Friday, September 27, 2013

Big City Forum: Shifting Space, Shifting Place

 
Steve Roden
Big City Forum @ Armory Center for the Arts
Shifting Space, Shifting Place
Anna Neimark/ Steve Roden/ Flora Wiegmann
145 N Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA 91103
Wednesday, October 2nd
7 – 9 pm


Big City Forum presents the final panel at the Armory Center in 2013. This will be a true, cross disciplinary conversation about the concept and poetics of Space. We anticipate a rich dialog with members of the BCF creative community presenting an individual body of work, a reading, a screening, or a movement that has helped shape their ideas and vision about Space, either at a personal/psychological level or related to ideas around social change, engagement and public space. The event will feature an architect, artist/musician, and dancer/choreographer.

Featuring:
ANNA NEIMARK: Anna Neimark is co-founder of First Office, a design studio that focuses on form through a critical engagement with the conventions of architectural drawing. Recent publications include an article, “The Infrastructural Monument, Soviet Works under Construction and in Representation” in Future Anterior, as well as a series of essays co-authored with Andrew Atwood: “Zoopol, A Monument to the Animal Kingdom” in Project, “How to Domesticate a Mountain” forthcoming in Perspecta, and “Abstraction Returns” in Think-Space. Anna is full-time faculty at SCI-Arc. She received a BA in Architecture from Princeton and an M.Arch from the GSD.

STEVE RODEN: Steve Roden received his BFA from Otis/Parsons in Los Angeles, CA and his MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles, CA; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; the Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas; the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA; the Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science, Fresno, California; the Henry Art Museum, Seattle, WA; the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA, and Le Bon Acceuil, Rennes, France.

Roden has been included in group exhibitions at the Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Mercosur Biennial Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Centre George Pompidou Paris, France; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; UCLA Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; the Sculpture Center, New York, NY; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; Run Run Shaw New Media Center, Hong Kong, China, and the Kitchen, New York, NY.

FLORA WIEGMANN: Flora Wiegmann is a Los Angeles-based dancer and choreographer. Usurping the tactics of visual artists, she attempts to broaden the platform for dance by making works on film, site-specific dances, endurance pieces, and by collaborating with artists such as Fritz Haeg, Drew Heitzler, Silke Otto-Knapp, Alix Lambert, Margo Victor, and Andrea Zittel. Creating both live and filmed performance works, her recent projects have been presented nationally and internationally. Her work has been shown at ICA, Philadelphia; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; LACMA, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; The Kitchen, New York; Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica; Art2102, Los Angeles; Art Basel; and Cneai, Chatou.
Moderator:
WILL WRIGHT: AIA Los Angeles. Will is the Director of Government and Public Affairs for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|LA) and a 2011 AIA|LA Presidential Honoree. As the chief design advocate for Los Angeles, he has more than a decade of experience lobbying for a healthier and more beautiful city. At AIA|LA he is responsible for a variety of roles including connecting architects and designers with civic leaders to help shape public policy. In 2013, Will became a founding board member of the non-profit From Lot To Spot, which helps underserved communities transform vacant lots into parks. Will is also serves on the boards of the BOMA-LA PAC and the Los Angeles County Business Federation (BizFed) as a Vice Chair of the Land Use & Development Committee. Past leadership includes serving as a member of the statewide Climate Plan Strategic Planning Steering Committee. As a graduate from the Art Center College of Design, Will won an AIGA 365 award as the Editor of the literary arts publication, FishWrap
V. 5.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Big City Forum: Architecture/Complexity/Generosity

Iwan Baan from No More Play
Big City Forum @ Armory Center for the Arts
Architecture/Complexity/Generosity
Wednesday, September 4
7 – 9 pm

Big City Forum returns to the Armory with another panel in the series Transforming the Social, which explores current architectural approaches in Los Angeles that address community based issues. What are the challenges and possibilities of contemporary Los Angeles as the practice of architecture takes into account and responds to community-based needs? How does architecture align itself to everyday social practices and diverse, multidisciplinary, and sometimes counterintuitive expressions in order to re-imagine the daily life of the city in more complex and generous understandings?

