Author Frances Anderton, environmental artist Lauren Bon, and urban historian Norman Klein approach the city of Los Angeles from different perspectives and fields: together they will discuss how L.A.’s unique history, architecture, and environment have shaped the city. The conversation will be moderated by L.A.-based critic, editor and curator Mimi Zeiger.
L.A. history and fiction require a unique historical template in order to discover its hidden structures and story. Contrary to the conventional myth, the city is by no means ungraspable. It is layered in very unusual ways and the story of these layers began as a set of policies from the late 19th century onwards. Even if these policies are long gone, they still affect the city today, shifting L.A.’s infrastructure tectonically. They powerfully affect ethnic, environmental, architectural, and racial stories in the city’s fabric and can hide its vectors of power. As the city grew in the early 20th century and agglomerated rapidly, it annexed over sixty little towns by 1925. Ever growing, decade by decade, L.A. is now a deeply layered metropolitan region of over fifteen million people— what urban historian Norman Klein calls the New Byzantium: a crossroads city state.
This panel of renowned L.A. authors, artists, and critics will examine the city’s ironic and iconic contradictions from a variety of angles, like different layers of an interface. Environmental Artist Lauren Bon will contribute from the perspective of environmental art and its unique relationship with the city. Through her artistic endeavors, she strives to engage with the city’s environment and communities, seeking to connect with its essence and evoke meaningful reflections. Frances Anderton examines L.A. through the lens of its changing housing concepts: L.A. has always been equated with the suburban single-family home with a big backyard. But for decades, the city has also been the laboratory for exceptional experiments in multifamily housing. Anderton makes the case that well-designed, equitable, connected living is tomorrow’s American dream. In his many seminal publications on the region, urban historian Norman Klein explores the process of memory erasure in the city. In his famous ‘anti-tours’, he looks at sites that no longer exist or point to forgotten histories, excavating the way information technology has recreated the city, how the Pacific economy is changing the structure of urban life, the impact of collapsing infrastructures, and the restructuring of those very districts that had been ‘forgotten’.
In a conversation with moderator Mimi Zeiger, acclaimed L.A.-based critic, editor and curator, the panel will examine how L.A.’s unique history, architecture and environmental art have responded to these challenges and various cultural layers. The panel seeks to explore the paradoxes of L.A., how it is simultaneously centralized and decentralized, and what this can tell us about the city today. How will L.A. confront the challenges of a new age of globalization? How can these different approaches unveil insightful perspectives about the city’s past, present, and the potential paths it might take in the future? The panel invites the audience to actively engage in the process of understanding the city’s complexities.