Reframe: City Hall Mural – Memory Work Today
New approaches to telling stories about the places we live.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
6 – 7 pm
Location: Zoom (Virtual)
Eventbrite: RSVP
Stanton Macdonald-Wright’s controversial mural in Santa Monica’s City Hall uses images and text to tell one perspective on the origin story of Santa Monica and its notable events and people. This panel discussion introduces innovative alternative approaches to storytelling and public history from across the United States. We’ll meet practitioners working with approaches like augmented reality, projection mapping, animation, oral history, publications and walking tours. These innovators reframe the histories of place in America from perspectives that have long been silenced. This discussion will feature idris brewster, Christine Wong Yap.
idris is an artist and CEO of Kinfolk Foundation (NYC), an organization that holds public teach-ins, demonstrations, and performance pieces. Kinfolk has created augmented reality (AR) experiences that advocate for the decolonization of history with a mission to uproot oppressive systems and reimagine public spaces through art, emerging technology and storytelling.
Christine Wong Yap (she/they) is a visual artist and social practitioner working in community engagement, drawing, printmaking, publishing, and public art to explore psychological well-being, belonging, and resilience. She has developed participatory research and public art projects in partnership with Times Square Arts, the Wellcome Trust, For Freedoms, the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, and more. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, after a decade of living in New York City.
This activity is part of the Reframe: City Hall Mural project event series organized by Meztli Projects, an Indigenous-based arts & culture collaborative centering Indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles by using arts-based strategies to support, advocate for and organize to highlight Native and Indigenous Artists and systems-impacted peoples. Meztli Projects’ facilitation team is Joel Garcia, Robin Garcia Ph.D., Susannah Laramee Kidd Ph.D., and Rosten Woo.
As part of its Acknowledge and Reframe Together (Reframe) initiative, the City of Santa Monica has embarked on a public process to consider the meaning, impact and potential responses to the WPA-era mural by Stanton Macdonald-Wright in the lobby of historic City Hall. The Reframe: City Hall Mural project offers a series of civic memory conversations and activities to connect Santa Monicans’ diverse histories and contemporary experiences. This process explores representation in public art and how community stories are told so that we can develop creative ideas for future events, public art, and policy updates. Each event will offer a different way to engage with the process of considering the mural. The whole arc of learning events will provide community members with the tools to help amend and celebrate Santa Monica history and take part in Reframe! More information on the City Hall Mural project here.