- please distribute -
The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative:
Art-Migrations-Development
Conference: October 22-24, 2010
Festival: September 25, 2010 - March 19, 2011
www.WattsTowersCommonGround.org <
http://www.wattstowerscommonground.org/>
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Saturday, September 25
(29th Annual Watts Towers Day of the Drum Festival:
www.myspace.com/drumnjazz)
Charles Mingus Youth Art Center (Watts Towers Arts Center campus)
1727 East 107th St., Los Angeles, 90002
10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Migrating Towers: The Gigli of Nola and Beyond. Exhibition. Sept. 25, 2010 - Jan. 2, 2011. Curated by Felice Ceparano, Dir., Museo Etnomusicale, I Gigli di Nola; Katia Ballacchino, Ph.D. Università di Roma, Sapienza.
Nola - Watts - New York
The Watts Towers strikingly recall the festival spires or "gigli" of Nola, a town situated approximately 35 miles from Rodia's birthplace near Naples. Here, every June 22nd, for the feast of St. Paulinus, the city commemorates the bishop's safe return from slavery. Eight 80-foot tall obelisks, or gigli, and a ceremonial "boat" are carried on the shoulders of hundreds of crew members from the community. Supporting a musical band, the massive structures are then danced through the narrow streets of the town's historic center. Emigrants from Nola have remained loyal to this tradition and re-enact it, with towering gigli not only throughout Campania, Italy, but in Brooklyn, in Harlem, N.Y., and Cliffside, N.J. This exhibition features images from the Ethnomusicological Museum of the Gigli of Nola as well as images of the Nolan diaspora from the Nola County Archive.
Sunday, September 26
(34th Annual Simon Rodia Watts Towers Jazz Festival:
www.myspace.com/drumnjazz)
Charles Mingus Youth Art Center (Watts Towers Arts Center campus)
10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Formal Inauguration of Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative, with Consul General of Italy in Los Angeles, Nicola Faganello, 12:00 p.m.
Musicàntica: Music of Mediterranean Italy (Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center), 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.
about the...
Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art-Migrations-Development
The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of 3 decades by a single-minded artist-artisan, Sabato (Simon, Sam) Rodia, an Italian immigrant who wanted to do "something big." Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally-renowned icon, they are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo-Our Town/Our People. The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art-Migrations-Development seeks to celebrate the common ground of the Towers, a locus of creativity, of sustained resolve in adversity and of positive public transformation. With an eye to renewing civic commitment to art in community contexts, this Initiative will encompass a range of public events throughout the city, including an international conference at the University of California at Los Angeles and Watts, and a festival of art, film, theater, music, communal food tables and city tours. Our goal is to address modes of sustaining art and community development within a civic environment of meager resources. We also aim to promote hospitality and partnership across geographic, social and other boundaries.
Both festival and conference carry forward the conversation begun at the international conference, Art and Migration: Sabato Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles, jointly sponsored by the University of Genova and the UCLA International Institute (Italy, April 2009), which examined the monument's multiple resonances within the milieux of local and global migrations, of contested social and urban spaces, and of the rapport between art and economic development. How are these divergent discourses and goals best bridged? How is "common ground" fostered around the Watts Towers? The continued well-being of the Towers and their adjacent Art Center, as well as the divergent communities which sustain and are sustained by them depend on upon how well we answer these questions.
Sponsors: Department of Italian at the University of California at Los Angeles; UCLA International Institute; City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles (IIC); Consulate General of Italy in Los Angeles; Armand Hammer Museum; Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments (S.P.A.C.E.S.); Watts Towers Arts Center (WTAC); Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC); Museo Etnomusicale, I Gigli di Nola (Gigli of Nola Ethnomusicological Museum); St. Alban's Episcopal Church; Dept. of Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA
Project Coordinator: Luisa Del Giudice
With the Assistance of: Thomas Harrison, Edward Landler, Jo Farb Hernandez, Rosie Lee Hooks, Edward Tuttle, Rudy Barbee, Janine Watkins,
UCLA Conference Committee: Thomas Harrison, Luisa Del Giudice, Jo Farb Hernandez, Paul Harris, Alessandro Dal Lago
