> sundown salon #30 / sunday, september 10th 2006 / 3:30 - 7:30pm / in conjunction with the wattis institute for contemporary art

> work by:

bestor architecture /escher gunewardena / fritz haeg studio / francois perrin / alexis rochas / taalman koch /who will also be featured in the 'humans were here!' newspaper and a new documentary by nils timm

> performances:

4pm - BEDROOM WALLS played the very first salon in the cave in 2001, now for the last salon they'll be playing from the comfort of a queen size bed up in the dome

6pm - KELLY AND DAVID they'll also be roaming around during the afternoon and pleasuring us with their music

7pm - NEW ENERGY DARK CONSORT OF MUSICKE performs a timed duration of organ, flute, and slow movement. (featuring members of the West Coast Encounter Group, Red Krayola, Whale Folk, and Far West New Energy Family Band)

a new documentary video by director nils timm will be screened for the first time and a companion newspaper. both will tell the story of the current work and life of six diverse eastside l.a. architecture and design practices. each will present one project currently under construction or recently completed, exploring their relationship to the geography and community of the city they call home, and how that has affected the projects they build. they will provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how they meet with clients, contractors, and consultants to get a project built. the presentation will attempt to reveal the human stories behind the work. in contrast to the slick, homogenized portrayal of architecture made to elicit desire and envy, this show will reveal the messy truths of construction for today's designers and architects.

this show travels to the wattis institute for contemporary art in san francisco from september 12th - november 11th 2006.

this event marks the conclusion of the first series of 30 sundown salon events that began in 2001. in fall 2006 sundown salon transforms into a sundown schoolhouse.

> here's the pdf of the HUMANS WERE HERE! newspaper!

THE PERFORMERS:

Kelly Marie Martin and David Jones first starting making sounds in the summer of 1995 while living in New York City. Stints in bands in San Francisco had brought them into earshot of one another's style and they forged a collaboration that has evolved over the last decade in the forms of live bands, sound installations, film scores, and in the recent release of a full length album of original songs as an acoustic/ electric duo. Both have also honed their chops playing in country and early American music idioms; Kelly presently plays guitar in Triple Chicken Foot, an old-time string band and David was a member of country-rock group CB Brand.

Their brand new album, Kelly and David as the Twilight Auguries blends the variety of their experience into a group of eleven unique songs of longing and loss, weaving folk forms into original compositions with soaring vocal harmonies and lyrics that intrigue and beguile. While contemporary comparisons are evident, they don’t stop there. Their unique character studies are informed by a deep relationship to life’s lessons of their own past, literature and the historical styles of classic songwriting. In these 11 songs, beauty reveals itself in a variety of disguises. They have tea with a mouse, witness a standoff between a wolf and a coyote, learn spells from a shapeshifter, and a sometime lover reveals himself to them as the Devil. Look for it now at cdbaby.com or go to myspace.com/kellyndavid to learn more.

Bedroom Walls / Hailed as "the next breakout group from Los Angeles" by the SF Bay Guardian, BEDROOM WALLS enchant fans with a voluptuous sound they call ROMANTICORE. Armed with a narcotic grace and a bone-dry sense of humor, the band's songs aim to instruct listeners in the proper use of melancholy. The L.A. WEEKLY says: "Music has to be liked a bit too much. Bedroom Walls make that easy, playing songs with awkward perfection. It's shamelessly melodic, kind of ambient, kind of spaced-out, surprisingly clever. It's like your little sister on drugs, insouciant and a bit off-the-wall." Or, as Bedroom Walls told the LOS ANGELES TIMES, "We just want to make people sad."

THE ARCHITECTS:

Barbara Bestor is the principal of Barbara Bestor Architecture in Silverlake, and author of the recent “ Bohemian Modern, Living in Silverlake”. She is a graduate of Harvard and SCI-Arc and has been in practice since 1992.

Escher GuneWardena's work addresses issues of sustainability, affordability and the dialogue between form and construction. They seek to establish simple formal manifestations of the complexities of each project, investigating the sublimated characteristics intrinsic to the work itself. Published internationally, they were one of six architectural firms included in the 2003 National Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York and in 2004 they were selected by dwell magazine to design the Dwell Home II, a prototype for a sustainable house. They are currently in the invited exhibition OPEN HOUSE: Intelligent Living by Design, organized jointly by the Vitra Design Museum and the Art Center College of Design, exploring the topic of the future house. Their interest in contemporary art has led to various collaborations with artists including the installation design of artist Sharon Lockhart's current work PINE FLAT. Frank Escher grew up in Switzerland and studied Architecture at the ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule) Zürich. Ravi GuneWardena, originally from Sri Lanka, was trained at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. In 1997 they jointly edited the architectural guide "Cruising Industrial Los Angeles" for the LA Conservancy.

Fritz Haeg Studio was established in New York City in 1995 and was moved to Los Angeles in 1999. We create places and spaces of poetry that reconcile the qualities of a particular location with needs and desires of diverse humans. Most of our projects expand seamlessly and without distinction from furniture to interior space to architecture to landscape out to urban space and beyond. We are interested in subverting the role of the human as the dominant occupant of the planet. With the garden as a useful model for a balanced relationship between human need and natural resource we are looking for radical ways to create an architecture of harmony.

Francois Perrin was born in Paris in 1968 where he studied Architecture at the Beaux-Arts. He moved to Los Angeles in 2000 to establish his practice and since has completed residential projects and several exhibition designs. He has taught at the Art Center College of Design, Sci-Arc and Cal Poly Pomona and has lectured recently at the MAK in Vienna, the Jan Van Eick Academie in Maastrich and Columbia University in New York. He is the editor/curator of the book and exhibition “ Yves Klein : Air Architecture” and his work has been featured in the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum, The Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis, Sunset, ID and V Magazine. He is currently working on a new residential project in the Hollywood Hills and an outdoor space for the Quiksilver Headquarters in Huntington Beach, California.

Alexis Rochas is the founder of I/O, a Los Angeles practice focusing on Open Source architectural methodologies and systems through the development of dynamic technologies and implementation processes. His recent work includes the AEROMADS project, which outlines an architectural system that combines air pressure and high-strength intelligent fabrics as a tectonic solution for the creation of minimal mass, self-sustaining structures. His work has been exhibited at the A+D Museum NextGen, Spot on Schools 2006, Florence, 2005 INDEX Awards, Copenhagen; MAK Center for Art and Architecture(2005); TELIC(2005); Watts Towers Arts Center(2005); Sundown Salon: Baroque Geode; Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, in collaboration with Lebbeus Woods; and at the Bienal de Buenos Aires. His work has been published in a number of architectural journals including Metropolis, Architectural Record, and Domus magazine. A member of SCI-Arc's design faculty since 2003, Rochas has headed projects through the Community Outreach and Design Build Program, including the FAB Arts Market Temporal Gallery, LINC Housing community grounds prototyping, SCI-Arc's Lecture Hall Acoustical Treatment, and the LAMP Community's Sun Shelter Pavilion. He is the recipient of the 2004 City of Los Angeles Design Award, the 2002 New York Society of Architects M.W Del Gaudio Award for Excellence in Total Design, and the 1996 Award for Excellence in Design from the Architectural department of the University of Buenos Aires.

Taalman Koch Architecture is an architecture practice led by Linda Taalman and Alan Koch addressing a broad range of scales and approaches for the built environment, involving the research of pioneering and speculative projects and engaging and conspiring with creative individuals. Founded on the principals of experimentation and speculation -- innovation and fabrication, TK Architecture’s mission is to continue to mediate thorough investigations of the built environment and stimulate dialog with the community in the production of well-built and thoughtful environments.