Florence in Ruin: An Excavation Opening Night

Florence in Ruin: An Excavation

Doors open: 7:30pm

Slide Show w/Introduction by Norman Klein & Margo Bistis: 8:00pm

Garden Reception & Installation Viewing: 8:30 - 9:30pm

Archivists Ruby Carlson and Sara Velas will present a 20 min. experimental slideshow Florence in Ruin—or—The Great Escape for the opening of the installation Florence in Ruin: An Excavation by Sara Velas, with an introduction by Norman Klein and Margo Bistis. 

Florence in Ruin: An Excavation 

An installation by Sara Velas exploring a psychic fixation on the Alameda Corridor and Port of Long Beach. At its centre is a moving panorama tracing a psychogeographic journey from the neighborhood surrounding the Velaslavasay Panorama—with its concealed oil drilling sites, early development by Henry E. Huntington, and ornate Victorian, Craftsman and Gothic Revival architecture—along the enigmatic Alameda Belt Line to the Port of Long Beach, where flows of capital, cargo and tax-free art converge.

Florence in Ruin—or—The Great Escape

Originally presented at the 2024 Magic Lantern Conference aboard the Queen Mary, the former Cunard ocean liner, Florence in Ruin—or—The Great Escape is an experimental dual-projection slide lecture combining 35mm and magic lantern slides. The work interrogates the development of modern academic conceptions of visual beauty, geolocating art and beauty within the circulation of images and value through the port. Drawing on cinematic references ranging from Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Space (1997) and Reveries: Going Deeper (2020) to David Zucker’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), among others, the lecture offers a playful invocation of Rimbaud’s “systematic derangement of the senses.”

This event is the inaugural iteration of the series The Archival Phantasist, made in collaboration with Velaslavasay Panorama curators/artists Sara Velas and Ruby Carlson and curators/writers Norman Klein and Margo Bistis, who will introduce the performance and lead an informal discussion in the garden to follow.

Florence in Ruin: An Excavation

November 13, 2026 - December 19, 2026

This exhibition is a part of the 2026 Hyper SoCal initiative, which brings awareness to nonprofit and municipal art venues supporting working artists in Southern California. Florence in Ruin: An Excavation is made possible in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Velaslavasay Panorama Enthusiast Society. It is the first iteration of a four-part series The Archival Phantasist curated/created by Sara Velas & Ruby Carlson (Velaslavasay Panorama/IRMA360) and Margo Bistis & Norman Klein (The Imaginary 20th Century). Supported in part by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the Velaslavasay Panorama Enthusiast Society.