Photographs of Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard, 1965–2010, photo by Ed Ruscha. Negative frame from 35 mm film reel. Getty Research Institute, 2012.M.1. © Ed Ruscha
Imaginaries of LA: Michelle Caswell, Laura Pulido, and Kandis Williams
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Imaginaries of LA is a series of conversations between Los Angeles-based artists, scholars, and curators, providing a forum for debate about representations of the city. In this fourth iteration, archival scholar Michelle Caswell, social scientist Laura Pulido, and multidisciplinary artist Kandis Williams explore the ways in which archives can repress or enable certain histories of the city, as well as strategies for working with archives that chronicle Los Angeles's past and shape its future.
Michelle Caswell is professor of archival studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is also an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Asian American Studies. Her books include Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work (2021), which looks toward the radical politics of community archives to envision new liberatory theories and practices. Her work helps to build a critical feminist approach to archival studies.
Laura Pulido is the Collins Chair and Professor of Indigenous, Race & Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon, where she studies race, cultural memory, and environmental justice. Her books include A People's Guide to Los Angeles (2012), a radical tour guide documenting power in Los Angeles's history and landscape. Most recently she has been researching the connections between the denial of white supremacy in both cultural memory and climate change.
Kandis Williams is a visual artist whose practice spans collage, sculpture, film, performance, writing, publishing, and curating. She explores and deconstructs critical theory around race, nationalism, authority, and eroticism.
This program is moderated by Zanna Gilbert, senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute. It was organized by Zanna Gilbert and Isabel Wade, research assistant at the Getty Research Institute.
The conversation will be recorded and available on the Getty Research Institute YouTube channel following the event.