Experiments in Los Angeles Cohabitation

In Los Angeles, a city in which questions of land use are particularly visible as sites of negotiation for human and more-than-human thriving, artists have been at the forefront of envisioning new approaches to shared livability. Offering proposals for alternative land use practices, creative practitioners have been activating local communities and devising models that reimagine what cohabitation can look like. In this conversation, programmed and moderated by MAK Center and SOM Foundation Researcher-in-Residence Maya Livio, artist Huntrezz Janos and writer and researcher Emma Kemp presented their work. Janos discussed ExtraTerraceTrill, a sustainable infrastructure project and prototype for an off-grid community space in LA. Kemp introduced No Canyon Hills, a community coalition working to protect an area of the Verdugo Mountains that is under threat of luxury development. Placing these projects into dialogue, this discussion surveyed the challenges and possibilities that artist-led land use projects can surface.

Participants

Huntrezz Janos is an Afro-Hungarian artist whose work transcends dimensions but often takes form in ours as 3D interactive experiences. She is the black transgender founder of ExtraTerraceTrill, a sustainable community space currently under construction in Los Angeles, and she currently works independently as a self identified transcorporeal artificer both on and offline. Janos is a CalArts experimental animation alumni and current USC student soon to complete a Masters of Science degree in Integrated Technology, Design, and Business. She proudly creates AR, VR, 3D prints, animations, as well as architectural and automotive designs from solar power, and is widely recognized for her creative use of the virtual medium, poetry, and performance.

Emma Kemp is a writer and researcher based in Los Angeles, working across art, ecology and cultural criticism. She is an Assistant Professor at Otis College of Art and Design, where she has taught writing and design since 2015. She holds an M.F.A. in Writing and Critical Studies from California Institute of the Arts (2014), where she is Program Coordinator of the CalArts Summer Institute. Her essays have appeared in X—TRA Journal of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Flash Art, CARLA, and others. She is the recipient of grants and awards including a Utah Humanities Fellowship, an Al Larvick National Grant, and the Ithaca New Voices literary award. Kemp is co-founder and director of Concerning Landscape, a nonprofit and interdisciplinary research studio exploring ecocritical activism through their primary project, No Canyon Hills (NCH), which is working to protect a significant ecological area in LA’s Verdugo Mountains.

Maya Livio is a writer, media-maker, and curator whose research and practice are invested in the relationships between ecosystems and technological systems. She is Assistant Professor of Climate, Environmental Justice, Media and Communication at American University and divides her time between Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Her work has been featured in and supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, NPR, Vanity Fair, and The Washington Post, among others. She has also commissioned and programmed media arts old and new as Curator of Medialive, an annual international festival at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) and the Media Archaeology Lab, a collecting institution for historical technologies. Livio is currently the Researcher-in-Residence at the MAK Center for Art & Architecture. In 2023, she was a Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Resident. She holds a PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder and MA from the University of Amsterdam.

About Researcher-in-Residence

The Researcher-in-Residence, a joint residency program between the SOM Foundation and the MAK Center, provides an architect, artist, or researcher dedicated space and time for innovative work that addresses pressing issues related to the built environment. This year’s topic seeks to explore affordable, equitable, and innovative modes of multifamily housing that respond to current and future needs.