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# Performances About Learning, Set in a Fictional Classroom
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/dan-levenson-house-of-the-book-ezra-orion/
- Published: 2018-01-23T00:29:37.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:25:37.000Z
- Description: The classroom, which hails from a fictional Swiss art school, is set in the 1970s brutalist performance hall House of the Book.
- Author: Matt Stromberg
- Tags: Art, Events, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/01/dsc_5129w_lighter.jpg)

Dan Levenson’s SKZ Monochrome Workshop installed at The House of the Book, Simi Valley (photo by Dan Levenson)

The State Art Academy, Zurich (SKZ) is a fictional Swiss art school conceived by artist Dan Levenson. Over the past 15 years, he has fabricated everything from [utilitarian wooden desks and lockers](https://www.vielmetter.com/exhibitions/past/508/view.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) to faux-aged abstract paintings supposedly created by its students. He has even devised a [curriculum](https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2016/in-real-life/dan-levenson-drawing-lessons-from-the-skz/?ref=hyperallergic.com) for this modernist Bahaus-esque institution.

The latest chapter of this unfolding narrative takes place at the American Jewish University, where Levenson has created an SKZ classroom in conjunction with [*Ezra Orion, Revisited*](http://arts.aju.edu/calendar/opening-launching-sites-ezra-orion-revisited/?ref=hyperallergic.com), an exhibition examining the work of “[Israel’s best forgotten artist](http://arts.aju.edu/calendar/opening-launching-sites-ezra-orion-revisited/?ref=hyperallergic.com).” The installation is situated in the brutalist [House of the Book](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/house-book-american-jewish-university?ref=hyperallergic.com), a 1970s performance hall designed by Sidney Eisenshtat. Levenson attempts to draw parallels between the faded utopian visions of Orionand the SKZ. This Sunday, the [space will be activated by a series of performances that explore the phenomenon of learning.](http://arts.aju.edu/calendar/skz-monochrome-dyptichs-live-performances/?ref=hyperallergic.com) The program will feature Carver Audain’s sonic reworking of the Nirvana song “School,” Barnett Cohen’s “People Performing Words” — inspired by bored students in bad classes — and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs’s collaborative sound and movement piece that focuses on liminal states of knowledge.

**When:** Sunday, January 28, 2–5:19pm  
**Where:** House of the Book (1101 Pepper Tree Lane, Simi Valley, California)

*More info* [*here*](http://arts.aju.edu/calendar/skz-monochrome-dyptichs-live-performances/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*.*