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DOPIUM.LA: Big Art Little Chinatown

2017-11-14T20:16:00-05:00

Only a dream can kill a dream.

Developed with some of the minds behind One Night Stand LA, DOPIUM.LA aimed to preserve the original beauty of Chinatown, while showing its inspirational influence on an emerging community of creatives in Los Angeles.

For one night, a group of artist, architects and atmospheric maestros turned the Mandarin Plaza into a space to remember; into an experience sparking the thrill of pleasure and inspiration - like Dopamine through the brain, and Opium* through the vein.

Two spectators enjoying their shadowed existence.

”Opium” as a part of the name is a reference to the organic relief it originally provided as a natural form of medicine, and is in no way making light of controversial issues. We aim for this event to represent art as a creative catharsis, our own way of expressing ourselves as means to escape the climate we’re in for one day, at least.

Image: Dopium LA

Featured artists created original pieces to bring the plaza (aka the "Canvas") to life through mixed media, from sculpture...

Grammatical Supremacy; A conversation with Cross-Talk's Anthony Morey

2017-08-03T20:02:00-04:00

This week we're joined with Anthony Morey, LA-based theorist, designer, educator, writer, and curator. Readers of Archinect will probably recognize his name from his curatorial work with the exciting annual architecture show "One Night Stand", and his relatively new series on Archinect “Cross-Talk”.

Listen to "Grammatical Supremacy":

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Rounding second base with One-Night Stand LA

2016-05-23T18:37:00-04:00

If twenty or so policemen shut down your architecture exhibition, it’s probably a sign that you’re doing something right. Far from the antiseptic tedium that characterizes so many architecture events these days, the second iteration of One-Night Stand LA, "the Rendezvous", was a raucous affair and all the better for it.

Beer flowed from the bar-cum-installation designed and staffed by Happy Hour Agency, a creative agency that hosts a “conceptual cocktail pop-up” every few months in the Highland Park neighborhood. As you waited in line for a drink (or a tube of alcoholic toothpaste), a harlequin face would appear from a hole in the wall and grin at you.

Just down the hall, a major highlight was the installation by Jennifer Bonner and Volkan Alkanoglu, which comprised an “architectural crime scene” replete with taped off floor plans, number tags and description cards. One “victim,” so to speak, was John Hejduk’s Wall House II. The installation worked well both as a one-liner and with mo...