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EVENING PROGRAM
Los Angeles is frequently billed as a sprawling and
de-centered city where culture grows small in the
shadow of a flourishing entertainment industry. For
those of us who live inside this unique metropolis
however, the experience is both richer and more
complex than that. Non-traditional exhibition and
project venues; cross-fertilizations between the arts
and entertainment industries; an increasing focus on
the role of art and artists in cultivating healthy,
sustainable civic, social and public spaces these
things are not just burgeoning but positively
flowering in our city, and most particularly in
downtown L.A. What's growing in LA? How are these
emerging cultural forms and initiatives impacting
lived experience in the urban environment? What could
grow in this city if culture's roots are well fed and
watered? Join Not a Cornfield artist Lauren Bon,
director of the Norman Lear Center Marty Kaplan,
writer and curator Janet Owen, and designer, engineer
and founder of Materials & Applications Jenna Didier
for a discussion of these questions and some the many
issues arising at the intersection of culture and the
public realm.
ABOUT FRIDAY NIGHTS @ NOT A CORNFIELD
Friday Nights @ Not A Cornfield brings people together in order to share, engage, energize, and enhance the organic nexus that is this project.
ABOUT THE NOT A CORNFIELD ART PROJECT
Growing in the historic center of Los Angeles, the Not Cornfield project transforms an industrial brownfield site into a cornfield for one agricultural cycle. Now the Los Angeles Historic State Park, the site popularly known as 'The Cornfield' had remained derelict for more than a decade. The project serves as a potent metaphor that provides a focus for reflection and action in a city unclear about the location of its energetic and historic center.
GUEST SPEAKERS
Martin Kaplan, whose career
has spanned entertainment, journalism, politics and academia,
is Associate Dean at the USC Annenberg School for Communication
and director of the Norman Lear Center a multidisciplinary
research center exploring the impact of entertainment
on society. Marty leads the Grand Intervention, an
initiative focused on the development of 16-acres of
land in downtown LA, which intends to make sure that
the most exciting ideas regarding public space, and
specifically this important public space, are brought
to light.
Jenna Didier is the founder and director of Materials & Applications, an outdoor exhibition space in Silver
Lake that focuses on transarchitectural installations.
In addition to producing twice-yearly installations
that can be visited any time, 24 hours a day, M & A
hosts regular open air discussions, workshops, and
film screenings. Jenna is also the Principal and Lead
Design Engineer of Fountainhead, a water feature
design company that pursues new and environmentally
sustainable approaches to public space and the built
environment.
Janet Owen is a Co-director of Raid Projectsm, a
non-commercial art venue in the Brewery that
facilitates and ventilates Los Angeles cultural
production to the world, and vice versa. To this end
Raid annually hosts 21 projects by international,
national and locally emerging artists; takes 4-6
projects abroad for exhibition; and administers a
year-round international residency program. A writer
and curator, Janet is the Founding Director of the AIM
internationalfestival of time-based media, a member of adjunct
faculty in the Public Art Studies department at USC and a
consultant with Not A Cornfield.
ABOUT LAUREN BON, NOT A CORNFIELD ARTIST
Not a Cornfield artist, Lauren Bon resides in Los Angeles and holds a Masters of Architecture degree from MIT and a BA from Princeton. Ms. Bon is a trustee of the Annenberg Foundation and President of Not A Cornfield, LLC. Her recent urban, public and land art projects in the U.S., Hong Kong, Belfast and Northern Ireland, as well as her role as a trustee, make her uniquely poised to build the capacity of the Foundation in the area of site based philanthropy, serving communities through education, civic, health, artistic initiatives and programs. Not a Cornfield art project is being developed through a grant by Annenberg Foundation.
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