Featuring:
Michael Maltzan, FAIA, founder and principal of Michael Maltzan Architecture. Michael’s work fully engages our contemporary world through an architecture that is a catalyst for new experiences and an agent for change. Through a deep belief in architecture’s role in our cities and landscapes, he has succeeded in creating new cultural and social connections across a range of scales and programs. Michael received a Master of Architecture degree with a Letter of Distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He holds both a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Architecture from Rhode Island School of Design, where he received the Henry Adams AIA Scholastic Gold Medal. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a GSA Design Excellence Program Peer. He lectures internationally and often serves as a design instructor, lecturer, and critic at prestigious architectural schools including Princeton University, Rice University, Harvard University, Rhode Island School of Design, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Berkeley, University of Southern California, University of Waterloo, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Theresa Hwang, community-driven designer working in Los Angeles, CA. Currently Theresa works with the Skid Row Housing Trust, a non-profit permanent supportive housing organization where she was the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow from 2009-2012. With the Trust, she is designing and developing high quality and sustainable housing with and for the very low-income homeless community. Theresa is adjunct faculty at Woodbury University and works with its Architecture+Civic Engagement (ACE) Center. Activist-turned-architect, Theresa has spent over 10 years doing community-organizing work for equitable cultural development and community empowerment with multiple groups and campaigns in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and Art History from the Johns Hopkins University.

Peter Zellner, Principal and Founder, ZELLNERPLUS Associate AIA / RAIA Affiliate. Peter is the founder of award winning Venice based firm ZELLNERPLUS, which he established in 2004. Peter has been recognized as an emerging voice in national publications such as The Los Angeles Times, which named him one of “10 Faces to Watch in 2012”; Art+Auction, which included him in its annual "Power 100" selection of influential people in the art world; Harper's Bazaar, which included him in its Editor's Selection "Best of What's New—Designers to Watch"; as well as The New York Times and numerous other publications. Since 1999 Peter has been a faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, where he coordinates the Future Initiatives urban design program. He has held Visiting Professorships at UC Berkeley, FIU, the University of Southern California, the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and the Institut für Städtebau und Raumplanung (Institute for Urban Design & Urban Planning) at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. In 2013 he held the Ivan Smith Eminent Chair at the University of Florida, School of Architecture.


Moderator:
Will Wright, AIA Los Angeles. Will is the Director of Government and Public Affairs for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA|LA) and a 2011 AIA|LA Presidential Honoree. As the chief design advocate for Los Angeles, he has more than a decade of experience lobbying for a healthier and more beautiful city. At AIA|LA he is responsible for a variety of roles including connecting architects and designers with civic leaders to help shape public policy. In 2013, Will became a founding board member of the non-profit From Lot To Spot, which helps underserved communities transform vacant lots into parks. Will is also serves on the boards of the BOMA-LA PAC and the Los Angeles County Business Federation (BizFed) as a Vice Chair of the Land Use & Development Committee. Past leadership includes serving as a member of the statewide Climate Plan Strategic Planning Steering Committee. As a graduate from the Art Center College of Design, Will won an AIGA 365 award as the Editor of the literary arts publication, FishWrap V. 5.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Big City Forum @ LA Design Festival

Brian Roettinger "Dyptich for Saint Laurent"

Big City Forum hosts an interdisciplinary conversation for creative and progressive thinkers during LA Design Festival this year. 


“Independent Publishing and Print Culture in the Public Sphere,” will explore the impact of self initiated and independent publishing in the Los Angeles community.

Panelists include designer, musician, and educator Brian Roettinger, designer and curator Lauren Mackler, and designer, educator Willem Henri Lucas. The conversation will be moderated by LACMA’s Head of Publications Lisa Mark.

Design is intrinsically linked to visual language and through print and publications it dessiminates this language to a broad audience. What are the collisions and intersections between visual language, print culture, and the social sphere? How does print culture and independent publishing generate new platforms for these intersections to be recognized? “Independent Publishing and Print Culture in the Public Sphere” considers collective knowledge, layered histories, and the function of design and art in our community.

