Making History: Seeing the Future of the Urban Past with XR Technologies

Schedule: 

6 p.m.: Exhibition and light refreshments  
7 p.m.: Panel discussion 

ADMISSION:  
Admission is free. Reservations required. 

RSVP

DESCRIPTION: 
The Ahmanson Lab, USC School of Architecture, and USC Libraries invite you to experience Making History, an exhibition and discussion exploring housing justice in Los Angeles.  

Providing unique perspectives on the history of Los Angeles, the fight for housing justice, and the impact of urban renewal policies, the exhibition features an interactive digital experience of a residential hotel at 240 South Figueroa on Bunker Hill, a building that housed hundreds of working families from around the world. The exhibition also includes an immersive VR representation of the neighborhood before it was demolished, highlighting the current struggle for housing in Los Angeles.  

An insightful and urgent panel with students, scholars, and activists will discuss lessons of the past and how they can inform the fight for housing justice today. 

About the panelists: 

Ben Caldwell , who will participate via Zoom, is a Los Angeles–based arts educator and independent filmmaker. His work has been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Tate Modern. Caldwell taught for fifteen years at CalArts, was a major founding force in CAP (Community Arts Partnership), and founded the KAOS Network community art/tech accelerator center dedicated to providing training on digital arts, media arts, and multimedia in Leimert Park. 

Meredith Drake Reitan is an associate dean in the USC Graduate School and an adjunct associate professor in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and USC School of Architecture, where she teaches classes on planning, urban design, and heritage conservation. She has written for academic and popular publications including the  Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Planning History, and Journal of Urban Design. Her research has been published as part of KCET’s Lost LA  series and on the Urban History Association’s Metropole blog.  

Lifelong resident of Los Angeles Karen Mack is the executive director of LA Commons. She decided to start LA Commons after her work in the civic sector revealed the challenge of building a sense of community in the city, believing that art has the power to address it. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University, where she studied the role of culture in community building, and is an appointed member of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission. 

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Suzanne M. Noruschat (USC Libraries), Meredith Drake Reitan (Public Policy and Architecture), Andrzej Rutkowski (USC Libraries), and Curtis Fletcher (Ahmanson Lab/Harman Academy at the USC Libraries).