REMINDER: Proposals due May 15
(please excuse multiple postings)
- please distribute -
Call for Papers & Presentations
[Submission deadline: May 15, 2010]
The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art, Migrations, Development
UCLA Conference: October 22-24, 2010
Los Angeles Festival: September, 2010 - March, 2011
This innovative conference and festival will highlight the extraordinary Watts Towers of Sabato (Simon/Sam) Rodia, Italian immigrant and single-minded artist, who wanted to do "something big." His Towers in Watts, a National Historic Landmark and internationally-renowned icon, are both a personal artistic expression and collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo-Our Town/Our People. This Initiative seeks to refocus attention on the Watts Towers, renew our commitment to art in human and community development, and celebrate the common ground of the Watts Towers as an inspiring symbol of creativity, sustained resolve in adversity, and positive transformation. A consortium of sponsors* will launch this Initiative in 2010 with an international conference at UCLA, and public events throughout the city, in a festival of art, film, theater, music, communal food tables, and tours, with the goal of addressing modes of sustaining art, community development, the common good, as well as promoting hospitality and partnership across geographic, social, and other boundaries.
Paper/presentation proposals must be submitted by e-mail only and include:
1. One-paragraph bio-bibliography or resumé (with name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, telephone number)
2. Paper title and one-page abstract addressing one or more of the five themes below as they apply specifically to the Watts Towers or to related areas in other cultural contexts (please indicate to which of the themes your paper pertains):
1) Rodia's Towers in art and architectural history
2) the Watts Towers campus: monument, art center, community
3) preserving and promoting the Watts Towers
4) art, cultural heritage, and migration: local, national, global cartographies
5) art, education, and community development
[Oral presentations are limited to 20 minutes (+ 10 minutes for questions). Please note: financial support for conference participants is unavailable.]
Deadline: May 15, 2010
Contact: Luisa Del Giudice, luisadg@???, Project Director
* Watts Towers Arts Center, ("celebrating 50 years of inspiring art" in 2009), UCLA, the Consul General of Italy in Los Angeles, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, SPACES - Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments; Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and others. (Co-sponsor and partnership opportunities available.)
History of the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art and Migration: Sabato Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles, a historic international conference devoted to one of the most significant works of art and architecture of the last century, and to the Italian immigrant artist who created them, took place at the Università di Genova, Italy, in April of 2009. Artists, sociologists, architectural historians, ethnologists/folklorists, oral historians, filmmakers, scholars of literature and cinema, community activists, heritage and conservation specialists, as well as civic arts administrators considered the multiple meanings of a unique artist and his highly idiosyncratic work of art. They placed Rodia and his Towers within the context of local and global migrations, contested social and urban spaces, relations of art and economic development. Presenters also examined the community of Watts and its monument (physical, socio-economic and political realities); art environments, vernacular traditions, and their imaginaries; Italian migrations: literary, artistic, and visual legacies; and the feast of the Gigli of Nola, Italy. How can we bridge these divergent discourses and goals, and how do we foster "common ground" around the Watts Towers? The continued wellbeing of the Watts Towers, the Watts Towers Art Center, the communities which sustain them (and which are sustained by them) depend on it.
Luisa Del Giudice, Ph.D.
P.O. Box 241553
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1553
Tel/Fax: (310) 474-1698
E-mail: luisadg@???
www.luisadg.org
www.iohi.org
www.ItalianLosAngeles.org <
http://www.italianlosangeles.org/>
