Jesse Colin Jackson

Art 251: Special Topics Seminar

Spring 2016

 

The Acjachemen and Tongva homelands we now call Orange County is a place we love to disparage, and yet here we are. This seminar will explore what can we do with, about, and around this conflicted relationship, through the consideration of local architecture, landscape, and political economy, and of artistic production conceived in response.

We will begin by examining, through text and experience, a variety of theoretical positions present in our immediate built environment: the late modern, the postmodern, and the contextual. This will inform our participation in a symposium—the successor to a 1989 event featuring Derrida, Eisenman, Gehry and Lyotard—focused on the legacy of UCI architect and master planner William Pereira.

Migrating outward, we will then consider Orange County’s position within the greater Los Angeles megalopolis through arguments made Banham, Davis, Sorkin, and Soja. We will consider relationships between art, architecture, and place-making more generally through a variety of creative responses, including the hagiographic, the meditative, the critical, and the political.

As much as possible, this seminar will occur in situ. Our contemplation of place will occur in place, during visits to local sites, including:

We will interpret these places with the help of local and visiting informants, including:

In lieu of a final paper, participants in this seminar will, in consultation with the instructor and in collaboration with each other, propose and execute an urban intervention that represents a meaningful response to the seminar experience.