Big City Forum for LA Design Festival at The Standard, Downtown on June 19 from 7–9 p.m.


Creator of Hand Held Heart record label and Los Angeles resident BRIAN ROETTINGER never thought his simple phrasing of “Hand Held Heart” could encompass such an enormous round up of music, art and talent. Beginning in 1998, his project Hand Held Heart has grown exponentially since, as has Roettinger’s admirable passion. Supporting fringy death metal albums and makers of experimental noise, Roettinger is no novice to the music scene. A fan of chaotic punk rock himself, Roettinger was the bassist for This Machine Kills, a Southern California hardcore fixture that featured Steve Aoki on vocals. Roettinger now balances a life between work and play, teaching as the art director for the Southern California Institute of Architecture. His imagery is communicative and complicated, both disturbing and accurate, making him a perfect candidate to dissect the function of visual language on a diverse community.

Finding the fanciful in a city of fantasy and recreation, LAUREN MACKLER revels in opportunities for experimentation presented in Los Angeles. She created PUBLIC FICTION (the museum of) in 2010, a proud Los Angeles gallery-gone-publication that refuses to stop “reporting fearlessly on the factual, the fictitious and the imaginary.” Promoting art in all shapes, styles and forms, Mackler has created an exceptional space at 749 Avenue 50, incorporating the daily happenings of Los Angeles into art through exhibitions, shows, music, and more, following every event with a publication of Public Fiction’s journal. Her constant immersion in the avant garde arts world, coupled with her experience as a professor has prepared Mackler for Big City Forum’s discussion over the intersection of community and art culture in Los Angeles today.

WILLEM HENRI LUCAS is the final featured panelist for Big City Forum. His projects translate the connections between media, politics, and relationships in a very abstract way. His extensive amount of projects began in book design. He has posed himself with the artistic challenge of uniting humanity, culture and art. He began this endeavor designing book covers, and from there created installations, posters, and even a mixed tape in print reflecting YouTube video’s of sad love songs. Lucas concentrates on the subjects of war, love and humanity, trying to bring design “back to the streets” and back to community. His intentions as an artist align smoothly with the conversation topics Big City Forum looks forward to creating.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

What I Talk About When I Talk About Community

Big City Forum in residence at Armory

What I talk about when I talk about community: Reframing practice in the public sphere 


Wednesday, May 1, 2013
7–9pm


Armory Center for the Arts, 145 North Raymond Ave, Pasadena
This panel discussion brings together four practitioners from the fields of art and architecture to discuss the complexity of social engagement. Speakers will investigate the agency of art and design when shaping spaces for a public. What I Talk About When I Talk About Community asks for more refined understanding of community, in order to reveal the politics, pitfalls, and pleasures of these practices.


Featuring:


Victor Jones, principal of Los Angeles-based Fievre Jones, cultural activist, and writer, whose research lies at the intersection of architecture, urban design, and community building within cities. Recent design projects include the Platform for Watts House Project (2011) and a skate park for New Orleans' City Park (2009). His design work has been supported by numerous grants, including the Graham Foundation, Artplaces, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. He is currently Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Southern California.


Jennifer Su and Laura Noguera, co-owners of Thank You for Coming, a communal restaurant/residency program that “aims to give people with varying experiences and backgrounds an opportunity to explore and execute ideas around sharing food. Residents are invited to utilize our restaurant space as a platform for public engagement and creative experimentation.”


James Michael Tate received his Masters of Architecture from Yale University and Bachelors of Environmental Design from Texas A&M University. He has previously worked for MOS, Peter Eisenman, and Samuel Mockbee. Tate co-taught a studio with Michael Maltzan at Rice University this past spring; the experience motivated him to move to Los Angeles. Tate designs, makes, writes, and participates in a variety of architectural affairs. His current affinities include narratives, oppositional dialectic blends, seeking refuge in unsettled territories between art and architecture, the latent potentialities of history in contemporary experiments, and the Korean taco food-truck.


