Movement
We were invited to produce an architectural exhibition for WUHo, a small storefront gallery on Hollywood Boulevard. Set within a streetscape defined by spectacle—the Walk of Fame, canonical theaters, and the apparatus of the Academy Awards—the gallery registers as nearly invisible. In this context, architecture’s conventional formal concerns appeared misaligned with the performative economies that dominate the boulevard.
Rather than competing with spectacle, the project engaged it directly. Taking the gallery’s indiscernibility as a condition, we approached deployable performance as a spatial strategy. In place of a conventional exhibition, we staged a temporary spatial transformation. Part scenographic intervention, part inhabitable supergraphic, the installation rejected architectural connoisseurship in favor of direct engagement with multiple publics.
The project functioned as a self-propagating, large-scale “selfie-maton”, inviting tourists and Angelenos alike into their own red-carpet moment. Star motifs lifted from the sidewalk were pulled into the gallery and projected through the space, generating spatial distortions that referenced cinematic tropes—superheroes, hyperspace, hypnotism, villainous interiors, and astrophysical singularities. Upon entry, the exposed construction made the artifice legible, foregrounding the project’s temporary nature. Moving through a sequence of voids, visitors ultimately arrived at a projection room where video and text articulated the formal procedures underlying the installation.
2012
WuHo Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Scale:
1200 SF
Support:
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Principals:
Anya Sirota, Jean Louis Farges
Collaboration:
Steven Christensen
Curator:
Christian Stayner
Fictional Narrative:
Youna Kwak
Design Team:
Bruce Findling, Kayla Kim
Production Team: Geovanny Chavez, Anais Farges, Brandon Harvey, Jason Stock
Catalogue:
The Beta Movement