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:
- The architecture and landscape of William Pereira’s UCI campus
- The urban ecologies of the Santa Ana river
- The adaptive reuse of the Orange County Great Park
- Irvine’s minimalist office parks and spectacular shopping centers
- The arts and culture of Santa Ana
We will interpret these places with the help of local and visiting informants, including:
- Filmmaker Lev Anderson and media scholar Catherine Liu, collaborators on the How to Live in Irvine project
- Spacing magazine founder Matthew Blackett
- Location scout Robert Girardin, author of a forthcoming flaneur’s guide to Orange County
- Architectural historian Alan Hess
- Independent curator Grace Kook-Anderson
- Former Mayor of Irvine Beth Krom
- UCI professor emeritus William Lillyman
- Artist and community activists Mariangeles Soto-Diaz
- Arts and culture advocate Kevin Staniec
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.