Making Skid Row Cool: Los Angeles Poverty Department’s (failed) Skid Row Walk of Fame - Opening lecture of Urban Imagineering and the Construction of Cool Cities by Marina Peterson

The CEU Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology cordially invites you to

 Making Skid Row Cool:

Los Angeles Poverty Department’s (failed) Skid Row Walk of Fame

 a public lecture by

Marina Peterson

Marina Peterson is trained as an anthropologist and a cellist. A cellist, Peterson plays primarily new and experimental music. An anthropologist, her work focuses on practices and processes of city making. Her research has explored multi-scalar formations of urban space through the study of sensory, sonic, and embodied processes ranging from performance and planning to labor and law. She has conducted ethnographic research in Los Angeles, Singapore, and Appalachian Ohio. Her work has appeared in Anthropological Quarterly, O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies, Space and Culture, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Urban Anthropology.

She is the author of Sound, Space, and the City: Civic Performance in Downtown Los Angeles and co-editor of Global Downtowns.

 Date and Time: 30 September, 17:30

 Venue: POPPER room, Nádor utca 9.

 Abstract:

When the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency commissioned Los Angeles Poverty Department to create a permanent artwork downtown, the group developed a plan for a Skid Row Walk of Fame. Modeled on Hollywood’s world famous tourist destination, it would permanently commemorate Skid Row heroes in the sidewalks of downtown L.A. Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a Skid Row based performance group. Now in its thirtieth year, its work addresses the consequences of broad economic and political forces for the lived experiences of Skid Row residents. Recent work has engaged more strategically with the politics, discourse, and imagineering of the creative economy and urban cultural policy; as gentrification puts pressure on Skid Row boundaries and lives, LAPD is “making the case for Skid Row culture” (Jackson and Malpede) through projects that include an annual Festival for All Skid Row Artists, a Skid Row History Museum, and the Skid Row Walk of Fame. Tracing the process of planning the Skid Row Walk of Fame through its ultimate demise, this talk addresses how LAPD, in using arts and culture to claim a “right to the city” (Lefebvre), reveals the biases and exclusions of the “cultural city.” As such, it examines the political machinations that enable, or disable, “coolness” – or who is allowed to imagine and who is allowed to be visible.

The talk is the opening event of the workshop Urban Imagineering and the Construction of Cool Cities organized by the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
For the program of the workshop, see http://sociology.ceu.edu/events/2015-09-30/urban-imagineering-and-construction-cool-cities-workshop