Moderator:


Mimi Zeiger, editor and publisher of loud paper, a 'zine and blog dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse. As writer and critic she covers art, architecture, urbanism, and design for the New York Times, Domus, Dwell, and Architect, where she is a contributing editor. Zeiger is author of New Museums: Contemporary Museum Architecture Around the World; Tiny Houses; and Micro Green: Tiny Houses in Nature.


Big City Forum returns for a second annual residency at Armory Center for the Arts with a new series, entitled Transforming the Social, which features six panel conversations that recognize and celebrate the ability to create transformative moments within the scope of the built environment and social space. Armory is pleased to have been hosting Big City Forum in residence since 2012, which saw the launch of Mapping LA, a series of four events exploring current creative practices that inform the landscape and geography of Los Angeles. Through its residency at Armory, Big City Forum is deepening its ongoing investigation of social and civic space within the built environment of the Los Angeles region. The residency builds upon a shared interest between the Armory and Big City Forum in advancing public discourse on the notion of social and civic engagement.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Big City Forum: Design by Deferral



Elizabeth Chin, Dance for Joy, Media Design Program in Kadampa, Uganda


Big City Forum: Design by Deferral

Wednesday, April 3rd
7 – 9 pm

 Armory Center for the Art
145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91103

Big City Forum returns for a second residency at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. “Transforming the Social" will present four discursive panel conversations that aim to recognize and celebrate the ability to create transformative moments within the scope of the built environment and social space while acknowledging our core potential for human value.

The second of these conversations BCF: Design by Deferral explores the academic and professional conventions that keep research about everyday urban life separate from the practices of design and planning. Research practices such as ethnography conduct description and analysis and may lay the groundwork for architectural or planning projects, but are rarely integrated into the design process. 

This panel will explore emerging practices of research that turn this paradigm on its head, deferring to everyday social practices and diverse, multidisciplinary forms of expertise in order to re-imagine how the daily life of the city will be designed for, and in whose interest.

Featuring:

Elizabeth Chin, anthropologist, Professor, Media Design Program, Art Center College of Design (topic: public space and dance in Kampala)
http://works.bepress.com/elizabeth_chin/

Adonia Lugo, anthropologist and bike activist, University of California, Irvine (topic: ethnographic experiments and bicycle advocacy, CicLAvia)
http://www.urbanadonia.com/

Michael Powell, anthropologist and strategist, Shook Kelley (topic: corner store conversions in South LA, collaboration with architects)
http://culturalanalysis.tumblr.com/


Curt Gambetta (moderator and discussant), architect, Woodbury University

Monday, March 4, 2013

Big City Forum: Music as Urbanism

image courtesy of B+
Big City Forum: Music as Urbanism
Wed. March 6th
7 - 9 pm

Armory Center for the Art
145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91103

Big City Forum returns for a second residency at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena.This new series "Transforming the Social" will present four discursive panel conversations that aim to recognize and celebrate the ability to create transformative moments within the scope of the built environment and social space while acknowledging our core potential for human value.

The first of these conversations BCF: Music as Urbanism explores the power of music to shape and define culture, to set the contours for a vital urbanism, and to activate vibrant social spaces. It will feature presenters who are deeply committed to using music as transformative agent related to themes of culture, community engagement, and history.

Featuring:
JOSH KUN, Assoc. Professor, USC Annenberg School of Communication, Director The Popular Music Project, Co-FOunder, The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation
BRIAN CROSS (aka B+), photo journalist, film maker, Founder, Mochilla
EAMON ORE-GIRON, contemporary artist, DJ Lengua, member OJO collective
Moderated:

Susannah Tantemsapya, Founder, Creative Migration

bios:

