Big City Forum at Armory Center for the Arts

Armory Center for the Arts is pleased to welcome Big City Forum in residence starting immediately and extending through June 2012. During its residency at Armory, Big City Forum will present Mapping LA, a series of four discursive events that will feature speakers from a similar creative practice. Each event will feature a panel of speakers who share a specific creative practice, which will provide the framework for a lively discussion around livability, sustainability, community, and the politics of place in Los Angeles.

Fast Forward: Los Angeles on the Verge
Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 7pm
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103

This panel explores new directions for urban planning and architecture with the following Los Angeles-based architects, theorists, and planners:

• Dana Cuff, Director of cityLAB, a think tank within UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

• Roger Sherman, Co-Director, cityLAB; principal, Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design.

• Jessica Varner, Co-Editor, No More Play (Hatje Cantz, pub.); founder, SmallerLarge, a publications studio focused on ideas about architecture, urban studies, art, and culture.

• Edward Soja, postmodern political geographer and urban planner; Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA; Visiting Professor, London School of Economics.

• Linda Taalman, Principal, TaalmanKoch Architecture; Assistant Professor of Architecture, Woodbury University.

• Ava Bromberg (Moderator), Project Director, Atwater Crossing (ATX); Doctoral Candidate, School of Urban Planning, UCLA.

The Armory Center for the Arts, in Pasadena, California, believes that an understanding and appreciation of the arts is essential for a well-rounded human experience and a healthy civic community. Founded in 1989, the Armory builds on the power of art to transform lives and communities through presenting, creating, teaching, and discussing contemporary visual art. The organization’s department of exhibitions mounts over 25 visual arts exhibitions each year at its main facility and in locations throughout the City of Pasadena. In addition, the Armory offers studio art classes and a variety of educational outreach programs to more than fifty schools and community sites.

There's no 'there', there: LA films LA

There's no 'there', there: LA films LA
Wed, Nov. 16th

Goethe Institut LA
5750 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 525-3388

7 - 9 pm

Big City Forum presents a film screening curated by Saskia Wilson-Brown, Founder and co-director of Cinema Speakeasy. The evening will feature short films that examine what LA means to those that inhabit it, in a program and discussion about our public urban identity. We will be screening pieces that capture the complexity and reality of living in our de-centralized - yet mythical - metropolis.

Before you moved here, and you thought of Los Angeles, what came to mind? Hollywood? Getty Center? Strip malls and traffic? Urban sprawl? Hardened cops? Gang warfare? Chicks in bikinis filing their nails under towering palm trees?

LA is the constantly shifting metropolis constructed entirely for mass consumption by fantastical and fevered minds with nary a glance at the rich complexity roiling beneath its shimmering skin. From gritty downtown cop dramas to technicolor Hollywood fantasies, it has been omnipresent in American celluloid, but rarely truly captured. It is, in short, the most filmed yet least understood megalopolis in modern American history.

Filmmakers will be on hand for a post-screening discussion about their sense of place, moderated by Saskia Wilson-Brown and Big City Forum.

PROGRAM

Part 1: LA Isn't a Real City, It Just Plays One on Camera (Observations)
'I Hate LA' by Suzy Barrett (TRT 2.5 min)
'Los Angeles: A Love Poem' by Dylan King (TRT 2.25 min)
'Not West of Western' by Clay Dean (TRT 13.5 min)

Part 2: Interlude (Moments)
'Javelin @ Bob Baker Marionette Theatre' by Alex Pelly, Dublab (TRT. 10 min)
'Mall Mania' by Joel Fletcher (TRT 4.5 min)
'Intolerance' by Lisa Marr and Paolo Davanzo (TRT 2.25 min)

Part 3: A Manufactured Narrative (Stories)
'Untitled (Perlman Place)' by Vera Brunner-Sung (TRT 1 min)
'Dos, Por Favor' by Fabian Euresti (TRT 15 min)
And a special surprise by Austin Young (TRT 10 min)

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Saskia Wilson-Brown is an independent film advocate, curator and artist. On the art side, she is currently collaborating with designer Micah Hahn under the nom-de-plume à deux 'Mr. and Mrs. Hahn'. She is also the founder of Cinema Speakeasy, a regular film screening series that showcases independent films and arts in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She runs Cinema Speakeasy with her colleague Georgi Goldman, out of LA (with independent events in San Francisco, and now Palm Springs!)

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. As an incubator of ideas Big City Forum promotes the arts and imagination as powerful tools for community and civic transformation. In addition it seeks new ways to map and understand what creative acts of imagination mean to people and places. By bringing together creative visionaries and community/civic leaders, Big City Forum aims to build a platform for collaboration and partnerships that promote a more active sense of cultural vitality and engagement.