Starting February 9, the MAK Center for Architecture in Los Angeles will exhibit Shelter or Playground: The House of Dust at the Schindler House, a fresh look at the intersection of contemporary architecture, technology, and performance art.

The exhibition is curated by Maud Jacquin, Anna Milone, and Sébastien Pluot of Art by Translation (TALM) and is organized with the help of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, France Los Angeles Exchange (FLAX), and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

For the group exhibition, the curators have organized a set of performances, commissions, and installations that draw inspiration from The House of Dust, a “seminal yet under-recognized” late 1960s work by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, according to a press release. The House of Dust is considered among the first computer-generated works of poetry and is composed of repeating quatrains each beginning with the phrase “A House of . . . ” that is then followed by a random sequence of computer-generated materials, sites or locations, light sources, and categories of inhabitants. In 1968, Knowles translated the poem into a physical structure at a site in Chelsea, New York. The structure was eventually destroyed and then rebuilt and moved to the CalArts campus, where Knowles taught in the early 1970s. At CalArts the structure served as a makeshift classroom, an exhibition space, and as a catalyst for student work.

The coming presentation at the MAK Center seeks to pick up the work’s generative potential with new installations and performances by Henry Andersen & Bryana Fritz/Slow Reading Club, architectural writer and researcher Lila Athanasiadou, media artist Jasmin Blasco, French architects François Dallegret and François Perrin, and FLAX Artist-in-Residence Aurélie Godard, among many others. For a full list of participants, see the MAK Center website.

The run of the exhibition will include a program of historical performances highlighting works by Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown. CalArts students will also perform interpretations of scores created by Fluxus-associated artists, including Alison Knowles, Yoko Ono, Alvin Lucier, and Pauline Oliveros.