Josh Kun is an American author, academic and music critic. Kun is an Associate Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.He also holds a joint appointment at USC's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. He is the director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's The Norman Lear Center and co-editor of the book series "Refiguring American Music" for Duke University Press.Kun serves on the boards of Dublab, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the Latin American Cinemateca, and on the editorial boards of American Quarterly, the International Journal of Communications, and The Journal of Popular Music Studies. He has also worked as a consultant and curator with The Los Angeles Public Library, Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Autry National Center, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.
B+ (aka Brian Cross) was born and raised in Limerick, Ireland. He attended the National College of Art and Design in Dublin graduating in 1989 with a degree in painting. In 1990 he came to Los Angeles to study photography at the California Institute of the Arts. While at Cal Arts he began work on a project entitled, Its Not about a Salary: Rap Race and Resistance in Los Angeles which was subsequently published by Verso Books in 1993. It was nominated as a Rolling Stone Music Book of the Year and made the NME critics best music book of the year list.

Eamon Ore-Giron was born in 1973 in Tucson, AZ. He received his BFA from the San Francisco Institute of Art in 1996, and his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2006. He has had solo exhibitions at MUCA ROMA, Mexico City (2006); Queen’s Nails Annex, San Francisco (2005) and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia (2005). His work was also included in group shows at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and in the traveling museum exhibition, Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, which was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and which has traveled to venues in Mexico, New York and Texas.
Ore-Giron has lived in Peru, Spain, Mexico and the Southwest of the United States which has informed his visual vocabulary. His paintings and works on paper blend contemporary style and subject matter with cultural iconography and folklore in a surrealistic composition. Ore-Giron currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Big City Forum: VIVA VOCE

 
VIVA VOCE – interactive sound and video installation

Katharina Rosenberger / Heiko Kalmbach


JANUARY 22 – 24, 2013
HUMAN RESOURCES, Chinatown, LA | 410 Cottage Home St. | www.humanresourcesla.com
2pm to 6pm, or by appointment

All events are free

VIVA VOCE celebrates vocal performance art in an interactive and experimental context and through this lens explores voice, body relationships, and the self. In the process, the work investigates the root of oral tradition and its impact on shared information in the virtual versus physical social space. In real-time visitors play and re-compose performance and documentary sequences of three vocal artists—Juliana Snapper (Los Angeles), Shelley Hirsch (New York), and Pamela Z (San Francisco)—by interacting with a 3D sonic sculpture on an iPad. Sung and spoken passages appear synchronized to the visual portrayal of the protagonists on floating screens in the gallery space. By improvising with the iPad interface and triggering text and vocal passages, visitors become not only intimately introduced to the vocalists; they turn into performers themselves.

 Katharina Rosenberger, Composition, Artistic Direction Heiko Kalmbach, Video Michael Schmitz, iPad Design, App Programming Jason Ponce, Multimedia Programming Vance Galloway, Set Design, Technical Direction Joe Kucera, Audio Engineering Nick Drashner, Audio Mastering

EVENTS

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22

Opening and Artist Reception

7PM – 10PM



WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23

BIG CITY FORUM Panel Discussion

7.30PM

VOICE AND BODY SEEN THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA

Big City Forum presents a conversation to explore and expand upon key concerns raised by the installation VIVA VOCE

Featured Panelists:
Micol Hebron, performance/installation artist, faculty Chapman University
Ming-Yuen S Ma, Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College
Victoria Vesna, Professor of Design | Media Arts, UCLA, Director of the Art | Sci Center

Katharina Rosenberger, composer, Asst. Professor, Music, UC San Diego


Moderated by Nina Eidsheim, Asst. Professor, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music

Big City Forum is an interdisciplinary project that facilitates the exchange of ideas through gatherings, symposiums, exhibitions, and special events that provide access to forward-thinking creative projects by highlighting the intersections between creativity and public/social space.


For more information:

www.vimeo.com/channels/vivavoce

Special thanks to Human Resources, LA, swissnex San Francisco, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Consulate General of Switzerland, LA, Big City Forum, LA and the Goethe Institut Los Angeles for supporting the show and opening events.

VIVA VOCE has been awarded the mediaproject/sitemapping grant of the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, Berne and is funded in part through the Hellman Foundation Fellowship, San Francisco, the UC San Diego Academic Senate Grant, the Faculty Career Development Program and the UC San Diego Department of Music.