experiences.<\/p>\n
On one balcony, a recording of Nina Simone\u2019s soulful 1965 rendition of the spiritual \u201cSinnerman\u201d is set over pirated archival footage of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War protests. Elsewhere, frat boys binge drink at Maya ruins in Cyprien Gaillard\u2019s \u201cCities of Gold and Mirrors\u201d (2009), while Maya Deren\u2019s nearby \u201cMeditation on Violence\u201d (1948) captures a Taoist ritual of masculine grace.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a Wonderful World\u201d treats dissonance, cacophony and intensity as metaphors for daily life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world itself is loud and overwhelming,\u201d Kittelmann said, noting that meaning emerges when familiar connections break open, allowing attention to shift to the gaps between.<\/p>\n
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Curator Udo Kittelmann, left, and Julia Stoschek sit in front of Lu Yang\u2019s \u201cDoku The Flow\u201d at the exhibit \u201cWhat a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem,\u201d which brings Stoschek\u2019s seminal collection of video art to the U.S. for the first time.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Stoschek builds her collection around what she calls \u201cart with an afterimage,\u201d seeking out pieces that linger in the mind, then subtly change register. The work is often difficult and disorienting, but the show\u2019s aim is not to cow viewers into submission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want people to enter, to pause, to reflect, and to leave with a shift in perspective, with a glimpse of hope,\u201d Stoschek said.<\/p>\n
A dry sense of humor surfaces in unexpected places \u2014 like by the lavatory mirror, where Douglas Gordon\u2019s \u201cThe Making of Monster\u201d (1996) is installed. A droll moment of introspection is offered when Gordon disfigures his face with tape.<\/p>\n
A former MOCA trustee, Stoschek spent years trying to bring her collection to Los Angeles, which she calls,\u201cthe birthplace of the visual modernity of cinematic imagination.\u201d Access to the Variety Arts Theater presented the perfect occasion. Artworks by Dara Birnbaum and Elaine Sturtevant flank the building\u2019s entrance, honoring the theater\u2019s origins as a women\u2019s civic center. Prominent public figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt spoke there before it transitioned into a vaudeville venue. Charlie Chaplin attended the opening.<\/p>\n
Variety Arts has been mostly dormant since the 1990s, seeing occasional rentals and long stretches of vacancy. Over time it\u2019s become a symbol of neglect and unrealized potential in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
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Paul Chan\u2019s \u201cHappiness (Finally) After 35.000 Years of Civilization (after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier)\u201d screens during the exhibit \u201cWhat a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem\u201d at the Variety Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Showing at the theater represents a full-circle moment for Aitken.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to a family wedding there as a 5-year-old, and to underground punk shows in the \u201980s as a teenager,\u201d he said, adding that the exhibit and its setting counter the familiar narrative that Los Angeles is \u201ca city with no history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aitken traces the building\u2019s guiding spirit through downtown\u2019s uncanonized cultural lineage \u2014 along Alameda Street and to venues like LACE and Al\u2019s Bar \u2014 where artists merged music and film in loft takeovers and avant-garde installations.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerations of artists keep inheriting the white box, and we think that\u2019s where art should reside,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s such a conservative view.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a Wonderful World,\u201d he said, models an alternative way to showcase the artistic history of Los Angeles \u2014 one that runs parallel to Hollywood\u2019s dominant narrative.<\/p>\n
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The exterior facade of the Variety Arts Theater in downtown L.A., which is opening its doors for the first time in years to host a video art exhibit from the Julia Stoschek Foundation.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Kittelmann, too, sees physical theaters as essential to that ambition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are very rare spaces where, once the doors are closed, you forget about the outer world and you breathe totally differently,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Through the exhibit, the building is allowed to show its skin: Walls are plastered but unpainted, and the basement is stuffed with bric-a-brac accumulated during its long, colorful history.<\/p>\n
Powerfully installed at the end of the basement\u2019s long hallway is Anne Imhof\u2019s \u201cUntitled (Wave)\u201d (2021). In the video, Imhof stands alone at the ocean\u2019s edge, repeatedly striking the water with a whip. As she does so, everything else falls away, leaving only this image of solitary resistance against a force that does not answer back.<\/p>\n
In an era when most viewing happens alone, at home or on phones, \u201cWhat a Wonderful World\u201d insists \u2014 almost stubbornly \u2014 on collective attention as a radical act.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a love letter to time-based artworks,\u201d Kittelmann said, \u201cand a love letter to Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The five-story Venetian-style Variety Arts Theater in downtown Los Angeles will open its doors to the public for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":563339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[38143,8067,8058,9102,1582,276,28063,1020,472,22184,245875,2961,245878,224,2444,5337,245874,245879,245877,245876],"class_list":{"0":"post-563338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-apex","9":"tag-artist","10":"tag-artwork","11":"tag-building","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-california","14":"tag-exhibit","15":"tag-film","16":"tag-history","17":"tag-image","18":"tag-kittelmann","19":"tag-la","20":"tag-little-nemo","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-los-angeles-times","23":"tag-losangeles","24":"tag-stoschek","25":"tag-stunning-collection","26":"tag-video-art-show","27":"tag-wonderful-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116006860054409867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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