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The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art – Migration – Development

UCLA Conference
October 22-24, 2010

Free and open to the public.
No registration required.

Conference Sessions:

Friday, October 22
2:00 – 8:30 pm
Sequoia Room, UCLA Faculty Center
Parking in Lot 2 – Westholme/Hilgard entrance, $10.
Includes evening reception.

Saturday, October 23
9:00 am – 5:00 pm
UCLA 121 Dodd Hall
Limited free parking at St. Alban’s, first come, first served.
Additional parking in Lot 2 – Westholme/Hilgard entrance, $10.
Includes lunch reception at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 580 Hilgard Ave., LA 90024

Sunday, October 24
1:00 – 3:00 pm
Watts Labor Community Action Committe
Includes “Day in Watts” morning tour and lunch.

Conference Speakers include:

Susan D. Anderson, UCLA

• Preserving the History of Watts as a Progenitor of the Avant-Garde

Katia Ballacchino, Univ. of Rome Sapienza
• Towers of Memory: Images and Visual Community Symbols Between Italy and the United States

Monica Barra, Rutgers Univ., Newark, N.J.
•Teaching the Watts Towers, Learning Los Angeles: Public Art, Storytelling, and Urban Pedagogy

Linden Beckford Jr., Los Angeles
• The Black Southern Migration in Watts: Post-WWII Facelift

Guglielmo Bilancioni, Univ. of Genova
• Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Simon Rodia and Fantastic Architecture

Gail Brown, “Where I’m Standing,” Los Angeles
• From Where I’m Standing Photo-Documentary Workshops at Watts Towers Arts Center: Building Community Through Self-Awareness and Self-Expression

Steve Colton, Art Conservator, Los Angeles
• Conservation Work at the Towers: A Brief Overview of Conditions, Causes, Treatment Campaigns, and Results Over Five Decades

Alessandro Dal Lago and Serena Giordano, Univ. of Genova
• Art Without Nation

Mark Gilberg, and Frank D. Preusser, Conservation Center, LACMA

• The Watts Towers – Preservation Impossible?

Luisa Del Giudice, Los Angeles
• The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative

Paul A. Harris, Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles
• Local Monument to a Global Imaginary: Rodia’s Watts Towers, Marco Polo, and Italo Calvino

Jo Farb Hernandez, S.P.A.C.E.S. & San Jose State Univ.
• Local Art, Global Issues: Tales of Survival and Demise Among Contemporary Art Environments

Jeffrey Herr, Hollyhock House/Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts, DCA
• Simon Rodia’s Towers: A Status Report

Darnell M. Hunt and Ana Christina Ramon, UCLA
• Watts This About “Black Los Angeles?” An Anthology on Space, People, Image, and Action

Laura E. Ruberto, Berkeley City College
• A California Detour on the Road to Italy: The Hubcap Ranch, the Napa Valley, and Italian American Identity

Kenneth Scambray, Univ. of La Verne
• California and the Italian Immigrant Experience: The Artistic and Literary Contexts of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers

Joseph Sciorra, John D. Calandra It. Am. Inst., Queens College, NY
• “Why a Man Makes the Shoes?”: Italian-American Art and Philosophy in Sabato Rodia’s Watts Towers

Richard Cándida Smith, Univ. of California, Berkeley
• An Era of Grand Ambitions: Sam Rodia and California Modernism

Timothy Watkins, Watts Labor Community Action Committee, Los Angeles
• “Don’t Move, Improve!” Watts Labor Community Action Committee, Past and Present

Amit Wolf, UCLA
• The Open Macrostructure: Umberto Eco’s Semiology of Architecture and The Watts Towers

And two special panels:

Artists in Conversation
Panel discussion including John Outterbridge, Judson Powell, Charles Dickson, Augustine Aguirre, Betye Saar, and others.

The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts
Rare Reflections by Original Members: William Cartwright, Bud Goldstone, Jeanne Morgan

17 ottobre 2010