Closing Program: Construction, Occupation

Join us for a powerful presentation on the fight for housing justice, featuring Pete White of the Los Angeles Community Action Network and Lisa Riedner of the Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. Together with Construction, Occupation curator Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, they will delve into issues surrounding housing inequality, activism, and the role of art in shaping social change. This program will also include the launch of the Construction, Occupation catalog, offering deeper insights into the exhibitions’ themes.

Lisa RiednerLisa Riedner is a cultural anthropologist with special interests in social (state) regimes, the precarity of life and labor in urban spaces, migration, and border studies. Her work explores the intersections of academic, activist, and artistic practices. She leads the Emmy Noether junior research group “Contestations of the Social: Towards a movement-based ethnographic social (state) regime analysis“ at the Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Göttingen and a Master’s of anthropological research from the University of Manchester.

Pete WhitePete White is the founder and executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN), a grassroots organization working to ensure that the human rights to housing, health, and security are upheld in the city. White has been a community organizer in Los Angeles since 1992 and has educated and organized thousands of low-income people on a multitude of issues and campaigns. A lifetime resident of South Central Los Angeles, he is committed to fighting for racial justice, equitable distribution of resources, and inclusion of everyone. White believes that leadership development and organizing are essential for achieving social change. He serves on a variety of boards and advisory committees related to homelessness, organizing, and grassroots funding.

Alex Ungprateeb FlynnAlex Ungprateeb Flynn is associate professor and graduate vice chair in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. His research sits between the arts and social sciences, cultural theory and aesthetic practice. Working with activists, curators, and artists in Brazil, he investigates the prefigurative potential of art in community contexts and theorizes about the production of knowledge, notions of utopia, and social and aesthetic dimensions of form. Through a collaborative methodological approach, he inquires into how human beings express themselves artistically and, in doing so, seek to transform the world.This program is presented in partnership with UCLA World Arts and Cultures/Dance and UCLA Latin American Institute.

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